If you regularly visit Travel Between The Pages you will know that I am a life-long LOTR fan and that I love a good travel poster. This beautiful set of Tolkien themed travel posters is the work of LA-based artist and designer Beverly Arce. You can see the entire series and more right here. Why not purchase a poster or two from her shop while you’re at it.
I imagine that most folks are well acquainted with the iconic series of Japanese woodblock prints titled Thirty -Six Views of Mount Fuji. Even those who are unfamiliar with the work of Katsushika Hokusai who was a 19th century Japanese ukiyo-e painter and printmaker know the iconic print of The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
Two centuries after Hokusai, his sublime prints continue to inspire. London-based artist Edward Luper grew up looking at one of his city’s landmarks: the BT Tower and his life-long love for Japanese woodblock prints eventually led him to create an homage to the master of the art form with his own series 36 Views of BT Tower.
Luper’s prints capture London’s BT Tower from various vantage points and throughout different weather patterns and seasons. And while these types of projects are often cartoony and derivative, Luper has transcended with his detailed and atmospheric work. I loved each of the thirty-six views.
Luper’s prints are available for purchase through the curated art platform Your Art Home where you can see the entire series.
When you are a bookseller potentially everything can remind you of a book that you’ve sold. Not long ago I saw a story online about the recent release of a new film adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight . Naturally it reminded me of an illustrated copy of the the book that I sold many years ago. That edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was published by the Limited Editions Club in 1971. The publisher’s announcement describes the book in detail:
“…twelve full-page ‘resist’ drawings, a two-page drawing for the title spread, and numerous tailpieces and incidental decorations, all printed in Sepia. Frank Lieberman designed the volume and drew the large initials which open each stanza. He chose Goudy ‘Thirty’ type for the Middle English text and Poliphilus for the modern English, both in the sixteen-point size… The light tan Arak paper is a rag wove watermarked stock made specially for this edition at the Curtis Paper Mill… The text was set by Westcott & Thomson in Philadelphia… The binding is in natural coarse Irish linen, stamped on the shelf-back with the title and a series of decorations reflecting the medieval text.”
This terrific edition was printed by the Meriden Gravure Company, with illustrations by Cyril Satorsky The book was published in an edition of 1500 copies signed by Satorsky.
If you are a writer, or a traveler, or even a travel writer, it’s quite likely that at one time or another you have utilized an iconic Moleskine notebook (or in some of our cases a very good knock-off). But unless you are au courant with the updated versions of Moleskine notebooks, you may not have seen some of the beautiful editions that they now offer. Which leads me to the wonderful series from the company called “I Am City.” Created by Milan-based illustrator and architect Carlo Stanga, the three books are love letters to New York, London, and Milan.
Stanga leads readers on tours of the great cities, paying tribute to local lifestyle, landmarks, parks, and architecture. His playful illustrations and intimate anecdotes showcase the personalities of cities and the idiosyncrasies that make them unique.
These notebooks/guidebooks may be too beautiful to write in.
I was recently trying to remember the details of a camping trip in Denmark many summers ago and ran across this wonderful series of short time-lapse videos of the four seasons there. Filmmaker Casper Rolsted beautifully captures the magic of the changing of the seasons in the beautiful little country.
Very few tourists who spend time in New York City bother to visit the Borough of Queens. Those who do are usually in search of the amazing variety of ethnic food on offer. But it would be well worth the effort for street art aficianados to make the short trip across the East River to the Queens neighborhood of Astoria to check-out the amazing Welling Court Mural Project, which has produced hundreds of compelling pieces of public art over the last 11 years.
The art work which covers much of the gritty Welling Court neighborhood is produced by local up and coming street artists, as well as world known figures in the public art scene.
The most recent additions to the project are pieces of art work that reimagine and update three historic fire emergence alarm boxes. Completed secretly by an anonymous artist, the colorful mosaics augment 19th century call boxes.
You can get the flavor of the Welling Court project from the short video below that was filmed just a few weeks ago.
NB: If you get TBTP via an email server, it may be necessary to click on the short url linl at the bottom of the email to play the video. I still don’t know why this is happening.
I’m a sucker for any story about little free library concepts, especially when they involve repurposing old tech. The city of Geneva, Switzerland has done just that with some of its obsolete public telephone booths. This example can be found in the lovely Place du Petit-Saconnex.
Until three years ago, every municipality in Switzerland was required by law to maintain public phone booths. But the advent of universal mobile phone use has rendered that legislation unnecessary. The city of Geneva is refitting former phone booths to augment its libraries and to provide an opportunity for residents to recycle their books. The mini libraries are open 6 days a week and maintained by professional library staff. Useres are asked to only leave 3 books at a time and to keep the booths tidy.
Marple is a pleasant English town located a short distance from Southport and Manchester. For decades now, the community has been claiming that it was the inspiration for the name of Agatha Christie’s iconic sleuth Miss Marple. The town has gone as far as commissioning these colorful posters of some of the novelist’s most popular titles. Sadly, the entire Marple-Marple connection is based on an apocryphal tale of Christie’s frequent visits to the town. Still, it makes for a great story over a pint in the local pub and for these wonderful book posters.
Frequent visitors to Travel Between The Pages are well aware of my appreciation for the writing of the late Ursula K. Le Guin. If memory serves, I first discovered her work in the magazine Amazing Stories. The first of her impactful sci-fi books that captured my attention was the dystopian environmental novel The Lathe of Heaven. But Le Guin was more than a genre novelist, she also was a poet, philosopher, social critic, essayist, short story writer, and children’s author. And, late in life, at the age of 81, she embraced blogging. Unfortunately after Le Guin’s death in 2018 her online blog disappeared, but happily for us it has been resurrected.
One does not need to be a fan of sci-fi to appreciate Le Guin’s wide-ranging blog. In her initial entry, she attrubuted a new found interest in blogging to the online presence of the Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago. You can do a deep dive into Le Guin’s blog archive right here.
Here’s a taste of Le Guin’s first foray into the blog world:
October 2010
I’ve been inspired by José Saramago’s extraordinary blogs, which he posted when he was 85 and 86 years old. They were published this year in English as The Notebooks. I read them with amazement and delight.
I never wanted to blog before. I’ve never liked the word blog—I suppose it is meant to stand for bio-log or something like that, but it sounds like a sodden tree trunk in a bog, or maybe an obstruction in the nasal passage (Oh, she talks that way because she has such terrible blogs in her nose). I was also put off by the idea that a blog ought to be “interactive,” that the blogger is expected to read people’s comments in order to reply to them and carry on a limitless conversation with strangers. I am much too introverted to want to do that at all. I am happy with strangers only if I can write a story or a poem and hide from them behind it, letting it speak for me.
So, though I have contributed a few bloglike objects to Book View Café, I never enjoyed them. After all, despite the new name, they were just opinion pieces or essays, and writing essays has always been tough work for me and only occasionally rewarding.
But seeing what Saramago did with the form was a revelation.
Oh! I get it! I see! Can I try too?
My trials/attempts/efforts (that’s what essays means) so far have very much less political and moral weight than Saramago’s and are more trivially personal. Maybe that will change as I practice the form, maybe not. Maybe I’ll soon find it isn’t for me after all, and stop. That’s to be seen. What I like at the moment is the sense of freedom. Saramago didn’t interact directly with his readers (except once). That freedom, also, I’m borrowing from him.
I can’t imagine a better way for book lovers to spend a summer evening in New York City than at a Books Beneath The Bridge event. Sponsored by the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservency and local indie bookstores, the atmospheric weekly event features readings by popular authors and priceless views. The free series continues this year on Monday nights from 7 to 9 PM. You can learn more at their website.
|
|
Travel Between The Pages 