In recognition of National Poetry Month the Caxton Club celebrates the importance of poetry and poets.
Attend our 4/21 Program – Jacqueline Goldsby on “Do Not be Afraid of No: Gwendolyn Brooks’ Years at Harpers”
Caxton Club co-sponsored discussion with designer Matthew Carter and The Newberry’s Jill Gage on development of Snell Roundhand typeface. Video here.
The Caxton Club proudly announces support of the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize, an annual prize of $1,000 for an outstanding book collection conceived and built by a young woman.
https://www.honeyandwaxbooks.com/prize.php
The Caxton Club has had four women presidents.
Visit www.caxtonclub.org for more information and to register.
Columbine, White Lily and Lupine. Secret message: It was a dream of folly, from which I woke to weep. Osgood, Frances Sargent (editor). The Floral Offering, A Token of Friendship (1847). Art by J. Ackerman. Contributed in BHL from Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. Digitization sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
Caxtonian Leora Siegel, Senior Director, Lenhardt Library wrote a recent blog post for the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) about editor Frances S. Osgood’s The Floral Offering, A Token of Friendship. The illustrated book explains the secret language of floral arrangements through illustrated bouquets, poems, and a floral dictionery.
The Lenhardt Library of the Chicago Botanic Garden is digitizing 62 rare nineteenth century language of flowers volumes as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Floral Offering is from the second set of volumes.
For more about the BHL, see the December 2019 issue of the Caxtonian.
Read about past grant winners in the Caxtonian from January 2014, November 2014, December 2015, December 2016, December 2017, January 2019, and January 2020.
View a slideshow about 2019 Grant Recipients.
Visit the online exhibit of artists’ books co-sponsored by Artists Book House and the Caxton Club.
What seems like a long time ago now, we had hoped to have a real live show of artists’ books.
The Caxton Club, which is 125 years old this very year, celebrates artists’ books every November. The Caxton Club has given more than $100,000 in grant money to book artists since 2002. This year we had hoped to bring together artists whose work we have supported, as well as the work of artists we admire, in a show in Chicago. Artists Book House, which isn’t even yet 125 weeks old wanted to join us in this celebration. But we all know what happened next.
So. Here we are. Like so much of the world, meeting up online. In this case it hasn’t been entirely a bad thing. We’ve been able to connect with artists whose work we didn’t know as well as with those we have long admired. We hope you, too, enjoy seeing their work.
The Caxton Club’s November 18th, 2020 Panel Discussion — “Artists’ Books, The Institutional Perspective” — featured Anne Everhaugen of the Smithsonian Library, Ruth Rogers of Wellesley College, and Jill Gage, Curator of the Wing Collection at the Newberry Library.
In this companion show, we see what these curators look for in their collections. Anne Evenhaugen sees artists’ books as a part of the Smithsonian’s mandate to tell “the American story through art,” and the artists’ books there are a part of the art that “infuses all parts of the Smithsonian Institutions.” Ruth Rogers builds the Wellesley Collection to show that “artists’ books are not separate from earlier forms of the book, but relatives in a long evolutionary line. A conversation across centuries on the page.” Jill Gage hopes that “people ten, twenty, fifty years ahead to be able to look back at the Wing Collection and see the high points of American fine press, book arts, and printing.”
In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, we salute Ruby Figueroa and Jose Resendiz, Caxton Club Books Arts Grants Recipients.
Ms. Figueroa’s work was shown in the December 2016 issue of the Caxtonian and Mr. Resendiz’s work was shown in the December 2015 issue.
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