• Collections
  • SWEAT

    The SWEAT broadsheet Collaboration

    The Rosa Trillo Clough Archive of Italian Futurism
    Books as Aesthetic Objects

    The essential focus of the collection is on artists' books

    
    Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here

    Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition -one of only ten in the world-

    
    
• Events
  • 
    Upcoming Events

    Socials, Gallery Talks, Exhibition Openings, Makers' Meets

    Workshops

    Books Arts 101, Paper Making, Box Design, Binding, Letterpress

• Exhibitions
  • 
    Silents

    Novels in Pictures

    JCBA Media
• About Us
  • Helen M. Salzberg A.I.R.

    Artists and Residence Program founded in 2011

    
    Arthur Jaffe

    Founder, Director, Visionary of the Jaffe Center for Book Arts

    
    JCBA Staff

    Meet the talented invdividuals whom make up the Jaffe Center

    
    

• Events
  

  Come see our current exhibition SILENTS: Novels in Pictures and take in a silent film while you're here. We'll be giving you plenty of opportunities while the exhibition runs (through January 10, 2017). All screenings are on the big screen at the Book Arts Gallery inside the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, 3rd floor east of FAU's Wimberly Library. Admission is self-determined: give what you like or what you can.

• Events
  

  Come celebrate the seasonal and the handmade at our Autumn Makers Marketplace! We're gathering makers of all kinds at one central location so you can shop, make connections, and be generally inspired (a constant JCBA theme). This Marketplace will, naturally, have an autumnal theme. We're thinking apples and pumpkins and hay bales (some of our favorite things).

• Exhibitions
  

  A core concept at FAU Libraries' Jaffe Center for Book Arts is that there is more than one way to define "book." There is also more than one way to tell a story. What if we told a story without words? Could we tell a story solely through a sequence of images?

• Workshops
  

  This Book Arts 101 workshop begins in the witching hour with the All Hallow's Eve magic of "Hist Whist" by poet e.e. cummings. We tune into that Halloween spirit by turning our eye toward the spookier items in the Jaffe Collection followed by a visit to our haunted print shop as we work our spell to transmogrify you into a book artist, at least for this one eerie night. Is anything what it seems? Who knows.

Welcome to Jaffe Center for Book Arts

Schedule a Tour

Support The Center

The Jaffe Center for Book Arts is South Florida's hub for research and instruction in artists' books and book arts topics.The center revolves around the Book Arts Gallery, which houses the Jaffe Collection. We think of the space as a hybrid of a library and an art gallery. Exhibitions, gallery talks, films and performances and our popular Book Arts 101 presentations all take place inside the gallery in the midst of this inspiring collection of artists' books, as do university class sessions and community group tours of the Jaffe Center. Our approach to the Book Arts Gallery takes a cue from artists' books, which encourage us to see things differently... and so the gallery has even been the setting for intimate concerts with artists like Jane Siberry, Matt Alber, and The Boston Camerata.

The Jaffe Center Studios

Our Letterpress Studio is housed in the room that originally held the Jaffe Collection. Equipment includes two Vandercook proof presses, a Potter proof press, and a tabletop platen press, all from the twentieth century. A nineteenth century Wesel iron handpress is the central feature in the room; the handpress was a gift to us from Brien and Beverly Varnado of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. The Wesel is our workhorse each year for Letterpress Appreciation Day (September 18), at which you can be a 19th century printer yourself! The studio also houses a collection of mid-twentieth century advertising cuts (a gift to us from Lee Kline of Miami) that represents somewhat of a graphic design history of 1950s to 1970s Miami.

Book Studio 350C is our setting for teaching workshops and classes in bookbinding, book structures, boxmaking, paper decoration, and other such topics. It includes comfortable work stations, board shears, and numerous nipping presses.

JCBA's Paper Lab is in a satellite location at T6, one of FAU's historic World War II era buildings on the northeast corner of campus. It is the setting for instruction in hand papermaking topics, as well as paper decoration. Equipment includes a Renna Hollander Beater, vats, felts, moulds and deckles, and a hydraulic press. A second book studio, designed to accommodate larger workshops, is also located at Historic T6, across from our Paper Lab.

Arthur Jaffe

Together with his late wife, Mata, Arthur built an outstanding collection of books as aesthetic objects focused on artists' books and limited editions. His collection began over 50 years before he and Mata gave these books to FAU in 1998. Rather than being the end of something, that gift was an inspired beginning, garnering an enthusiastic group of loyal supporters that grows with each passing year. The Arthur & Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts is their legacy.

(Arthur Jaffe, 1921-2015) 

The Arthur & Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts. Wimberly Library, Room 350 Florida Atlantic University 777 Glades Road Boca Raton, Florida 33431 Telephone: 561.297.0226.