A Thing of Beauty

Most of us take books and their easy availability for granted. Far fewer are aware of the book’s centuries-long journey from dim notion to everyday object. It was a long while before the raw materials were even available. Paper, for instance. “Papermaking was invented in China in 100 AD,” says publisher Allan Kornblum, founder of the Minneapolis-based Coffee House Press, “and traveled slowly from China to Tibet to India to Pakistan, across the Arabian subcontinent to North Africa, and then finally to Spain. It took a thousand years to get from China to Spain--and another few hundred years to make its way through the rest of Europe.” Once paper, ink and printing were realities, there were still greater obstacles to overcome. “Not too many people now know that Gutenberg went bankrupt,” Kornblum points out, “or that during the Spanish Inquisition, offending printers and authors were tied together at the stake and burned, with their books used to start the blaze.” Kornblum knows a great deal about the history of printing and bookmaking, and he has developed an entertaining hourlong presentation on the subject. A grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Program enabled the 45-year old publisher to give his lectures in scores of venues around the country over the past year--from a Minnesota saloon to the Library of Congress. The fourth and final stage of the tour will bring Kornblum to eight Southern California bookstores this month.

Kornblum wears a long denim apron and a leather visor when he gives his talk. An old-fashioned platen press, known as a “clamshell” or “jobber,” serves as a visual aid. Spectators are invited to help print a broadside at the end of the hour.

The presentation is intended to increase awareness of small presses--like Kornblum’s own literary Coffee House Press, begun in 1984--and to instill some knowledge of the traditions of fine printing. Although Kornblum is enthusiastic in principle about the rise of so-called “desktop publishing,” he notes: “The new technology has led to such an easy access to bookmaking that people are starting to do it without any sense of its history, and there has in fact been a decline in standards.”

One of Allan Kornblum’s aims is to remind us what books should and can look like. At their best, they are still far from being everyday objects. “There are people today, in this country and others, doing unbelievably exciting work,” the printer-publisher says. “Using handmade paper and metal type, utilizing ancient traditions and contemporary techniques, they’re making books that are a tribute to the human spirit.”

Southern California Tour:

UC San Diego Bookstore: Monday, Tuesday, noon

UC Irvine Bookstore: Monday, 4 p.m.

Dutton’s Brentwood Bookstore/Los Angeles: Tuesday, 7 p.m.

BookGrinders/Van Nuys: Wednesday, 7 p.m.

Huntley’s Bookstore/Claremont: Thursday, 12 noon

Beyond Baroque/Venice: Saturday, 8:30 p.m.

Chaucer’s Bookstore/Santa Barbara: next Sunday, 2 p.m.