2016 Events

Please join us for the opening of our third annual pop-up holiday card exhibition, with remarks by curator Jonathan Clark.

Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Presentation: 6:00 p.m.

Please find more information on the exhibition here.

Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Presentation: 6:00 p.m.

Michael Adams will give an illustrated talk about Ansel Adam’s life and legacy, including the photographer’s youth in San Francisco, his exposure to music, and his relationship to the landscape of Yosemite, the Sierra Nevada, and the Southwest. The talk will be accompanied by a slideshow of some of Ansel Adam’s most beloved photographs.

Michael Adams was born in the Yosemite Valley and was educated at Wasatch Academy in Mt. Pleasant, Utah, and Stanford University. He received a B.A. in Geography from Fresno State College, and his M.D. from Washington University School of Medicine. In addition to his private medical practice, Michael has also served as a fighter pilot for the United States Air Force and the California Air National Guard in Japan and New Mexico, and as a flight surgeon/pilot physician in Germany and Fresno, California. He retired from the USAF and Air National Guard in 1993, as a Major General and from duty as Deputy Surgeon General of the USAF for the Air National Guard.

Michael is Chairman of the Board of the Ansel Adams Gallery, now in its 114th year of operation in Yosemite Valley. He is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco Medical School, Department of Medicine, and teaches in the UCSF Fresno Residency Training Program. Michael has been an advisor to the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson, where the Ansel Adams photographic archive is located. He is a Council member of the Yosemite Conservancy.

Click on the image, left, for a larger view:  The building at 178 Townsend Street  in Clarence Alley in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, September 15, 2012. Photo credit: Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle.

Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Presentation: 6:00 p.m.

San Francisco’s beloved older buildings aren’t simply treasures to be preserved, they’re lenses through which we can view how this city and its cultures continue to evolve. Join the Book Club of California and John King for an eye-opening look at what the landmarks around us reveal about where we might be going next, and how our treatment of the past can alter San Francisco’s future. The talk will be illustrated with plenty of images – some buildings you’ll recognize, and others that will make you look twice.

John King is the San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic, where he casts his sharp eye on everything from the design of major towers to the value of rooftop public spaces. In 2016, he embarked on “Rising Reality,” a multi-part look at how sea level rise will alter Bay Area waterfronts and present both challenges and opportunities that we must begin planning for now. He has two books published by Heyday: Cityscapes: San Francisco and Its Buildings and Cityscapes 2: Reading the Architecture of San Francisco.

Click on the image, left, for a larger view:  “A Book for Ian” © Left Coast Press, by Dorothy A. Yule, June 2006, edition of 10, showing portrait ovals and rose-petal necklace.

Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Presentation: 6:00 p.m.

For those among us who are not paper engineers, pop-up books can seem magical and mysterious. For more than twenty years, Dorothy Yule has been exploring the world of pop-up and movable structures and learning how to use them in miniature books. Examining her own books as examples and using enlarged models of the structures, she will show how the mechanisms that create the illusions function.

Dorothy A. Yule started making books in primary school and eventually earned a Masters in Book Arts from Mills College. Her books tend to be small in size, written in verse, and often incorporate pop-ups. Her work has been exhibited and collected internationally, and awarded several prizes, including the Meggendorfer Prize for Artists Books from the Movable Book Society in 2014 and a Hedi Kyle Award from 23 Sandy Gallery in 2015.

The Book Club of California is honored to present a special event for members.

Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Remarks: 5:30 p.m.
Book Signing: 6:00 p.m.

Nicolas Barker is Editor Emeritus of The Book Collector and Editor of recent editions of John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors. The ninth edition of the ABC was recently published by Oak Knoll Press and includes a new Introduction, new terms, additions and amendments, and, for the first time, illustrations. Nicolas will give brief remarks on his experiences with these two long-standing, widely respected publications. A book signing will follow with Simran Thadani, co-editor of the ABC‘s ninth edition and Executive Director of Letterform Archive.

Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Presentation: 6:00 p.m.

When Joshua Foer, Ella Morton, and Dylan Thuras set out to write Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders, their goal was to create a catalog of all the places, people, and things that inspire our sense of wonder (after all, when you can buy a plane ticket and be in Borneo in less than a day, the world can feel awfully small). The extraordinary result is an utterly unique guide that combines compelling descriptive writing with arresting full-color photographs, maps, and charts to share over 700 of the most unusual, fascinating, and mysterious bucket-list destinations across all seven continents. From the secret apartment Gustave Eiffel built high atop the Eiffel Tower, to the spectacular New Zealand caves lit by glowworms, to the World’s Quietest Room, each entry in the book includes location information, GPS coordinates, and tips on when and how best to get there—and how much to bribe the guard to get you inside. An arresting cabinet of curiosities that inspires wonderlust as much as wanderlust, Atlas Obscura proves that the world is vast and there are marvelous treasures behind every corner—if you just know where to look.

For more information, please visit the Litquake event page here.

Co-sponsored by the Grabhorn Institute

Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Presentation: 6:00 p.m.

Simon Barcham Green, former owner of England’s last full-scale commercial handmade paper mill, presents a guided, selective, and very abridged tour through the last 2,000 years of papermaking. Illustrated with a wide variety of images, including many from the Hayle Mill collection dating back to the nineteenth century and also other English Mills, the presentation will also include recollections of major Californian book projects of the late twentieth century using Hayle Mill papers, including projects for the Arion Press, the Press in Tuscany Alley, and the Allen Press.

Simon Barcham Green belongs to the sixth generation of the family that ran Hayle Mill, Maidstone from 1812 to 1987. After obtaining a BSc in Paper Science from the University of Manchester, he worked in half a dozen machine mills before joining the family business, where he introduced the first alkaline sized mold-made watercolor and handmade papers in the world. Green developed many new papers for conservation purposes and worked closely with some of the leading private presses to produce bespoke papers, including special watermarks. He has visited hundreds of paper mills in recent years and provided consultancy services to many in India, Bhutan, and the Philippines. Now Business Manager of the Institute of Conservation and a member of the British Association of Paper Historians, Green is in continuous correspondence with people around the world on papermaking matters.

Co-sponsored by the Northern California Chapter of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America.

Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Presentation: 6:00 p.m.

Ken Sanders will give a brief overview of early Mormon activities and imprints in both California and Utah, and explore how the West was shaped cartographically–from the Republic of California to the State of Deseret, the Territory of Utah to the much smaller state of Utah–with a few fun facts, personal observations, and colorful characters thrown in along the way.

Free and open to the public but seating is limited. RSVP to programs@bccbooks.org.

Ken Sanders has been in the rare book business in Utah since the 1970s. He is a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America and served on its Board of Governors for six years, during which time he was the Security Chair, and was responsible for bringing numerous book thieves to justice. Sanders also has a long history of promoting the arts and literature and has hosted hundreds of book signings and art exhibitions, including the State of Utah’s largest ever poetry reading. In 2005, Sanders was honored by the Salt Lake City Mayor’s Award for Contributions to the Arts. Sanders has often been featured in television and film interviews and shows, including C-Span’s Book Talk, and A&E’s City Confidential, and has been an appraiser for PBS’s Antiques Roadshow since 2007.

Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Presentation: 6:00 p.m.

Join us for a celebration of the Book Club of California’s 236th publication, with an illustrated talk by designer and typographer Jerry Kelly.

The Noblest Roman: A History of the Centaur Types of Bruce Rogers chronicles every iteration of Bruce Rogers’s elegant Centaur typeface. Designed by Jerry Kelly, who co-authored the book with Misha Beletsky, The Noblest Roman is the result of significant new research, and is lushly illustrated with original drawings, proofs, photographs, type specimens, sample text pages, broadsides, promotional brochures, letters, and other ephemera, including a tipped-in type specimen letterpress printed from the newly recast foundry capitals, a type that has not been cast for over a century.

For more information on the book, including how to reserve a copy, please click here.

Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Presentation: 6:00 p.m.

For special collections libraries and art museums, encouraging engagement with rare, fragile, or otherwise vulnerable works that must be handled to be fully experienced is a quintessential problem. Stephen Woodall will discuss his institution’s efforts to address this dilemma through recent initiatives that establish a template for the translation of artists’ books into electronic media. Woodall will outline the promising advantages to this approach, and discuss the significant limitations of electronically distributed art.

Stephen Woodall is collections specialist at the Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books, the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts. Prior to that he was director of Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book and Paper Arts. From 1996-2008 Woodall served as education director and artistic director for the San Francisco Center for the Book, where he developed an extensive program of workshops and exhibitions.

Click on the image for a larger view: from the Dwiggins Collection at the Boston Public Library

Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Presentation: 6:00 p.m.

Presented by the California Rare Book School at the Book Club of California.

W.A. Dwiggins (1880–1956) is primarily known today for his type designs and his marionette theatre. However, from the late 1920s until his death, he was viewed principally as a book designer and considered to be one of the best in America. His work for Alfred A. Knopf was especially lauded, but the specific books of his that have been routinely singled out for praise tend to be limited edition work done for other publishers. When his Knopf books are cited, the emphasis is usually on their spines or shelf backs. Other aspects of Dwiggins’s book designs for Knopf, especially the interiors, remain overlooked. This talk seeks to rectify that oversight by looking at a wide swath of the more than three hundred books Dwiggins designed for Knopf, from their jackets to their colophons. In doing so, it will provide a new perspective on his work as a trade book designer and insights into Dwiggins’s views on book design.

Paul Shaw is a graphic designer and a design historian. He teaches calligraphy and typography at Parsons School of Design, and the history of graphic design at the School of Visual Arts. He is the author of Helvetica and the New York City Subway (2009) and the editor of The Eternal Letter (2014). Since 1980 he has been working on a critical biography of W.A. Dwiggins. Over the past decade he has given over a dozen talks on various aspects of Dwiggins’s varied career.

Please join us for the opening of our Fall 2016 exhibition.

Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Presentation: 6:00 p.m.

More information on the exhibition can be found here.

5 pm: Reception
6 pm: Program

Everyone knows that San Francisco is surrounded on three sides by water. But few realize that live, running water bubbles up from the ground throughout the city, from Islais Creek in Glen Canyon, to a rivulet high up on Twin Peaks, to a spring in Alemany Farm. Gary Kamiya will look at the fascinating history of San Francisco’s lost waters and explore the surprising ones that still exist.

Gary Kamiya was born in Oakland, grew up in Berkeley and has lived in San Francisco since 1971. He is the author of the bestselling Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco, which was awarded the 2013 Northern California Book Award in creative nonfiction. His first book was the critically acclaimed Shadow Knights: The Secret War Against Hitler. He was a founder and longtime executive editor of the pioneering Web site Salon.com. His work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Sports Illustrated, ArtForum, Mother Jones and many other publications. He is currently the executive editor of San Francisco Magazine and writes a history column, “Portals of the Past,” which appears every Saturday in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Please join us in the Albert Sperisen Library for a glimpse into the Book Club of California’s collection. This salon-like gathering features books from the club’s collection that highlight the work of Eric Gill, a typographer, sculptor, and illustrator best known for his typeface Gill Sans.

Space is limited, so don’t wait to reserve your place by emailing programs@bccbooks.org.

7 pm: Reception
8 pm: Program

at the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography (HMCT) | ArtCenter College of Design South Campus | 950 S. Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91105 | 626 396-4343

Featuring remarks and a visual presentation by author Robert Bringhurst.

Co-sponsored by the Book Club of California and the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography. Please join us to celebrate Palatino: The Natural History of a Typeface. Written and designed by esteemed poet, linguist, and typographer Robert Bringhurst, this book is a definitive account of Hermann Zapf’s most ambitious and enduring design project, and provides a detailed and sumptuously illustrated history of the evolution of all members of the Palatino tribe.

If books remain after all member pre-orders have been fulfilled, we will have a limited number available for purchase at the publication party.  (Book Club of California members may pre-order to reserve a copy and receive a 10% discount by mailing in the order form or calling 800-869-7656.) More information about the book can be found here.

** All Pasadena guests will receive a keepsake printed at Archetype Press using the D. Stempel Palatino foundry type. **

This event is free and open to the public. RSVP by May 20 to hmct@artcenter.edu

5 pm: Reception
6 pm: Program

Featuring remarks and a visual presentation by author Robert Bringhurst.

Please join us to celebrate the Book Club of California’s 235th publication, Palatino: The Natural History of a Typeface. Written and designed by esteemed poet, linguist, and typographer Robert Bringhurst, this book is a definitive account of Hermann Zapf’s most ambitious and enduring design project, and provides a detailed and sumptuously illustrated history of the evolution of all members of the Palatino tribe.

Books will be available for purchase at the event. Book Club of California members may pre-order to reserve a copy and receive a 10% discount. More information about the book can be found here.

Join Karen Zukor for a talk on the repair of Smith’s spectacular, twelve-foot-long, hand-colored engraved map, which expanded the field of geology, and whose importance was celebrated on its 200th anniversary in 2015.

Karen Zukor has been a paper conservator in private practice for thirty-eight years. Her work encompasses a full range of work on paper, from the fifteenth century up to contemporary pieces. She has been responsible for many collections, including fine art, archival material, maps, historic currency, and rare books, both in private hands and in institutions. The studio is involved in both conservation and preservation treatments; she and her staff not only repair damaged items but provide information for archival display, housing, and storage. Karen has trained both pre- and post program conservation interns for over twenty years, and lectures widely to the general public.

Please join us for the opening of our Summer 2016 exhibition.

Hospitality: 5:00 p.m.
Program: 6:00 p.m.

With remarks by Linnea Gentry, who served as editor, designer, and printer/production manager of Fine Print in its early years and continued as a contributing editor until its cessation in 1990.

More information about the exhibition can be found here.

Carl Nolte has been thinking a lot about the San Francisco Bay–an estuary so famous it gives its name to the whole region–and the ways it has shaped and been shaped by so many histories. From explorers, writers, shipwrecks, environmental activists, Chinese Junks, more than a dozen islands, several famous bridges, and a scenic delta at the heart of California’s longest-running crisis, Nolte will explore the Bay’s rich geographic and cultural legacy, give a reading from his book-in-progress, tentatively titled Tales of the Golden Gate, and solicit audience participation and feedback on the ideas he will discuss.

Carl Nolte has been a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle since 1961, and is the author of the column Native Son, along with three books of history. A fourth-generation San Francisan, Nolte is the recipient of many awards, including the club’s own Oscar Lewis Award for Western History, which he received in 2007.

Join calligrapher Thomas Ingmire for an intimate look at Calligraphy and Poetry: Thomas Ingmire and David Annwn, during its last week on view. The exhibition traces a remarkable, multi-year collaboration between Thomas and the poet David Annwn through a series of beautiful, complex, and exquisitely crafted artist books. At the walk-through, Thomas will take us through the exhibition to discuss individual books, speaking about the collaborative exchanges that created them and revealing details about their production and his own working process.

More information about the exhibition is here.

The Book Club will provide beverages, and lunch options are available at certain ticket levels. Click here to purchase your ticket on EventBrite. Space is very limited, so don’t wait to reserve your place! 

5 pm: Exhibition & Hospitality
6 pm: Presentations

A one-night-only exhibition of work by select students and recent graduates of the Mills Book Art program, California College of the Arts, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Academy of Art University, with presentations by each.

Penelope Anstruther (SFAI)
Sequoya Akosua Lee (CCA)
Chiao Ju Lee (AAU)
Selena Matranga (Mills)
Liz McCall (AAU)
Nora McKinnon (Mills)
Carlos Rodriguez (SFAI)
Malaya Tuyay (CCA)

Click here to download a flyer of the event, and click here to view the bios of our participating student artists.

The Book Club of California will have a table at the third annual Printers’ Fair. Sponsored by the San Jose Printers’ Guild, this free event celebrates letterpress printing and allied arts. The event will be held at:

History Park, 635 Phelan Ave., San Jose, CA 95112

David Annwn and Thomas Ingmire will reflect on their working processes and explore new insights about their collaborations. Their discussion will center on specific works now on exhibition at the Book Club of California and the many curious issues relating to creating visual interpretations of poetry. David will also read some finished poems and discuss the impulses behind their creation. Audience questions will be encouraged.

This event is co-presented by the The Friends of Calligraphy, and is held in conjunction with the Book Club of California’s Spring 2016 exhibition: Calligraphy and Poetry: Thomas Ingmire in Collaboration with David Annwn. Please click here to download a flyer of the event.

David Annwn, from West Yorkshire in the UK, is the recipient of the Cardiff International Poetry Prize, Wales’s most prestigious literary award. He was the resident poet at the 2011 International Calligraphy Symposium in Sunderland and at the Writing 2015 Calligraphy Symposium at Bruges. He will be reading in California for the first time.

Thomas Ingmire’s early calligraphic work focused on the exploration of calligraphy as a fine arts medium. Beginning in 2002, his focus shifted to the creation of original artist books, many in collaboration with numerous poets. His works can be found in artist book collections in universities and libraries throughout the US.

Join us for a ceremony celebrating the recipients of the 2016 Oscar Lewis Awards in Western History and the Book Arts. The Oscar Lewis Awards were established by the Book Club of California in 1994 in honor of Oscar Lewis (1893-1992), San Francisco author, historian, and Book Club secretary from 1921-1946.

Please click here for more information about the awards and a list of past recipients.

To attend RSVP to programs@bccbooks.org.

In 1820, John Hastings’s great grandfather founded Hastings and Company, a gold leaf manufacturing company in Philadelphia. It went on to become the largest gold leaf manufacturing company in America, lasting nearly 150 years. In this illustrated talk, Hastings will describe the age-old craft and all the traditions, methods, and surprising facts surrounding it–for example, it takes one ounce of gold to make 175 square feet of gold leaf. Hastings will also discuss gold beating in Japan and Burma, various uses of gold leaf, and why the market for gold leaf collapsed, and he will show an 80-year-old film about gold beating.

John Hastings was the fourth generation to run his family’s business, Hastings & Co., which manufactured gold leaf in Philadelphia for 148 years. After the business closed in 1968, he spent twenty years at the archeological museum of the University of Pennsylvania, developing computer databases for archaeology, and also working on digs in France, India an Tunisia. He moved to the Bay Area in 2001 and lives in Orinda. In recent years he has written several books about gold leaf and his family’s genealogy.

Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918) was the first son of light-skinned African Americans Thomas and Wilhelmina Brown. Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the precocious teenager arrived in Sacramento in 1858, where he became a hotel steward, and quickly gained public attention for his artistic ability. In 1860 he “passed” into the majority society by taking a job with San Francisco lithographer Charles Kuchel. Brown bought the business and for fifteen years engaged in a design battle with San Francisco’s letterpress printers and other lithographers. This talk illustrates by comparison how Brown’s ability triumphed.

Robert J. Chandler is a past president of the Book Club of California and was the long-time editor of its Quarterly News-Letter. He is a member of the Roxburghe and Colophon Clubs and numerous historical associations, including the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus. He is the author of San Francisco Lithographer: African American Artist Grafton Tyler Brown (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014).

The Rise of the Literary Annual, Powerful Femininity, and Beautiful Books offers an exhibit and lecture about the rise of the beautifully-bound and wildly popular British literary annual, a genre of early-nineteenth-century publication that is based on the rich diversity of European religious emblems, French almanacs, and British conduct manuals. The literary annual provided a space for re-creating a massive reading public who enjoyed poetry, travel tales, gothic short stories, images of popular (yet difficult to reach) artwork, morality short stories, fantasy, and other early forms of literature. By 1828, the craze for literary annuals overwhelmed booksellers and drawing rooms in England, France, South America, and finally, America, where publishers shamelessly pirated copies of the London volumes, even exchanging an anglo-centric poem for one that celebrates the nascent formation of American pride. Harris’ talk will touch on these topics as well as the beauty of these 200-year old books with an invitation to audience members to browse through an exhibit of representatives from her personal collection of silk-bound literary annuals (American, British, and French), hand-sewn almanacs, and gilt-edge anthologies. (Based on Harris’ literary history, Forget Me Not: The Rise of the British Literary Annual 1823-1835)

Katherine D. Harris, an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, San José State University, specializes in Romantic-Era and 19th-century British literature, women’s authorship, the literary annual, textuality, editorial theory, and Digital Humanities, all of which culminates in her three studies surrounding the literary annuals: The Forget Me Not: A Hypertextual Archive, The Forgotten Gothic: Short Stories from British Annuals 1823-1831 (Zittaw Press 2012), and Forget Me Not: The Rise of the British Literary Annual 1823-1835 (Ohio UP 2015). Harris is chair of the California Open Educational Resources Council, a state-funded initiative to promote adoption of OER textbooks in the UC, CSU, and CCC.

Visit the Book Club at the 49th annual Book Fair in Pasadena, located at

The Pasadena Convention Center
300 East Green Street
Pasadena, CA 91101

More about the fair may be found here.

Click here for a recording of the printers’ presentations and slideshow.

The Book Club of California is proud to present a celebration of the Bay Area’s vital printing community, featuring some of the best small publishers working within and invigorating the tradition of letterpress and fine printing. Participating presses include Land and Sea, Ladybones Print Shop, Dependable Letterpress, Lemoncheese Press, Super Classy Publishing, and Prototype Press. The program will feature a reception and informal pop-up exhibition from 5:00 – 6:00 p.m., followed by brief presentations from each of the printers from 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Note: this event was previously scheduled for December 7, 2015.

Click here for a recording of Thomas Ingmire’s presentation and slideshow.

Calligrapher Thomas Ingmire will speak about his collaboration with poet David Annwn and the works on view. For more about the exhibition, click here.

Click on the image, left, for a larger view: High Bridge, Midnight Paper Sales, 1987, and click here for a narrated slideshow of the program.

With the founding of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts in 1986, Minneapolis became a destination for touring practitioners of the book arts. In 1987, John Randle of the Whitington Press, en route to California, offered a workshop in which Gaylord Schanilec was a participant. Thus began a long and significant association between Gaylord Schanilec and the British printing scene.

Gaylord Schanilec, noted for his color wood engravings, established his own press, Midnight Paper Sales, in 1980. Since then, he has published more than twenty-five books under his imprint, as well as accepted numerous commissions including works for The Gregynog Press in Wales and the Grolier Club of New York. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Carl Hertzog award for excellence in book design, and the Greynog prize. He is an Honorary Member of the Double Crown Club, and an active member of the Typophiles and the Ampersand Club. His work is represented in most major book arts collections in the United States and in the United Kingdom, and the archive of his working materials is held at the University of Minnesota.

Join curator Bo Wreden for an intimate look at Holiday Cards from William P. Wreden, Family, and Friends. Refreshments will be served. Free and open to the public, but an RSVP to programs@bccbooks.org is required to attend.  More information on the exhibition here.