CODEX Foundation ~ California
(Peter Koch)

book art object
Editor, David Jury
copy edited by J. O. Bugenta
Berkeley, California: CODEX Foundation, 2008

12 x 9"; 432 pages. 735 color images. Offset printed and case bound with black cloth boards. Dustjacketed.

This book is a record of the initial Codex Symposium and Book Fair held in Berkeley, California, in February 2007. It contains the following:

• A preface by Peter Koch (founder, initiator of the Codex Foundation)
• An introduction by David Jury on the historical relationship of art, design, and the book
• Full-color photographs of work by the bevy of international fine presses and artists' bookmakers who exhibited
• Transcripts of the 4 keynote talks by Robert Bringhurst, Felipe Ehrenberg, Sarah Bodman, and Dr Stefan Soltek
• Essays by five international artist-bookmakers: Crispin Elsted, Canada; Markus Fahrner, Germany; Martha Hellion, Mexico; Jadwiga Jarvis, Australia; and Gerald Lange, USA
• Contact information and background information for every 2007 CODEX book fair exhibitor.

This is, in many opinions including ours, a worthy reflection of a great conference.
$95

CODE(X) + 1
published by CODEX Foundation

Peter Koch: "CODE(X)+1 is a monograph series devoted to thinking about books, book culture, and the arts of the book."

2008 Series: 3 monographs
• Why There Are Pages and Why They Must Turn by Robert Bringhurst
• ART : definition five by Peter Rutledge Koch
• each new book by Alan Loney

$100 set of three
$35 each

Why There Are Pages And Why They Must Turn
CODE(X) + 1 Monograph Number One
By Robert Bringhurst
Berkeley, California: CODEX Foundation, 2008. Edition of 500.

5.5 x 7.75"; 16 pages. Printed on an old Heidelberg cylinder press at Peter Koch, Printers by Peter Koch, Jonathan Gerken, and Shanna Mahan. Typeface: Quadraat ("well suited for feuilleton editions printed in relative haste"). Cover printed from antique wood and metal types in the Koch collection. Pamphlet bound.

Canadian Robert Bringhurst is a philosopher, poet, linguist, and typographer.

"Why There Are Pages and Why They Must Turn" is adapted from The Surface of Meaning: Books and Book Design in Canada, published in fall 2008 by CCSP Press (the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing Press) at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver."

Robert Bringhurst: "In cultures possessing fluent scripts, paper, and printing, books have acquired a stable material form. Those quiet, reliable, portable, legible objects are the benchmark incarnation of the book for most of us now, yet we know that, to be real, a book must be more than a physical object. What makes the tangible form of a book rewarding is that it stands for an intangible reality alive in the heart and mind.”
$35

ART: definition five
(and other writings)
CODE(X) + 1 Monograph Number Two
By Peter Rutledge Koch
Berkeley, California: CODEX Foundation, 2008. Edition of 500.

5.5 x 7.75"; 24 pages. Printed on an old Heidelberg cylinder press by Peter Koch assisted by Jonathan Gerken. Typeface: Quadraat ("well suited for manifesto / feuilleton editions printed in relative haste") Cover printed from antique wood and metal types in the Koch collection. Pamphlet bound.

Contents: "Definitions and Defictions: Or, Why I Am Not an Artist"; "What I Think When I Think About What I Make"; "From the 1995 Notebooks"; and "From the 2007 Notebooks"

Peter Rutledge Koch, printer living in Berkeley: “The great collections at the Museum of Modern Art and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco are filled with what are loosely referred to as 'artist’s books' but a great many of the books are more or less ordinary books with art in them. The books of Vollard and Kahnweiler are containers of art. Erase the pages and what remains is an entirely ordinary but blank book. Contemporary art with its more comprehensive and sophisticated approach to physical and formal properties requires the book itself (full and present in all its particularness) to measure up. This change in perspective has matured greatly in the last thirty years.”
$35

each new book
CODE(X) + 1 Monograph Number Three
By Alan Loney
Berkeley, California: CODEX Foundation, 2008. Edition of 500.

5.5 x 7.75"; 26 pages. Printed on an old Heidelberg cylinder press at Peter Koch, Printers by Peter Koch, Jonathan Gerken, and Shanna Mahan. Typeface: Quadraat ("well suited for feuilleton editions printed in relative haste"). Cover printed from antique wood and metal types in the Koch collection. Pamphlet bound.

An essay by the proprietor of Electio Editions discussing finer points of the book form.

Alan Loney, poet/printer living in Melbourne, Australia: "There is no doubt that fine press books propose a value for their material existence per se. This value could be seen as a replacement/rejection of the 'spiritual' value of the 'sacred' object. This is not merely the slip of my prejudices showing (tho Ido not deny it is that) but also the whole undergarment in contrast to the invisible threads by which the ‘sacred’ has bound communities together over against other communities. The chosen book is the chosen community, even in the avant garde. The question remains – how do I value the book without rendering it 'sacred' – even if the sacred is read simply as ‘a thing apart. '"
$35