On Libraries

May 27, 2019

Something a little different this time: a meditation on a single subject. A few years ago I gave a talk at Vassar College and got to spend some time in...

A Prisoner, a Museum, a Man Getting Old

May 23, 2019

When Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned in the Tower of London, he passed the time by making a map of Egypt. I wrote about how Le Corbusier’s idea of a Musée...

The Thingery and the Church

May 17, 2019

I love the idea of a library of things or Thingery — where you can borrow rather than buy or rent — but here’s a thought experiment for you: What sorts of...

Return Visit to the Academical Village

May 11, 2019

Last week I got to spend a couple of days in Charlottesville, Virginia and environs. I did my graduate work at UVA, and while that was not the happiest...

Notebooks, A Monk, and the Death of a Poet

May 6, 2019

A notebook of Leonardo da Vinci, at the British Library’s Writing: Making Your Mark exhibition. Would love to see that, but I don’t think I’ll be in London...

Texas Sunsets and Irish Fathers

May 1, 2019

Sunset over Benedict Farms Thanks so much to all who replied to my query, in my last edition, about how I might defray the costs of this newsletter, and...

Enough about Me

April 27, 2019

I rarely read, or even look at, a book of mine after it’s published. When the box arrives with my author copies I have a brief glance at the cover and the...

The Texas Edition

April 22, 2019

Wildflower season is always nice here in central Texas, but this one was especially lovely. Interestingly, last fall was unusually colorful as well: The...

Images Humble, Quirky, and Grand

April 17, 2019

Melanie Titmuss Bracelli’s Bizzarie di Varie Figure (1624) Emma Taylor, book sculptures A few years ago, when I was giving a talk at Vassar, I met a...

Of Printers and Patriarchs

April 9, 2019

This one is coming a little more quickly than usual, but Cool Things are backing up in my Cool Things Queue. Philadelphia, 1797. Via Lucretia Baskin, and...

In Which I Keep Going

April 5, 2019

Eric Ravilious For over twenty years, the National Security Agency had a technical journal for its employees called Cryptologs. The journal covered a wide...

On Non-Ephemeral Ephemera

March 29, 2019

I have long loved the small oddities of the publishing world: posters for books, pamphlets, broadsides — ephemera, mostly, though to the collector something...

Poems by Mail and a Man of Sorrows

March 22, 2019

In the 1950s the English publisher Faber & Faber had a wonderful little initiative: They offered poems in the mail by subscription. If you subscribed, you’d...

A Cat, an Eagle, and the Great Entail

March 16, 2019

Sterling Hundley’s sketchbook Sixty-some years ago a man gave a metal sculpture of an eagle to Boston College, because they’re the Eagles, right? So BC...

House, Home, Friends

March 11, 2019

Casa Sperimentale Visiting Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania last week to speak at the — very beautiful! — Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, I had the opportunity to...

A Line, a Grave, Voices

March 5, 2019

F13 (1926) by Wacław Szpakowski, via Miguel Abreu Gallery and BLDGBLOG. That shape is made from a single line. Julia Blackburn’s new book Time Song:...

Angels in the Architecture

February 26, 2019

I don't suppose there’s another architectural ornamentation that gives me the delight I receive from watching the angels ascending and descending on the West...

A Cartoon, a Library, a Deadly Credit Card

February 20, 2019

Some works of art are so famous and celebrated that you might wonder how it could be possible ever to see them again, but each time I’m in London I make a...

Brick Dust and Iron Birds

February 14, 2019

Jorge Otero-Pailos, The Ethics of Dust Thanks to my friend David Michael I learned about the work of Ajene Williams, who’s an artist-in residence at the...

Stars, Cops, and a Status Board

February 8, 2019

Katie Paterson’s work at the Turner Contemporary, Margate. See a brief video of the exhibition here. A powerful photo essay on black cops in Atlanta When we...

On Thumbs and Bibles and Stuff

February 4, 2019

Look, it’s Leonardo da Vinci’s thumbprint “The Saint John’s Bible is the first handwritten, illuminated Bible of its scale in over 500 years. The Bible gets...

The One About Stones

January 28, 2019

A photograph by Constantin Brancusi of his studio, from a new exhibition of his work at MOMA Many of you will remember the scene from Citizen Kane in which...

The Long Here, the Long Now, and the Indiana Jones of the Art World

January 23, 2019

Glenstone Museum, Potomac MD Brian Eno on the Big Here and Long Now: Today we view as fellow-humans many whom our grandparents may have regarded as savages,...

An Early and Artful Edition

January 14, 2019

Hello, friends! If you’re thinking Wait, didn't I just get a newsletter from this guy? — yeah, you did, just a few days ago. But today I’m embarking on a new...

Post-Truth Realism and a Musical Reconstruction

January 11, 2019

Venice in 1574. For a much larger version of the map, click here. I have recently discovered an amazing musical production: the Gabrieli Consort’s A New...

The Language of the Hand and Walt Disney’s Train

January 5, 2019

Hello everyone, and the happiest of New Years to you all. We’ve all overdue for a good year, so with fingers liturgically crossed and prayers uplifted.......

Christmas, Thomas Merton, type design

December 28, 2018

Merry Christmas, everybody! Christmas is of course a season, rather than a day, and we’re only a quarter of the way through that season, so to get us...

Old Material Is the Best Material

December 21, 2018

Hello, and welcome back! I’ve spent a lot of time in the last year learning to disconnect myself from the minute-by-minute stimuli of social media, to get on...

Mars, Harvard, and A Students

December 17, 2018

Greetings, old friends and new, from the beautiful Hill Country of Texas, where I’m on a short retreat at one of my favorite places on Earth, Laity Lodge. I...