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1verbivore
I'm curious, folks -- I'd love to hear about the beautiful books that seized you at the get-go, and have held you in their thrall to this day.
For me, it was Bradbury Thompson's masterpiece, the Washburn College Bible. I first learned about the project when Smithsonian magazine devoted a piece to it in the late 70's. Though I was a mere pup then, I had a Potter Stewart moment when I came across the pages reproduced in the magazine -- I knew it when I saw it, and it was *good*.
The original release in 1979 was a limited run of 500 numbered, leather-bound, three-volume sets. A slightly miniaturized mass-release, single-volume edition was released by the Oxford University Press in 1980. By the time I was a full-grown adult, the Oxford edition was no longer in print. So I kept an eye out for it whenever I passed through a used bookstore.
Eventually, I began purchasing books via the Internet, but for this particular item, it seemed apt to await a little deus ex machina to drop a copy into my hands. Of course, where should I find it, slipcover and all, but at my first in-store trip to Powell's?
Oh, it's a beaut. Less is more, much more (nearly 1,800 pages worth). The text is the King James Version, but with a twist -- it's beautifully set in Sabon in a "phrased" layout, with lines breaking as in verse:
And God said,
Let there be light:
and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good:
and God divided the light from the darkness.
Each new chapter is illustrated with a color plate of a work selected by J. Carter Brown, the then-director of the National Gallery of Art. (You know, a little Giotto and Velasquez here, a little van Eyck and El Greco there...) Three screen prints by Josef Albers, commissioned as frontispieces for the original three-volume edition, also appear within.
If good layouts are your religion, then this is your Bible.
For me, it was Bradbury Thompson's masterpiece, the Washburn College Bible. I first learned about the project when Smithsonian magazine devoted a piece to it in the late 70's. Though I was a mere pup then, I had a Potter Stewart moment when I came across the pages reproduced in the magazine -- I knew it when I saw it, and it was *good*.
The original release in 1979 was a limited run of 500 numbered, leather-bound, three-volume sets. A slightly miniaturized mass-release, single-volume edition was released by the Oxford University Press in 1980. By the time I was a full-grown adult, the Oxford edition was no longer in print. So I kept an eye out for it whenever I passed through a used bookstore.
Eventually, I began purchasing books via the Internet, but for this particular item, it seemed apt to await a little deus ex machina to drop a copy into my hands. Of course, where should I find it, slipcover and all, but at my first in-store trip to Powell's?
Oh, it's a beaut. Less is more, much more (nearly 1,800 pages worth). The text is the King James Version, but with a twist -- it's beautifully set in Sabon in a "phrased" layout, with lines breaking as in verse:
And God said,
Let there be light:
and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good:
and God divided the light from the darkness.
Each new chapter is illustrated with a color plate of a work selected by J. Carter Brown, the then-director of the National Gallery of Art. (You know, a little Giotto and Velasquez here, a little van Eyck and El Greco there...) Three screen prints by Josef Albers, commissioned as frontispieces for the original three-volume edition, also appear within.
If good layouts are your religion, then this is your Bible.
