Friday, October 24, 2008

Returning Home to Find a Beautiful Book

Right before leaving for Frankfurt,  I called  the Verona plant of Mondadori to speak to a client who was on press for the Chipstone Foundation.

It was a familiar story coming from Verona: The printing was going fine, but the staff in Verona was feeding my client too much!

It is a common belief among those of us who have spent a lot of time doing press OKs that certain printers plot to make their clients more pliable on press by feeding them too many lunches with too many glasses of wine. And now, apparently, ice cream is part of their repertoire as well! Unfortunately for the printer, the plan usually backfires with clients becoming more ornery and argumentative after eating and drinking too much.

 The Chipstone Foundation is a private collection of decorative arts with a focus on early American furniture, historical prints, and British and early American pottery. For the past two years I have worked with the designer on this project, and I am astonished to see how she is able to take a relatively dry subject and through sophisticated design and typography create a book that virtually anyone would want to pick up and browse through. And how great is it that she decided on a racey purple and burnt orange for the jacket and cloth cover of this title which, according to the introduction, has the sober mission of exploring "topics representing four centuries of ceramic history"?

Aside from admiring my advance copy of CERAMICS IN AMERICA, this week was spent trying to catch up on emails missed while I was in Frankfurt and following up on likely acquisitions of some of the new book projects.


And it is good to be home.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Lovely sight Christina and pet dog with the house on the background!
I very much hope you enjoyed your stroll! Lovely sunshine too!

Christina said...

Thanks Maria Eugenia! I can't wait until you get going on your blog, too, so we can see what's happening in Barcelona!