...So says Patti Smith in her National Book Award speech. "Publishers, there's nothing more beautiful than the book: the paper, the font, the cloth. Please, no matter how we advance technologically... There's nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book."
Why is it that books are revered as beautiful objects? Where does this belief come from? Are there any cultures in which the printed word is not regarded as a thing of beauty to be worshipped?
It seems fitting that it is Smith who is advocating for books as beautiful objects. Her biography of life with Richard Mapplethorpe (for which she won the award) offers insights into life as a thing of Beauty (in the most capital 'R' Romantic sense). I suspect, though, that books as beautiful objects has a much longer history than the Romantics...
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