umbrella on line

ISSN 0160-0699

Volume 29, No. 1, Mar 2006

From the Editor

Well, now we are online and I thank you all, subscribers, for your patience. It has been an intense three months and my technical guru, Jim Hanson, has made us cheer. We are proud of the website and hope you are too. Please tell your friends to subscribe and make this a solid base for information about artist books. If you are traveling to a conference or to do a workshop, perhaps you can share your adventures with our readers. Just let me know that you’re inclined to write an article and I will set the time and space parameters for you.

Now, we have also been busy with the 7th International Edible Book Tea, which has covered 17 countries and 28 States and has even reached the Foodnet Online, Associated Press, and the New York Times Book Review on the 26th of March, where Blake Eskin wrote an article on “Books to Chew On” telling the world about our event and also about the history of bibliophagy or book-eating throughout history. It was a week of interviews on the phone from around the world from Australia to Canada. My friends from Minden spent 1 April in India and performed an Edible Book Tea in Auroville too!

This issue has a report on the Book Arts Conference in Australia by Sarah Bodman, and I hope in the next issues to initiate a Dealers’ Column covering problems and solutions, as well as a Collectors’ Column if it’s possible for those collectors to speak about their interests, the problems they entail, etc.

The next issue will be sometime in the Summer. Know that I listen to suggestions and recommendations, so please do not hesitate to write me at umbrella@ix.netcom.com or umbrella@umbrellaeditions.com

Have a great spring and let’s hope there will be more peace and more patience in our leaders.

— jah