Ninety from the Nineties

Ninety from the Nineties: A Decade of Printing was an exhibition held at the New York Public Library from November 7, 2003 through May 28, 2004.

Ninety from the Nineties showcased a selection of ninety books made in the 1990s that were chosen on the merit of book arts. Note that the books were not necessarily written in the 1990s; some were older texts that were used to make special books in the 1990s. And, the books were not selected on literary merit.

In a contemporary review, The New York Times described the concept of the selection like this: "books, which we are accustomed to thinking of as containers — and conveyers — of information, are placed in a context in which form is valued over content. Language is less important than the type that impresses it on the page. The paper counts for more than the story told on it. The illustrations and the binding might be the story."

The books were divided into five categories: binding, paper, type, illustration and "inspiration." The exhibition was curated by Virginia Bartow.

Books in the exhibition

Following is a list of the ninety books selected and shown in the exhibition. The source for this list is the exhibition catalogue.

Number	Section	Book title	Author	Press	Year
1	Binding	Bon Bon Mots	Julie Chen
2	Binding	Doubly Bound: A Tool Kit [and] a Tackle Box	Diane Fine and Tracy Honn
3	Binding	Howards and Hoovers	Indigo Som
4	Binding	The Innocents Abroad	Mark Twain
5	Binding	The True Collector	Frederic Postman and Bonnie Stone
6	Binding	Baucis and Philemon from Ovid's Metamorphoses	Lois Morrison
7	Binding	Tea: Time in Korea	Greta D. Silbey
8	Binding	Phantasies of a Love Thief	Bilhana
9	Binding	Where I Live: Environments	Jim Gelfand
10	Binding	The Blues and Jives of Dr. Hepcat	Alan B. Govenar
11	Binding	New World Saints	—
12	Binding	Exquisite Horse: A Printer's Corpse	—
13	Binding	Rush Job	—
14	Binding	Vorkuta Poems	Sara Karig
15	Binding	The Dam Domino Book	Carol Schatt
16	Binding	Anatomy	Alice Jones
17	Binding	She Pushes with Her Hands	Dale Going
18	Binding	Kokopelli	Terry Horrigan
19	Binding	Voyelles	Arthur Rimbaud
20	Binding	In Praise of Patterned Papers	—
21	Paper	Dard Hunter & Son	Dard Hunter II and Dard Hunter III
22	Paper	Fine Papers at the Oxford University Press	John Bidwell
23	Paper	Song of Changes	Adrian Frutiger
24	Paper	The Lady Who Liked Clean Rest Rooms	J. P. Donleavy
25	Paper	The Pool	Toby Olson
26	Type	Portraits of Presses of Fleece	—
27	Type	Gifts of the Leaves	Dan Carr
28	Type	LETTERpressworkBOOK	James Trissel
29	Type	A Printer's Dozen: Eleven Spreads from Unrealised Books	Sebastian Carter
30	Type	She Who Saw with Her Heart	Roni Gross
31	Type	Zapf's Civilite Disclosed	Leonard Baskin
32	Type	Rex Reason, elements	Simon Patterson
33	Type	Prove Before Laying	Johanna Drucker
34	Type	Bad News	Lynne Tillman
35	Type	Le Roi	Francois da Ros
36	Type	The Architetextures	Nathaniel Tarn
37	Type	Specimens of Wood Type Held at the Alembic Press	Alembic Press
38	Type	Ten Sonnets	John Keats
39	Type	Twenty-three Poems from the French of Max Jacob	Max Jacob
40	Type	Odes	Horace
41	Type	Keeping Going	Seamus Heaney
42	Type	Loaded References (2)	Champe Smith
43	Type	Ornamented Types	—
44	Type	Poetry through Typography	—
45	Type	The Officina Bodoni and the Stamperia Valdonega	Grolier Club
46	Type	The Old-fashioned Snow	May Sarton
47	Type	Lin He-jing	Pu Lin
48	Type	A Printer's Dozen	Philip Gallo
49	Type	Die Ringparabel	Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
50	Type	The Steadfast Tin Soldier of Joh	Ernst Braches
51	Type	The Six-cornered Snowflake	John Frederick Nims
52	Type	Acts of Devotion	William Bronk
53	Type	Within the Walls	H. D.
54	Type	Late Fire, Late Snow: New and Uncollected Poems	Robert Francis
55	Type	Poems for the New Century	—
56	Type	The Valentine Elegies	Tess Gallagher
57	Type	Night Lake	Jean Valentine
58	Type	Song of the Andoumboulou: 18–20	Nathaniel Mackey
59	Type	Le chevallier Tondal: Gloss Written by the Fall(en) Typography Students	—
60	Type	Deborah, One of the Earliest Heroic Epics	Elaine Galen
61	Type	The Book of Revelation	—
62	Illustration	Wood Engravings	June Paris
63	Illustration	Phisicke against Fortune	Francesco Petrarca
64	Illustration	Waterfalls of the Mississippi	Richard Frey Arey
65	Illustration	Ein Nilpferd in New York	Anke-Sophie Mey
66	Illustration	Towers	David Moyer
67	Illustration	Trout & Bass	—
68	Illustration	Mr. Derrick Harris, 1919–1960	Simon Brett
69	Illustration	The Players and Paradigms of the Commedia Dell' Arte	Russell Maret
70	Illustration	North Pacific Lands & Waters	Gary Snyder
71	Illustration	Buddha's Bowl: A Dreamed Folktale	Alisa J. Golden
72	Illustration	John De Pol: A Celebration of His Work by Many Hands	—
73	Illustration	A Canticle to the Waterbirds	William Everson
74	Illustration	A Canticle to the Waterbirds	William Everson
75	Illustration	The Bread of Days	—
76	Illustration	36 Drawings	Sarah Peter
77	Illustration	Pochoir	Vance Gerry
78	Illustration	Das Mittagsmahl = Il Pranzo	Christian Morgenstern
79	Illustration	One-handed Basket Weaving	Maulana Jalal Al-Din Rumi
80	Illustration	Palms	John Ridland
81	Illustration	Gleichmass der Unruhe	—
82	Inspiration	David Jackson: Scenes from His Life	David Jackson and James Merrill
83	Inspiration	All My Relations	Susan Lowdermilk
84	Inspiration	Aliens in the Big Apple	Zofia Zaremba
85	Inspiration	As from a Fleece	Gael Turnbull
86	Inspiration	Agrippa	William Gibson
87	Inspiration	Batterers	Denise Levertov
88	Inspiration	The Red Ozier: A Literary Fine Press	Michael Peich
89	Inspiration	Cartesian Dreams	Judith Mohns and Francois Deschamps
90	Inspiration	Notebook Used Along the New Jersey Coast	Walt Whitman

References

• Books as Art Objects (Reading Is Optional). Michael Frank, The New York Times, January 2, 2004.
• Ninety from the Nineties: A Decade of Printing. (Catalogue of the exhibition at The New York Public Library.) Text by Virginia Bartow, curator, 2003.

See also

• Artist's book
• Letterpress printing
• Printing press
• Typography

External links

• Books as Art Objects (Reading Is Optional). Michael Frank, The New York Times, January 2, 2004.
• Ninety from the Nineties Showcases a Decade of The New York Public Library's Contemporary Rare Books Acquisitions, www.nypl.org