Good enough to frame

Had I been in London this month, I'd have gone to StolenSpace gallery to see this exhibition on the art of the book cover.
The gallery, in conjunction with Penguin, invited artists to 'paint, print, photograph, whatever their medium, whatever their style...create a book cover for a novel of their choice, a book that has inspired them, a book that has had a profound impact on them or a book that they remember fondly as a child...original artwork created to the traditional format and size of a Penguin book 198mm (h) x 129mm (w).'
The results were a visual feast and included new interpretations of old classics like The War Of The Worlds, The Cat In The Hat, Nineteen Eighty-Four and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
Had I been in London, and had I been an artist....I would have designed a book cover for Laurens van der Post's The Hunter and the Whale... 
What book would you choose?

Archived treasures

Love this 1966 edition of The Paris Review (No 39) I found in a secondhand book stall in New York a couple of years ago. 
Great cover art and scratchy thick textured pages. And look how fantastic the line-up is on the contents page! The letters of ee.cummings to Ezra Pound, an interview with Harold Pinter and poetry by Pablo Neruda - all published while they were not only alive and kicking but still writing new material. 
The magazine is still going strong today but it's fascinating to see who has contributed to past editions. Back issues, from as early as No 7 published in 1954, are still available via the website. I'd love to get my hands on that one - with illustrations by Picasso and Warhol - going for US$100, or No 28 1962 featuring an interview with Pound and fiction by Samuel Beckett and Jorge Luis Borges for US$80...
For now I'll content myself with reading the magazine's regular Art of Fiction series online via the Archive section (1953 onwards) which includes such contributors as Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, E.M. Forster and a myriad of other greats.

Touchy-feely...

Everyone knows a thing of beauty is a joy forever...and these beauties are made for keeps. Found these exquisite cloth-bound book covers by Penguin designer Coralie Bickford-Smith on-line here. 

Classic cover

How beautiful is this! The original cover art for E.B White's 1952 classic Charlotte's Web sold at auction to a New York collector for US$155,000. The graphite and ink illustration by Garth Williams features farmgirl Fern Arable holding the saved-from-slaughter pig Wilbur, with Charlotte spinning her web above them. If you look closely you can still see the production notes around the edges. The same cover art has been used for over 58 years and in 2000, Publisher's Weekly named Charlotte's Web the best selling children's book ever. 
Williams first teamed with White for the cover of the mousecapade Stuart Little.

Vintage mags from Comptoir de L'image

More from the fabulous Comptoir de L'image... Besides the beat poets I found two brilliant cultural icons from my youth...
A stack of Interview magazines and an equally impressive trove of vintage Vogue.
Interview coloured our lives in my teens - took my friend T and I out of boarding school bounds and into the exotic world of 1980s American art, film, fashion, music, culture - Isabella Rossellini, Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Cyndi Lauper - the cover art was always fantastic and so different from the drudgery of Dolly and friends on the shelves at the good ole Wahroonga Franklins...
And then there was Vogue.... there's something about the vintage editions that lifts them to a time so much more glamorous than the current. Maybe it's the original artwork, the timelessness of the models and Hollywood icons of old school cinema, the lack of ads and mass consumer chain store rip offs...
Resisted the temptation to lug them all home but did content myself with a cover print from French Vogue, 1 June 1921... I wonder if, in 90 years' time, someone will hang the Oct 2010 cover on their wall?

Cover art

Cool book covers I found here.

I heart art

Love these book covers by designer and illustrator Jim Tierney. 

Check out his website.

Sales by design...

I admit. When it comes to books I do sometimes...well, judge a book by its cover. All it takes is a certain je ne sais quoi - a deliciously embossed font, a velvety soft watermark, an intoxicating graphic - for me to get sucked in by its beauty and end up at the cash register.
Have you noticed that book covers seem to change randomly depending on where you pick them up? That's because different designs are chosen for the American and British markets and sometimes we in Australia end up with both options.
I found this comparison of UK and American book covers at a pretty cool online literary magazine - www.themillions.com. Check out the debate and see which ones you rate. It's a big deal when you consider that in sales terms, all the blood, sweat and tears an author invests in his or her manuscript can be slaughtered by a bad cover.
The UK version of Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood gets my vote. I have no idea if the story's any good, but who cares - with its ripe colours and heavily laden vines enswirling the words - I'd buy it solely for the luscious artwork. Ka-ching!

On coveting...

Anyone who knows me knows my mantra. A handbag a day keeps the doldrums away. And toting a handbag, that's also a book, that looks like a handbag (while sashaying in stilettoes and wearing fabulous lipstick) is about as close to heaven as a girl can get. Without, you know, carking it.
Imagine my excitement when I came across these beauties from accessories designer Olympia Le-Tan. Ooh la la!