What I Bought at Codex Book Fair 2015

The Craneway Pavilion in Richmond, CA is a huge, high-ceilinged, room with nearly floor-to ceiling windows on two sides and skylights. It is bright in there, and when the sun shines at a certain angle, everybody sweats, so vendors brings umbrellas and fans and changes of clothes if they can. The pavilion sits on the edge of the bay. Sailboats pass the window as if they were being pulled on a string. This was the fifth year, fourth year I attended, but second year at this venue for the Codex Book Fair, having outgrown Pauley Ballroom at UC Berkeley in 2011.

My yellow highlighter and I diligently looked over the list of 195 vendors, but when I entered the building at opening on Monday at 12:30 P.M., the list went into my bag, and I wandered from shiny object to familiar face until I checked and found it was four o'clock. I brought my CCA Bookworks class there for a field trip on Tuesday, just a taste for them—we had to leave after two hours so they could get back for their next classes.

I wrote a post about the last Codex in 2013 here. And you can see pictures there, too. This time, I found some little treasures again. Another brilliant work from Bryan Kring. This one called The Hunter & The Bear, made for the Small Plates Editions at San Francisco Center for the Book. He also had a new book with a little mythical caterpillar that crept along as you turned a crank.





A sweet bee book Honey B Hive from Jessica Spring of Springtide Press. The covers are black velour and as you pull them apart, the honeycomb shape springs into place.




A facsimile of a beautiful notebook by Taiwanese artist Liuying Chieh. The drawings are terrific, plus washi tape looks great reproduced.




A booklet made from offcuts of a monumental book Of Physical Lines and shaped into a lovely and worthy booklet all its own called Of Lines by Sara Langworthy





And another wordless, illustrated accordion sold by Al Manar by Diane de Bournazel called Planetarium. Her drawings are so friendly. Yes, she cut out all the little shapes by hand. A second book of hers was also tempting; that one had tiny pop-ups.




At the fair itself, however, this is the only photo I took.


Because of the shoes on the man in the center.




Comments

Kate Burroughs said…
Thanks for posting the link to Liuying Chieh's work. I went over to the Etsy shop and bought the same book you did and the other food & drink one too. It is always inspiring to look at others work and incorporate into my own style. I hope to make it to this expo one day.
Aloha, Kate