Blank Book for Tom Phillips'
translation of Dante's
Inferno
Whatman paper
Bound by Minsky 1979
9 5/8" x 7" x 1"
Nigerian goat sumac tanned and dyed by the artist, blind tooled
with Florentine lily design drawn by Phillips, made into intaglio,
relief and outline tools. Hinges of same skin, with doublures of
the same skin reversed.
"MINSKY 79" blind tooled inside back cover
The Crisis of Democracy
by Crozier, Huntington and Watanuki for the Trilateral Commission.
New York University Press, 1975
Bound by Minsky 1980
8 3/4" x 6" x 11"
Sheep, gold, barbed wire.
The authors propose that there is too much freedom in contemporary democracies, and that it is necessary to curtail personal freedoms in order to preserve the governability of democracies. In 1980 the choice in the USA presidential elections was of three teams, all of which included at least one member of the Trilateral Commission. I exhibited this book as a political comment, choosing the materials to reflect the metaphor of the text.
Inlaid Leather Blank Book
Bound by Minsky 1983
10" x 7"
Red Nigerian Goatskin with inlay and onlay panels of a geometric
design in both covers.
Nineteenth Century Japanese Photo Album
Bound by Minsky 1984
12" x 9"
Black calf spine, gold leaf, enamel, varnish, polyurethane and shellac over gessoed
boards.
Album of hand-colored albumen prints. There are 35 layers of clear finishes,
paint and gold leaf that create an optical effect of extraordinary depth. The
photo above does not capture the subtle colors in the "black" areas,
nor the illusionistic depth created by the light passing through many layers
that refract it differently.
Enamel and Gold Leaf Binding - Blank Book
Bound by Minsky 1985
11" x 10" x 1"
Grey goatskin spine, varnished enamel and gold leaf boards, acrylic
and gold leaf endsheets
"Minsky '85" signed inside back cover
Gracie Mansion Register
Dieu Donné handmade paper
Bound by Minsky 1985
13" x 10"
Black Chieftain goatskin, recessed pictorial inlay of goat and
vellum, blind tooled, recessed panel with foil stamped title.
Letterpress title page, dedication and colophon, linen endbands,
chain ring embedded in head edge of back board.
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