Alan Jacobs

[gallery] Shi zhu zhai shu hua pu

This is the earliest Chinese book printed by the technique of polychrome xylography known as douban invented and perfected by Hu Zhengyan 胡正言 (1584-1674). The method involves the use of multiple printing blocks which successively apply different coloured inks to the paper to reproduce the effect of watercolour painting.

Cambridge University Library (FH.910.83-98)

[gallery] visualgraphc:

thisiscommonground:

Toko - Architects Registration Board

#design #graphicdesign #purple

[Frank Cioffi] walked the few miles to the brutal architectural dystopia that was the University of Essex from his home in Colchester wearing an early version of a Sony Walkman. I always assumed he was listening to music, only to discover years later that he was listening to recordings of himself reading out passages from books. I remember him saying during a lecture that he was ‘not a publishing philosopher.’ This is not quite true, but although his books, like Wittgenstein on Freud and Frazer (1998), are fascinating, his rather tangled prose gives no sense of what it was like to listen to one of his lectures. They were amazing, unscripted and hugely funny performances, where he would move about over a vast range of quotations and reflections, his considerable bulk straining to control the passion of his thinking. Occasionally he would suddenly perch himself on the edge of a student’s desk, smoking a small, Indian cigarette (yes, it was that long ago). We were at once terrified and enthralled.

[gallery] Taliesin West

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Mies van der Rohe, Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper project; Berlin, 1921-2, opaque version of photomontage; here

[gallery] muspec:

Today, we’ve got an interesting study in form and content in the form of two editions of the same book.

On the one hand, we have a modern artist’s edition of Flatland, published by Arion Press in 1980.  On the other, we’ve got the very first edition, published in 1884.  It’s the same text, printed nearly a century apart, and in very different formats.  

The artist’s book is interesting; it’s an accordion book, and so could be laid completely flat and read end to end as a single, flat sheet. Its construction also means that it can stand freely (with a little support, just to be safe!) and act almost as a sculpture.

The first edition, meanwhile, is, well, your traditional book-shaped book.  Easier to hold and read, to be sure, but it’s difficult to deny that it lacks something of the dramatic impact of Flatland as a flat book.

“When politicians today praise America’s system of checks and balances, they seem to understand it as a self-correcting mechanism: When one branch pushes too hard, the other branches must push back, preserving equilibrium. That understanding actually encourages politicians to overreact, in the belief that they are playing a vital constitutional role. It also encourages complacency, because a system that rights itself requires no painful compromises to preserve.

Neither Congress nor the president has the capacity to govern alone, but either can refuse to compromise, and prevent the other from governing. If the system is thought to be indestructible, the temptation to take stands becomes overwhelming. Filibusters, shutdowns, and executive orders multiply. The veneration of the Constitution becomes its undoing.”

We are all easily lured into what might be called “package deal” ethics: if you are committed to one cause you will probably be committed to a particular set of causes, even if there is no clear logical connection. The danger then is of reducing ethics to style, to a set of superficially matching accessories. It is an important jolt for us to have to come to terms with those who look for a deeper kind of consistency – whether they are radical libertarians uniting a pro-choice position with a deeply individualist social morality, or Catholics uniting an orthodox sexual ethic with root-and-branch hostility to market economics or nuclear arms. It was one of the choice ironies of the era of the Second Vatican Council that the stoutest defender of the inherited position on birth control – Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani – was also one of the fiercest advocates of nuclear disarmament. Having to think through the connections between our moral perspectives so that we can have intelligent arguments about them is a rather urgent need in the current climate, where policy and principle are so often created reactively and opportunistically. (Do I have any political party especially in mind? Perish the thought.)

This Adorable Alabama Bookstore Only Sells Signed Copies

These gently animated book covers by Javier Jensen are wonderful! Via Open Culture.