JCBA welcomes you back with our LETTERPRESS APPRECIATION DAYS OPEN HOUSE Featuring “Pressing On: The Letterpress Film"

Sunday September 18 & Monday September 19
Noon to 4 PM each day

Jaffe Center for Book Arts
Letterpress Studio & Book Arts Gallery

The number .918 is of immense importance here at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts and for anyone involved in the old and venerable craft of letterpress printing: .918 inches is the standard height of all the types we use, from the very smallest to the largest. It's a number that reminds us of 9/18, and so for years now, JCBA has been celebrating Letterpress Appreciation Day on the 18th of September. This year 9/18 falls on a Sunday, so we're making things twice as nice by celebrating on Sunday the 18th (a great day for the community to come by) and on Monday the 19th, too (a school day, so we expect that'll be mainly for students, though the community is certainly welcome then, too).

COME PRINT!
During our open house come make a souvenir print. We hope to be cranking out prints on JCBA's 1890 Wesel Iron Handpress and you will be the printer. The old press is in need of some repair this year and we'll only be using it if we can fix it properly... and unfortunately the local hand press repairman retired about 95 years ago. (If we can't get the handpress fixed in time, we'll be using one of our 1940s Vandercook presses –– which are equally imPRESSive!) You'll print a broadside (a poster, basically) that will be set by hand from JCBA's collection of historic wood and metal types while we teach you a bit about this fascinating craft. The print is yours to keep and printing it will teach you the difference between clicking PRINT and actually PRINTING.

STAY AWAKE

bedtime stories for kids & sleepy adults

It's late June and here in the Northern Hemisphere, we find ourselves at the Summer Solstice (June 21 at 5:13 AM here in Florida). It's the astronomical start of summer, but in traditional reckoning of time, this time of longest days and shortest nights is thought of as the height of summer, hence its traditional name: Midsummer, for the days have been growing longer up until this point, and now, they begin to grow shorter. For centuries, St. John's Day, June 24, has been known as Midsummer Day, and its eve, the night before on June 23, has long been considered a magical time (much like Christmas Eve is at the opposite side of the wheel of the year).

William Shakespeare certainly reckoned time this way and so for Episode No. 4 of our Stay Awake Bedtime Stories series, we invite you to Stay Awake with John Cutrone as he reads you A Midsummer Night's Dream, in a story version adapted from both Shakespeare's play and from A Midsummer Night's Dream for Children, which was written by Edith Nesbit in 1899. Our version is an updated mash-up of the two.

SUMMER EXHIBITIONS 2022

Now Through Letterpress Appreciation Days
(September 18 and 19, 2022)
Wimberly Library Main Lobby (1st Floor)
and Jaffe Center for Book Arts Lobby (3rd Floor East)

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?