When Art Books are Artworks

Sometimes you've just got to have print books, and these two are my birthday and Christmas gifts to me!  one is the catalog raisonne of the current Metropolitan Museum's Interwoven Globe, a massive show of textile art.  

I couldn't make it into the city with my friends, a long planned trip, not yet up to a full day in the city, in crowds, so this is my consolation prize.  The cover is itself fabric backed, a lovely artwork in itself, and a wonderful representation of the exhibit.  If you want to know more about that, go here

And the other is a much more modest but equally lovely buy, a book on Japanese Folk Art, published in the early 50s, a collaborative work  of the two main proponents of the Japanese folk art revival, Soetsu Yanagi and Hugo Munsterberg. Yanagi founded and directed the Japanese Folk Art Museum, and really liked how Munsterberg presented this material.

The jacket and end papers are Japanese paper, and the illustrations are about as good as they got at that period.  Not the amazing resolution of pictures we're used to but still a great book  to handle as well as read.  This one, too, has a fabric hard cover.

So I thought you'd like to see, and maybe browse the Met exhibit, too.