I love this article from the New York Times last week:
SAN MARCOS, TEX. — On the day before New Year’s Eve, after making the 19-hour drive to Texas from Wisconsin, the writer and artisan Gaylord Schanilec began checking the status of the precious cargo that had been sitting, uninsured, in the bed of his Chevy Silverado. In the home studio of Craig Jensen, a bookbinder here, Mr. Schanilec plucked more than half a million dollars out of Rubbermaid storage bins. The money was in the form of 100 bubble-wrapped copies of “Lac Des Pleurs,” Mr. Schanilec’s ode to Lake Pepin, near his home in Stockholm, Wis., population 69. The going rate for each copy is $5,000.
The book took more than seven years for Mr. Schanilec to make. Now, Mr. Jensen would have to rush to complete the binding for 30 copies in time for the Codex Book Fair & Symposium in Berkeley, Calif., the premier international showcase for handmade books, which starts on Sunday.
The project began when Mr. Schanilec, a self-taught wood engraver and fine printer who seamlessly uses traditional techniques to modern ends, acquired a Lund fishing boat and retrofitted it with a drawing table and library so that he could create while pondering the lake. “I’m really into just going someplace I know nothing about, or into a subject I know nothing about, and just kind of letting it take me wherever,” Mr. Schanilec, 59, said.
Read the rest here:
Studio Z Mendocino 