According to Keith Houston, “the last thing the reader saw was the “colophon”, a single page at the back of the book named after the Greek word for “summit”, or “finishing touch.”*
Still quoting Houston: “The colophon was a place for the printer to record the details of the book’s manufacture–the name of its firm; its coat of arms, perhaps; and the place and date of its production.”
The attentive reader will notice that I got carried away. Under the influence of a Walter Hamady retrospective at The Center for Book Arts–plus a generous helping of the social and emotional conditions under which we are finding ourselves, I vented.
And I vented, and vented and vented, as if after all that was said and done, there was yet much steam gathered under the valve.
And yet–yet again, after so much has been said and done, there is something else I want to share: the very attentive reader might have noticed that I harbor a romantic hope in between those lines. That one of my impulses for splurging so bad comes from wanting to expose a certain hierarchy of labor in the making of works of art. That creating and crafting for me are one contiguous act, that honing these skills have made me an artist, and that by being an artist I am honing my skills.
And that one is no lesser than the other. And that I am grateful for it, and that I am grateful for you to have noticed it, too.
*source: a book called The Book, by Keith Houston. 2016, published by Norton.
ana paula cordeiro 