FEBRUARY 14, 2024 GRACE EBERT

The Whole Booke of Psalmes. London: Company of Stationers, 1643. All images courtesy of The Grolier Club,

An exhibition in New York counters the monotonous, machine-printed images we’re all too familiar with with bespoke designs.

Critics have been lamenting the conformity of contemporary book coves for more than a decade, railing against the same abstract blobs and bland stock imagery gracing many titles. The designs are often chosen for their marketability and ease of mass production, two unavoidable, economic factors in today’s literary landscape.

Josephus. ‘Jewish Antiquities and the Jewish War’ (Latin). Augsburg: Johann Schüssler, 1470. Bound with Eusebius. ‘Ecclesiastical History’ (Latin manuscript). Füssen, 1462.

An exhibition at The Grolier Club in New York, though, veers in the opposite direction, countering the monotonous, machine-printed images we’re all too familiar with for bespoke designs. Titled Judging a Book by its Cover: Bookbindings from the Collections of The Grolier Club, 1470s-2020, the show scans the club’s vast archives to highlight a wide array of elegant, handcrafted designs from the last seven centuries.[…]

Lynd Ward. ‘Gods’ Man: A Novel in Woodcuts. New York: Cape & Smith, 1929. Lynd Ward. Madman’s Drum: A Novel in Woodcuts.’ New York: Cape & Smith, 1930.

More: Spanning Seven Centuries, ‘Judging a Book by its Cover’ Celebrates an Enduring Art — Colossal