Genesis of a Book Artist: Booktryst Interviews Richard Minsky

by Stephen J. Gertz

Richard Minsky is considered to be the most influential book artist of his generation, a pioneer and innovator in the book arts. His critically acclaimed work is found in museums and private collections around the world; he has won many fellowships and awards. Booktryst has written about the breathtaking book art of Richard Minsky. 

FREEDOM OF CHOICE
Three Poems of Love and Death by Lucie Brock-Broido
Richard Minsky, 2009
73" x  26" x  24

We know that he got a printing press when he was only thirteen years old but his fascination with printing and books began much earlier than that. We recently asked him about his formative years, when he was initially captivated by printing at its most basic.

Booktryst: Prior to getting that printing press when you were thirteen you were strictly into rubber stamps.

RM: No, I just had a few sets of rubber stamps, mostly sets of letters. At the age of 10 I was given a Superior Cub Printing Press, a postcard size cylinder press that used rubber type, with rubber dies for the images. I don't have the same one, but here is a photo of the one I now own. It has a 1955 copyright on the Rotary Printer’s Journal that came with it. That has all kinds of information, from “What You Should Know About Type” to “Drumming Up Business.” The Cub Press has been around since at least the 1930’s. As you see, the type is similar in form to metal type:

You set it into slots one letter at a time, as you would compose foundry type, sort of like in a Multigraph:


Booktryst: After the initial attraction what kept you at it?

RM: The week after I got it my father died. He was a journalist, an editor, and on weekends I would go to his office and play with the Royal typewriters and some of the other equipment. I guess this replaced that activity.
 

Booktryst: At age thirteen you buy yourself a small, hand printing press. A gift? Did you save up for it?

RM: Sort of. I was given some savings bonds for my Bar Mitzvah. That year my mother died. My grandmother was my guardian jointly with the Guardianship Clerk of the Surrogate’s Court. There was some income from Social Security, but not enough to do anything but cover the basic expenses. At that point I figured it would be best to do something that I loved for the rest of my life, since it was likely to be short. The previous year I had Graphic Arts shop at Russell Sage Jr. High in Forest Hills, Queens, and was inspired by the teacher, Mr. Joseph Caputo.

5x8 Kelsey Model U
Table Top Platen Press

I decided to become a printer, cashed in my savings bonds, which yielded about $350, went to Zimmer Printing Supply on Beekman St. in Manhattan, and bought a 5x8 Kelsey hand press. A block away was Damon and Peets, another printer’s supplier that had used foundry type, and I got six California job cases filled with lead. They were heavy. Bank Gothic in three sizes, Copperplate Gothic in three sizes, Park Avenue, Typo Roman Shaded and Goudy Old Style.

My homeroom class became a 15% commission sales team, so everybody made money selling stationery, business cards, announcements, and the like.

Booktryst: Do you recall what you felt when transitioning from stamps to letterpress, aside from the practical differences?

RM: 
 I loved everything about it. The activity, the smell, the income.  I started building a muscle in my right forearm.

Booktryst: You seemed to have been completely absorbed by printing during  your teens. And then, in college, you change directions into another area of interest. What happened?

RM: 
 I discovered Daniel Gibson Knowlton in the basement of Brown University’s Rockefeller Library while in graduate school studying Economics. He was the University Bookbinder. Everything about what he did appealed to me, and I learned as much as I could from him.

Booktryst: And then you returned to printing. Again, what caused it?

RM: I never gave it up. In 1972 I opened a storefront printshop, bookbindery and art gallery in Forest Hills. There I had an 8x12 motorized Chandler and Price clamshell press, and two cabinets of foundry type, about 40 cases.  The Weiss family of fonts, with many sizes in Roman, Bold and Italic, Orplid and some other decorative fonts, Bodoni, Americana and more.


Booktryst: Your early bindings are beautiful yet not outside the tradition. When and why did you begin to experiment with bindings to move beyond popular conceptions of the art and craft?

RM: 1971.


Booktryst: There seems to have been a creative leap in your work. What motivated it?


 RM: Chance. In 1973 a client brought in a book for repair, Pettigrew’s History of Egyptian Mummies. I put it down on the counter on a yard of airplane linen I had just bought at Talas, the bookbinders’ supplier. It looked like it belonged there, so I tore the linen into strips and wrapped the book like a mummy.

Pettigrew's History of Egyptian Mummies
London, 1834
Bound by Minsky 1973
Linen, turquoise.
12" x 9"

Booktryst: Much of your work over the last twenty-five years has incorporated political themes. Do you have any plans to address the current political climate?

RM: Unfortunately the current political climate is no different, so my work of 30 years ago,   The Crisis of Democracy, is even more relevant today. The Bill of Rights set of ten works that I did 1998-2002 is fresher than ever. Nineteen Eighty-Four still speaks to people as the government watches everyone ever more closely. Today the Executive Branch asked Congress for legislation to allow wiretaps of the Internet. As though they weren’t already doing it!

Booktryst: What's the future of book arts, as you see it?

RM: It’s entering the mainstream. Last week I was at Albany Airport, and there is a book art exhibition installed there.

Booktryst: Any other thoughts, random or otherwise?

RM: It would be nice if your readers would buy my work. The price range is from under $30 for a trade book like The Art of American Book Covers 1875-1930  to $120,000 for The Bill of Rights, so there’s something for everyone. How about Freedom of Choice, a poetry book chained to an electric chair that comes with a shotgun, a sword and other deadly things? Look at everything on my website,  there are over 400 pages. 

And if you will be near New Haven this coming Tuesday, October 5, come to my talk at Yale at 1 pm! It’s free and there is a reception afterwards. You can stop in at the exhibition while you’re there. Click that last link—there is a free PDF exhibition catalog.


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The Breathtaking Book Art of Richard Minsky

FREEDOM OF CHOICE
Three Poems of Love and Death by Lucie Brock-Broido
Richard Minsky, 2009
73" x  26" x  24"

One day, once upon a time in 1960, young Richard Minsky confidently strode down the hallways of his junior high school, entered the guidance counselor's office, nodded to his advisor, pulled up a chair, and sat down with the aplomb, sangfroid, and radioactive self-assuredness usually associated with grown men who know what's what, who's who, and exactly where they're going.

"Well, Minsky," the counselor wearily exhaled, "what's going to become of you?"

And without a nanosecond necessary for reflection Richard Minsky, as if a proto-Anthony Robbins, recited a goal that had become his mantra:

"Fifty years from now I will be internationally acclaimed as the most gifted and influential book artist of my generation, and renowned as a scholar of bookbinding. My artist books and bindings will  often feature political themes and cry out for social justice and civil liberties. Museums and collectors will vie for my livres d'artiste and bindings. I will be shown in galleries throughout the world, and from August 2d through November 29th, 2010 Yale University will present a retrospective exhibition of my work!" 

The guidance counselor's eyes rolled to the heavens, rolled back to earth, and then the pastrami sandwich and sauerkraut he had for lunch two hours prior begged for help.

"Oh, boy," he refluxed, sourly. 

The Geography of Hunger
by Josue de Castro. New York, 1952
Bound by Minsky 1988
9" x 7" x 3"
"Friendly Plastic," acrylic, endpapers of food and dog food labels.

That tableau vivant, however imaginary, is surely the only explanation for an astonishing career that Yale University is now, indeed, celebrating with a wondrous and extraordinary retrospective exhibition, Material Meets Metaphor: A Half Century of Book Art by Richard Minsky, at its Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library.

But the fact that Richard Minsky began his own letterpress printing business when he was thirteen years old and has remained intensely focused on books and their creative possibilities as an object-medium for artistic expression may have had something to do with it.

A half-century later, his influence has been incalculable.

“Minsky’s work as an artist and as founder of The Center for Book Arts in New York changed the way people see and make books,” said Jae Jennifer Rossman, the Haas Family Arts Library’s Assistant Director for Special Collections.

The exhibition covers Minsky’s work from its genesis - a 1960 sample book, used when he started his printing business in 1960, through “Self-Portrait 2010,” a book that documents the evolution of a canvas, from pencil sketch through many layers of oil paint.

Self-Portrait
Deluxe Edition, limited to 5 copies
copy No. 5
9" x 12"

Many of Minsky's limited edition works will be on view in the exhibition, along with unique works that have become iconic in the world of book art. These include his 1975 binding of The Birds of North America and The Crisis of Democracy, bound in sheepskin, gold and barbed wire.

The Birds of North America, 1975.

The Crisis of Democracy
by Crozier, Huntington and Watanuki for the Trilateral Commission
New York University Press, 1975
Binding by Minsky 1980
Sheep, gold, barbed wire.
8 3/4" x 6" x 11"

Yale University Library acquired the Richard Minsky Archive in 2004. It includes maquettes, molds for castings, and correspondence, as well as holographic manuscripts and early versions of select works. It documents Minsky's exploration of printing technologies from the mimeograph and spirit duplicator to his early use of inkjet printing on handmade paper.

A Reliquary To Hold the Ashes of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses.
From The Bill of Rights Limited Edition Set, The First Amendment, 2001."
.A slipcase containing:

Minsky fell off the path of the printing press and received a masters in economics. He began work toward a Ph.D. but could not resist the magic of books and print and so left the dismal science to return to and pursue his true muse, studying bookbinding in Providence, Rhode Island with master binder Daniel Gibson Knowlton.

,,,A burned copy of Rushdie's Satanic Verses.

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
by George Orwell
Secker & Warburg, London, 1949
First Edition
Binding by Minsky 2003-2006
7¾" x  5" x  2½" + base

The Philosophy of Umbrellas, an essay by Robert Louis Stevenson published as an umbrella.

Open...

...In slipcase.

Yale Installation set-up, July 29, 2010.
Photo: Richard Minsky

Yale Installation set-up, July 29, 2010.
Photo: Richard Minsky

 Minsky's artist books are amazing. His bindings are divine:

Sappho's Leap
A Novel
by Erica Jong

Norton, 2003
Bound by Minsky 2003
12" x 7" diameter

Chateau Guest Book, Normandy, France
Blank book of various vintage handmade papers and sheepskin parchment.
Designed and Bound by Minsky in 1994.
20" x 16"

Snakeskin Binding
Blank Book
Bound by Minsky 1988
18" x 14"
Inlaid snakeskin covers and doublures, handmade paper, linen endbands.
Collection of the Allan Stone Gallery

The Hamptons
by Susan P. Meisel and Ellen Harris
Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 2000
Bound by Minsky 2000
Acrylic, sand and shells from the Hamptons
Above: The book installed on its base. 11" x 15" x 11"

Pettigrew's History of Egyptian Mummies
London, 1834
Bound by Minsky 1973
Linen, turquoise.
12" x 9"

Minsky's deep and ongoing scholarship of bookbinding led to American  Decorated Publishers Bindings 1872-1929, an artist's book, an exhibition catalog, and an exploration of art history seen through publishers' book covers.

Above: the cover of the Limited Edition
Foil stamped Hahnemuhle Bugra-Butten paper wrapper

Typical of stamped bindings of the period, changes in the angle
of the light cause the stamping to illuminate in different ways.
The technique for creating the stamping die was developed by
Minsky from study of the bindings in this collection

Above: the same cover with different lighting.

Of this, what became an instant essential reference, Sue Allen, the author of many books and articles on publisher's bindings, and foremost authority on 19th century bindings, says: 

"Inside this book is gathered an astounding collection of turn-of-the-century bookcovers. Though beautifully produced, it is no mere coffee table book, but comes with full bibliographical descriptions. Grouped together under headings such as 'Automobiles' or 'Trees,' the covers play against each other in a dramatic way. It is as if you were privileged to go into a number of libraries and bookstores and lay one book beside another. In one leap Richard Minsky has put himself in the forefront of collectors and scholars of this period when each cover was a work of art."

On or around the day of his Bar Mitzvah in 1960, Richard Minsky put aside the rubber stamps of his childhood, bought a printing press, and became a man. 

Fifty years later, Richard Minsky is a national treasure.

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Images courtesy of Richard Minsky, and Jae Rossman of Yale, with our thanks.

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