Pictorial Webster's: A Visual Dictionary, Unique Binding by Karen Hanmer

Full Title: Pictorial Webster’s: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities

Binding Details:  Beautiful full leather binding with leather hinges, marbelized text paper for endsheets, and doublures hand-printed at the Quercus Press. There are hand sewn silk headbands and the page edges sprinkled with red acrylic ink. The title is stamped in black foil. Illustrations were scanned from Pictorial Webster’s wall cards and laser printed onto goatskin onlays and outlined with inlaid goatskin lines. Internally, thirty-three additional illustrations were inkjet printed onto Mohawk Superfine text and hand cut into pop-ups, one sewn inside each of the text block’s signatures.

The design is an abstracted Cambridge panel. The color pallet was inspired by modern Webster’s dictionaries. Text drawn from the Preface and Introduction describes the original impetus behind the illustrations and the author’s vision for them in this work. Because the dictionary was originally printed to optimize text and not images, Carrera’s work marks the first opportunity for viewers to truly see the illustrations. The pop-ups further bring the illustrations to life. The book is housed in an illustrated custom-made drop case cloth box. The binding date is 2011.

Selected for the Hand Bookbinders of California Fortieth Annual Member’s Exhibition held at Stamford University from July 19th to December 12th, 2012.

Selected for inclusion in “500 Handmade Books – Volume 2” published by Lark Crafts in 2013.

A copy of the brochure and book featuring the book will accompany the Pictorial Websters along with a signed artist statement from Karen Hanmer.

About the Artist: Chicago binder, book and installation artist Karen Hanmer’s intimate, playful works fragment and layer text and image to intertwine memory, cultural history, and the history of science. Her work weds the ancient act of book binding with the high tech use of the computer to aid her process. The intimate scale and the gestures of exploration required to travel through each piece evoke the experience of looking through an album, a diary, or the belongings of a loved one. However, her works often take the forms of games or puzzles, and many include witty text. 

Karen Hanmer exhibits widely and her work is included in collections ranging from Tate Britain and the Library of Congress to UCLA and Graceland. Recent curated exhibition venues include the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Brooklyn Museum, Harvard University’s Fogg Museum of Art, the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft and The Center for Book Arts (NYC); and traveling exhibitions sponsored by the Guild of Book Workers, the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists' Guild, and Les Amis de la Reliure d'Art du Canada. Karen won the Jury Prize for Binding in the 2009 Helen Warren DeGolyer American Bookbinding Competition. She holds a degree in Economics from Northwestern University, and has studied with many notable book artists and fine binders.

Condition Report: The binding and clamshell box are in FINE condition.

Photographs of the binding, slipcase, exhibition catalogue, stock photograph of the printer and letterpress work, an example of a printed page, and examples of the pop-up illustrations appear in the photo section of the listing.