Brick & Mortar since 1991. Blogging since 2006. From Jason Thompson, Rag & Bone founder & creative director. We write about the things we love: bookbinding, book arts, paper arts, the bindery, personal stuff, our kids, our travels, sometimes food and sometimes art.
Rag & Bone attended the 2009 Fall New York International Gift Fair a few weeks ago. It always takes a while to post a review of the shows, we get so busy as soon as we return. This show was a little better than average, I can say the same for the last show as well. This year the section we exhibit in, “Studio”, was moved to the main hall. This was a great move. Our booth was placed alongside another Juried section called “Accent On Design” which is the so-called high-end section. Needless to say, this was a great location. We had two booths situated on a corner again.
We arrived in the one-way-rental U-Haul truck around noontime the day before the show opened. The truck was unloaded immediately, a trend we’ve noticed in the past few shows due to the smaller show size. The booth always takes longer than we expect to set up, even though the furniture (the bulk of the booth) is delivered set-up. The illusion that the booth sets up fast is due to the big furniture setting up in minutes. The books and little ‘touches’ however take hours.
The booth was similar to our January set-up, but different from our Stationery Show booth display. In recent years we’ve sold the booth furniture locally (in NYC) via Craigslist so we can just pack up a few books and hit the train. But we’ve been keeping the furniture and driving it back to RI for the past few shows.
The show was an average show in regards to attendance. It didn’t feel necessarily busy or slow, it was steady however. We didn’t pick up as many new accounts as we did in May, however our average order size was larger and we did reopen accounts which had been quiet for a bit. The few larger stores we did pick up were also confident with their orders. I’m always feeling one way or the other: Either I wish we had more smaller orders, or a few larger orders, either way it all adds up the same. This year was fewer and larger which added up to a better show than last year. So it goes…
We’re excited to add more non-book items to the line and to expand our printed book line. We’re following up with key accounts and we’re hearing a return to paper-page albums, which are the core of our line. That makes us happy.
We didn’t see much of our competition at the show. Without naming names, we were surprised to see smaller displays from our competitors, or they just didn’t show up at all.
Ilira spent one of the days visiting our NYC customers to write orders at their stores, which was a better success than we expected. I think customers appreciate the personal visit. I know I would!
Anyway, here are pictures of our booth. Thanks for reading.
We’re off to the New York International Gift Fair. It’s our 11th year. We’re not counting or anything, but something like our 22nd Gift Show. Please visit Rag & Bone Bindery at booth #4141. We’ll be back to blogging when we return on Friday! Wish us luck. Jason
Artist Peter Root makes diorama cities and landscapes using common materials such as staples, soap and stacks of die-cut metals. “My work fluctuates between highly repetitive mantra-like procedures and simple experimentation of techniques. The outcome of the work is frequently controlled by the initial shapes and forms of the units repeated.” I’ve been blogging about artists who create art using common materials lately, I don’t know what it is that I’m drawn to, the juxtaposition, the beauty in simplicity that flies in the face of art education. Art is what’s beautiful and thought provoking to the viewer. So this is art - even if it’s made from stacks of staples. We visited Dia:Beacon a few weeks ago. There are large scale works on display such as piles of glass, dirt and rocks, art made from a single piece of string, piles of felt. I wasn’t drawn to those pieces as much as this work. I appreciate the OCD nature and transformative aspect of common materials. A pile of dirt is a pile of dirt, regardless of how it’s described. But a pile of staples, photographed in just the right way, is a futuristic city, and that’s pretty cool.
Artist Sam Winston creates bookish and typographic art. Through exploration of language his work questions our understanding of words, both as a carriers of messages and as information itself. Here are two pieces from Sam’s portfolio, “Folded Dictionary” and “Romeo & Juliet”.
Designer Gabriella Crohn designed a table lamp which does not have a lampshade. You provide the lampshade by placing - and replacing - papers & documents into two concentric metal hoops. Clever! This is going around the web, but I can’t seem to find a website for Gaby.
Illustrated Coffee Cups. I love art made from simple materials. Although I despise styrofoam cups, artist Cheeming Boey’s one-of-a-kind illustrations are pretty rad. Check out the fast-motion video of Cheeming at work.
The most amazing cardboard structures ever. Life sized cars, bikes, chairs, violins - is there anything Chris Gilmour can’t make out of corrugated cardboard. How about a circular globe? Yep, there it is on his website. Sheesh.
The work of Chris Gilmour provokes surprise and amazement beyond what could appear to be a mere process of reproduction. In returning to the value of making and strongly emphasising it, these works reveal a process of understanding that lets us see everyday reality with new awareness and appreciation. This practice avoids a withdrawal into the limbo of craft, and implies an intimate and profound quest towards the reason of things.
We leave for the New York International Gift Fair in two weeks. Our giveaway for the show is a Kusudama flower kit, made from our recycled catalogs. Please stop by the Rag & Bone Gift Show Booth #4141 to pick one up!
The insert gets folded, which is why some of the packaging looks upside down. We’re using catalog pages, book pages and musical notation pages for the paper included in each kit. We’re making a bunch for the trade show display and maybe {if we can get it together} bringing a branch to hang paper ornaments from, also made from our old catalogs.
The Artfest 2010 website is now live over at Teesha Moore’s website. Classes this year form talented artists such as: Traci Bautista, Susan Lenart-Kazmer, Alex Shur, Mary Stanley, Julie Haymaker Thompson, Regina Portscheller, Syd McCutcheon, Robert Smith (not from the Smiths Cure [Doh!]) and more. Classes always sell out early, so make your reservation soon!
Heather Moore, AKA: Skinnylaminx, just completed another one of her beautiful paper cuts. “For the last four or five Fridays (Making Day, as many of you know), I’ve been cut, cut, cutting away with the very tip of my sharp little knife, and now I’ve finally finished.” Beautiful.
Manchester, England artist James Roper is a painter, illustrator, conceptual installation and site specific artist and a patient hand at kirigami and origami. This piece is a few years old, but I had not seen it until yesterday. Thought I’d share. Reminds me of the work by Paul Hayes and the 2008 University of Technology “Digital Origami” exhibition in Sydney.
James describes his artistic process as working with both tangible materials, such as paper, and with time as a conceptual element, as in the passage of time. The last piece pictured below, “Devotion”, is described: “Making on average ten per day, everyday, for three years, Devotion consists of approximately 10,000 origami flowers. 2002 - 2005″. Beautiful work.
Danish born California artist Gugger Petter weaves newspapers together to create three dimensional portraits. The Obama piece was originally commissioned to hang on the wall of Obama’s National Presidential Campaign Headquarters in Chicago. Wonder where it is now. I love how detailed it appears at a distance, yet so chaotic close-up. Like a Seurat.
The newsprint is crushed, rolled, crinkled and crimped. The tonal variations of the print are utilized to build up the portraits. The paper is held together with hemp. I desaturated the closeup image of the newsprint to match the Obama piece, Gugger works in color too. Check out her site for more images.
For the past twenty one years, I have worked with newspaper as my main medium, creating both two and three dimensional works with this material. My fascination with newspaper consists not only of its being “the diary of our lives,” it also presents me with a black/white/and limited color palette, which has always been my choice. My work is most often based on a oversized image of an observation of daily life, which can be seen as an abstraction as well as a representational image, where surface, subject matter, color and content all convey tension between opposites.
Australian Austrian {sorry Renate!} bookbinder Renate Ikinger sells beautiful hand-illustrated, swede covered, coptic bound journals on her Etsy site. Every cover is illustrated by hand, and the pages are acrylic dyed to match the swede color - every one is unique. Renate says, “All my books come with a signed certificate of authenticity.” Be sure to view them all, each one is special and there are many to choose from. New covers are posted frequently.
Renate Ikinger: Flickr
Renate Ikinger: Etsy
Renate Ikinger: Web
Colorado artist Jason Schnieder constructs furniture out of wood and cardboard. They’re like Anti-Ikea furniture, still made out of cardboard, but built to last. Don’t get me wrong, I loves me my Ikea, but just wish their bookshelves would carry the weight of, you know, books. Jason teaches at the Anderson Ranch in Colorado. Pretty amazing stuff, just keep the cats away.
Artists Tithi Kutchamuch and Nutre Arayavanis designed a year of paper rings. each ring is laser cut and assembled by hand. Every month represents a symbolic flower. Cool!
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! Three in fact. In our last comment contest we asked readers to let us know their thoughts on our new cover options: what’s your favorite, what’s your least favorite… After crunching the numbers the cover option that had the most wins is Chili Pepper. The least? Woodgrain Orange.
Each winner will receive a $50.00 gift certificate to use at the Rag & Bone Online Boutique. Congratulations to:
Beautiful paper cut flowers from Carol Gearing. She says they’re in-progress and the final piece will be a square meter shadowbox. I think they’re just beautiful and can’t wait to see the final piece!
This beautiful photo is from the twoandsix blog. Michelle in Australia says she saw the ones I made and created her own out of book pages. What glorious photography on her site too! I like the juxtaposition of the old books and the flowers. Of all the paper crafts I’ve made recently, the Kusudama flowers seem to inspire the most. They are striking, and so simple to make. This is the tutorial I learned from.
And also check out the paper garland / bunting created from more book pages. What is it about bunting/garlands that make any doorway or room or home fun?
