Saturday, August 2, 2014

Jacket


On Friday I took a day away from my regular work at the library and instead met a friend in Berkeley. After lunch, we spent the sunny summer afternoon in bookstores together. One of the most exciting finds (and certainly the most photogenic) was waiting for me among the many miles of unfinished pine shelving at Black Oak Books on San Pablo Avenue.

The Limits of Art was first published in 1948 as part of the always-useful Bollingen Series. This copy (acquired for fifteen dollars) is from the fifth printing issued in 1966 with a dust jacket by design great Paul Rand (1914-1996). Than whom nobody ever did more with an unblended four-color printing-palette. Chocolate brown, ochre, burnt orange, black.