This talk will discuss the design influences, technical innovations, and philosophies of book-making which merged in the period 1860-1890 to contribute to a recognizably “Aesthetic Book.” In defining and delineating the “Aesthetic Book” within the larger context of the Aesthetic Movement, the talk will address the impact of theorists and designers such as Ruskin, Pugin, and Dresser; the influence of other times and places, particularly the medieval European past, and the newly re-discovered culture of Japan; the anonymous but crucially important contributions of processes (chromolithography, color wood-engraving), innovations (publishers’ bindings), and the mechanization of printing processes generally; and the impact of Morris, Pickering, De Vinne, and other seminal figures in the nineteenth century book world.
Eric Holzenberg is Director of the Grolier Club of New York, America's oldest and largest society for enthusiasts in the book and graphic arts. Since 1994 he has shaped the Grolier Club's mission to celebrate the enduring value of the book-as-object, promoting the Club's 100,000-volume research library on books and printing, its 128-year-old series of public exhibitions on bookish themes, and its venerable roster of finely printed books-on-books. A former chair of the Rare Books & Manuscripts Section of ALA/ACRL, and past president of the American Printing History Association, Mr. Holzenberg holds an MA in library science from the University of Chicago, where he specialized in rare books and manuscripts; and an MA in history from Loyola University of Chicago. Among other books for the Grolier Club, he is the author of The Middle Hill Press (1997), and co-author of For Jean Grolier & His Friends: 125 Years of Grolier Club Exhibitions & Publications, 1884-2009. He has in addition written numerous articles, and lectured widely, on various topics in bibliography, bibliophily, and book history. His course on "The Printed Book in the West Since 1800" has been taught annually at the University of Virginia's Rare Book School program since 1998, and he is also an adjunct faculty member of the Rare Books Program of the Palmer Library School of LIU. Mr. Holzenberg is an avid collector of (among many other things) books on architecture and design, particularly the English Gothic Revival, and the Aesthetic Movement in Europe and America.
