Artist Books

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Darkness and Light: Words of Etty Hillesum: hand-bound, letterpress printed and laser cut, limited edition flag book by Don Widmer (2020).  Buy now. 

This sculptural flag book is an artist book with image and text attached as strips of paper (flags) to the accordion spine. Shop now.  Photo imagery courtesy of @speakzeasy.

"Charlie, Forgive Me" is an artist book with pages made from red oak held together with a leather spine. Shop now.

Girdle book structure covered in velvet, with 12 pages of handset type. The endsheet illustrations are reproductions of the following paintings: The Stigmata of St. Francis, by Bartolomeo Della Gatta (c. 1487) and St. Francis of Assisi, by José de Ribera (1642). Shop now.

Ten-year-old Fanny wakes one wintry morning to find her toy doll stripped naked and shattered in the parlor of Chicago’s famous Glessner house. A fan of Sherlock Holmes, she attempts to solve the “murder” by questioning several well-known architects including Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Isaac Scott. This work of historical fiction was inspired by Captain Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962), a pioneer in modern forensic science and creator of the miniature crime scenes known as the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Sold out. Limited edition paperback version still available.

The Offering (2015), a flag book with text by Don Widmer.  The sculptural flag book is an artist book with image and text attached as strips of paper (flags) to the accordion spine.  When opened, the image fragments combine into a panoramic spread.  The Offering was inspired by the sounds and sights of Bali.  Both the text and imagery are musical in nature.  The text is an original poem by Don Widmer.  The images featuring the instruments and dancers of the Balinese gamelan orchestra.  The largest gong, called the gong ageng, keeps cyclic time during the performance.  This bronze gong is pictured on the front of the book.  Shop now.

Flower Lore (2014) utilizes the archivally sound drum leaf binding structure.  Text and image is letterpress printed on Stonehenge  paper. The book is covered in handmade iris paper (by Don Widmer) and the edges are hand-painted with guache. Edition of 20.

Sold out.