Bindings
One view of the exhibit at BookWorks, with the amazing book-beetle in the foreground. I fell into time in Asheville, and tried not to come up for air. Whiling away some hours before my reading at Posana Café, I visited a few of the galleries and workshops of the RiverArts district and then crossed the French Broad River to West Asheville in search of the “Time Travelers Exhibition” at BookWorks Gallery. This was an elegant small exhibit featuring handmade book bindings in traditional styles – new bindings of old books, revisited old forms in new materials, a feast for the eyes and the mind of a bibliophile. I saw Coptic bindings and Gothic bindings, techniques from the Middle East and the Far East.My favorite was a giant beetle (pictured), a blown-up recreation of the creature whose larvae, tunneling under tree bark, supposedly gave rise to the Coptic alphabet. In the middle of its back was a tiny doorway, and inside that space, a miniature book. I’m a former news...