Horn Press Holiday Cards

A dispatch from Clark Library reference assistant and Horn Press student officer Derek Quezada:

This past weekend, the latest incarnation of UCLA’s Horn Press had its first major meeting of the year. For the greater part of the afternoon, student officers, club members and anyone interested in the “slow technology” of letterpress printing sacrificed their Saturday and helped to create wonderfully unique holiday cards that will be sold for the group’s annual fund-raising event. For many of those who haven’t had the opportunity to receive a hands-on introduction to presswork before it inspired many ‘wow’ moments when the connection between process and product was made.

Cards set out to dry

Since its revival by book artist and professor of bibliography Johanna Drucker, the UCLA Horn Press has at long last found a new home at the Broad Arts Center in the Design and Media Department, after having been expelled from its original headquarters in the Young Research Library and winding up in ‘temporary’ residence at the Clark’s gate house for the not so insignificant period of 17 years (where it remained unused because of a combination of logistics and non-weight-bearing floors)!  The first letterpress equipment acquired by a library school in 1961, the Horn Press has had a long and interesting history that is worth reading about here.  [The Clark also has an archive of material related to Horn Press founder, Andy Horn, which includes holiday cards printed at the Horn Press and at Horn’s personal press, the Battledore Press.]

If anyone is interested, the cards will be available for purchase the week after Thanksgiving from Monday November 30th to Friday December 4th between 12-1:30 in the Information Studies Commons in the GSEIS building on campus. They feature hand carved linoleum cuts and designs produced by club members at only a dollar fifty each. The profits will help support further Horn Press programming and the development of a printing community on campus with the aim of fostering greater interest in the book as an object worth studying.

Professor Johanna Drucker and the Clark's own Suzanne Tatian

Another article about the Horn Press holiday cards is here, at UCLA Today.

Star Struck until December 18th…

If you haven’t been down to the Clark yet to see our fall exhibition, Star Struck, you have until December 18th!

Four hundred years ago, Galileo Galilei discovered the telescope.  That is, using information he heard about a certain Hans Lippershey of the Netherlands creating an instrument to see objects at a distance and then using the information found in a confirming report, Galileo manufactured a tube of lead with two glass lenses and put his eye to it.  The International Year of Astronomy is being celebrated this year to honor the anniversary of the first use of a telescope to study our universe.  William Andrews Clark, Jr. was particularly interested in astronomy and astronomical history.  In 1917 he opened an observatory on the library grounds that featured a Brashear six-inch telescope, exhibition galleries, planetary models, and a geological library.  This exhibition brings together some of the highlights from the Clark Library’s collection of astronomical works.

For more information, to make an appointment to view the exhibition during normal library hours, please call (323)731-8529.

Thankgiving closure

Just a reminder that the Clark Library will be closed November 25-27 for Thanksgiving!

(from the Library of Congress on Flickr Commons)

December and January events

Don’t forget to keep your eye on the Center for 17th- and 18th- Century Studies calendar of events!  More information and registration forms are available at the Center’s website.

December 4-5, 2009 — Conference: Cultures of Communication, Theologies of Media in Early Modern Europe and Beyond: Theology as Media Theory.  A core program conference at the Clark, organized by Christopher Wild, UCLA and the University of Chicago and Ulrike Strasser, UC Irvine, Center and Clark Professors, 2009–2010.   Registration Deadline: November 25, 2009

January 22-23, 2010 — Conference: Cultures of Communication, Theologies of Media in Early Modern Europe and Beyond: Media of Reform between the Local and the Global. A core program conference at the Clark, organized by Christopher Wild, UCLA and the University of Chicago and Ulrike Strasser, UC Irvine, Center and Clark Professors, 2009–2010.

January 31, 2010 — Chamber Music at the Clark: Leipzig String Quartet. Reservation lottery submission deadline: December 4, 2009.

The Leipzig String Quartet, photographed by Gert Mothes.

And one more reminder:  The Clark and the Center will both be closed November 26-27, 2009 in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday and December 19, 2009-January 4, 2010 for UCLA’s winter closure. The Clark will also be closed November 25, 2009.

Stephen Fry’s Clark Visit

A dispatch from Bruce Whiteman, Head Librarian

On Saturday, November 7 in the morning, actor and writer Stephen Fry visited the Clark.  Stephen was in Los Angeles for a few days, and as a devoted Wildean was keen to see some of the Clark’s Wilde treasures.  He played Oscar Wilde in the 1997 film of that name and was profoundly happy to be able to handle and examine various Wilde books and manuscripts, including a holograph draft chapter of The Picture of Dorian Gray and a copy of Ravenna for which Constance Wilde, Oscar’s wife, had made an embroidered cover for presentation to a male friend.

Stephen has a devoted following for his roles in various films and television programs, including Backadder and Stephen Fry in America. In the latter, televised in 2008, he travels to all 50 American states in a London taxicab. He has long been a good friend of Hugh Laurie (of House fame) from his days at Cambridge University, and has done any number of highly amusing television and theatrical bits.  Watch him on YouTube, for example, playing Robert Browning to Emma Thompson’s Elizabeth Barrett.

We hope to see Stephen back at the Clark in the not too too distant future.

photograph by Suzanne Tatian

Wowed, indeed!

Thank you to our friends and colleagues who were able to make it to the Karmiole Lecture given by Michael Suarez this past Saturday at the Clark!  A bigger thank you, of course, goes to Professor Suarez himself!

If you were not able to make it on Saturday — and even if you were — please read Stephen Gertz’s writeup of the event, posted at the BookPatrol blog and at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

More Chrzanowski information

If you’re curious about what exactly is contained in Paul Chrzanowski’s recent donation to the Clark, a list of the items and a few images of title pages from the collection are now posted on our main website.

Title page from Ranulphus Higden's Polycronycon, published in 1527

Chamber Music at the Clark: Review and Reminder

A friend alerted us to Laurie Niles’ wonderful review at Violinist.com of Augustin Hadelich’s November 1 recital at the Clark Library.  If you’d like to learn out more about upcoming chamber music performances sponsored by the Clark and the Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies, you can find the schedule and ticket information through the Center’s online calendar.

Sunday Times

The Clark is featured in this article about small special collections libraries in the New York Times Sunday travel section!  We are in good company, as we are discussed alongside the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology, The Library Company of Philadelphia, The New York Academy of Medicine Library, and The Rosenbach Museum and Library.