Celebrating our twelfth year!

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In September of 2008, Barrister Books opened on the corner of Lawyers Row and Barristers Row in the heart of historic downtown Staunton. We are so grateful for your continuing support and patronage, even through these difficult times. We are looking forward to being here for many years to come. In celebration of our twelfth anniversary, we are giving away a set of two letterpress prints by printer, book artist and paper maker Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.

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Layers of color and bold type, letterpress printed on chip board, characterize Kennedy's challenge to each of us to be an active participant in conversations about equality, opportunity, race and the nature of craft.  

Kennedy says of his efforts in establishing The Detroit Printing Plant: "What I want to do is have people help me create a model for sustainable industries built to human scale. I want others to explore this model so that they too can pass on your love and devotion of a craft.  The Detroit Printing Plant is about sustainability: it's not about being so big that you have to maintain your bigness, it's about being just big enough that your craft can maintain you." 

To take this set of wonderful prints home, all you have to do is come by Barrister Books and enter your name and email address in the drawing.  We have framed the set of Kennedy prints in custom black lacquered wooden frames, so if you win, you'll take them home ready to hang.  We'll draw the name of the winner on October 31, 2020 at 5:00 pm and let you know if you win.

To read more about Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. and see more of his work, visit his web site Kennedy Prints! and on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/kennedyprints/?hl=en and https://www.instagram.com/pile_of_bricks/?hl=en

Celebrating Eleven Years in Downtown Staunton

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"I knew much later what I didn't know then, so I did not remain in my six year apprenticeship with Henry Southern, booksellers. I was eighteen and thought London in the 1960's was far too three dimensional to work at a job selling books.  Half a decade later I was collecting books but had not entertained a consideration to selling any of them. Footloose and free, but without the fancy part that money offered, I was slipping into dull humdrum with occasional bouts of jocularity, as the amusement park photo attests to.  A couple of decades or more later, my collection had turned into a book scouting commodity and then into a bookstore in Blue Hill, Maine.  In September of 2008, we opened Barrister Books in Staunton, Virginia."

- Anthony Baker

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Lyall Harris "Winter Flame"

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Lyall Harris, “Winter Flame”, book arts exhibit in place from Wednesday, November 29 through Sunday, January 14, 2018

at Barrister Books, book arts / paper arts: re-imagining the book

As part of a continuing series featuring book arts, Barrister Books presents “Winter Flame”, an exhibit of work by Virginia book artist Lyall Harris.  Lyall’s work will be on view at Barrister Books from Nov 29, 2017 through Jan 14, 2018. These works include structures from Harris’ A Year in Books during which she made a new project every week for one year, book objects, such as Outing Yourself, featuring text on miniature hangers, and fully developed artist’s books like Interior Landscape, a reflection on Sylvia Plath’s journals, and Paper Boats, a collaborative book Harris made with Patricia Silva about contemporary mass immigration to Europe. Most works are for sale, prices start at $10. 

About “book art,” Harris says: Book art might indeed look like a book and it usually references the book form in some way, but this art medium doesn’t have prescribed parameters. It allows for a broad range of expression through a unique combination of text and/or image, sequence, and structure, and in so doing, it does something a “regular” book just can’t do. Works on display at Barrister Books run the gamut from very simple structures to more elaborate works. Even in easy structures, I try to conceptually push what a “simple gesture” can accomplish as I often explore charged and layered content. My identity as an artist-mother is near at hand in much of my book art. Originally from Virginia, I am happy to be back, now living in Charlottesville, after 30 years on other coasts and continents. 

Bio: Lyall Harris is a visual artist and writer with a BA in Art History from Northwestern University (Phi Beta Kappa) and an MFA in Book Art and Creative Writing from Mills College. Her book art is held in dozens of Special Collection libraries, among these at Yale, Stanford, Smith, Vanderbilt, UCLA, UC Berkeley, University of Utah, University of Texas, Indiana University, Washington University, University of Vermont, Savannah College of Art and Design, Duke, UNC, VCU, and University of Virginia. Harris’ painting has been exhibited in over 100 juried group shows and several solo exhibitions across the US in venues such as National Academy Museum, Purdue University, Creative Arts Workshop, National Art League, Maryland Federation of Art, Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, City College of San Francisco, and many others. Her poetry has appeared in such publications as The New Guard, The Prose Poem Project, Pure Francis, and San Francisco Bay Guardian, and her creative nonfiction has been featured in The Montréal Review. She was a selected BANG! writer in 2016. Her writing has been a finalist in numerous writing contests, including The Bunchgrass Poetry Prize, The Briar Cliff Review Poetry Contest, The River Styx International Poetry Contest, The Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, and Glimmer Train Press Very Short Fiction Award; she received the Honorable Mention for the Mary Merritt Henry Prize in Poetry. Harris is the co-editor of the online literary and art journal The Sigh Press, which she co-founded in 2014.

Barrister Books, at 1 Lawyers Row, is celebrating its ninth year of buying and selling old, used, and rare books in downtown Staunton by featuring a series of exhibits of work by local book artists.  “We have taken on this direction in an effort to support local book artists, expand opportunity for book arts venues, and broaden the discussion about the nature of books; it is a natural extension of the bookshop's mission” said Anthony Baker, proprietor of Barrister Books.  “In addition, we are excited about the possibilities to collaborate with local artists, teaching venues, and arts organizations for future book arts exhibits at Barrister Books.”   

Lyall Harris “Winter Flame” exhibit at Barrister Books will remain in place from Wednesday, November 29 through Sunday, January 14, 2018.  Barrister Books is open Wednesday through Saturday, 10:30-5:30 and by appointment.   

Web Site: lyallharris.com

Literary and Art Journal, The Sigh: thesighpress.com

 

Barrister Books joins the celebration for QCMM!

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We are excited to be part of this year's Queen City Mischief and Magic!  Join us September 22 - 24.  We'll be featuring: 

* a magic corner with a Big Book Selfie Spot, 

* flying books throughout the bookshop, 

* magic hands holding books emerging from the shelves, 

* and handmade bookmarks featuring a quill pen and envelope bookmark, red lion wax seal and QCMM ~ 2017 dedication. 

A Snowy owl overlooks the proceedings.  We are looking forward to all of the fun - 

Artist Books and Paper Objects

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We are now featuring collected small, surprising, fun, and affordable artist books and paper objects from Printed Matter in New York:

Yearbook by Sophie Arnold; paper tags, vintage yearbook pictures

Earbooks by Purgatory Pie Press; letter press, paper books, featuring the poetry of Sommer Browning

Le Travail by Susanne Bürner; folded heavy paper, photographs, map

Patterns by Sara Diamond; paper, stapled spine

Coffee by Evah Fan; paper, stapled spine

DNAids cups by Creative Time; set of five paper cups

Handling, Miniature Garden 2015; digital print on gray paper, edition of 50 by Claudia Peña Salinas and Denise Shatz

Float Float by Sandy Son; paper, stapled spine