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Emily K. Larned, Red Charming, Bridgeport, CT
Emily has left Brooklyn for the greener pastures of Connecticut while she attends the Yale School of Art in pursuit of that mighty MFA. She can be reached via email at emilyatbooklyn.org, using the conventional email format, which you can discern because you are human while a spambot, one hopes, cannot.
Current Titles
SEARCH RESULTS
PARFAIT 2
GALOIS FIELDS
PARFAIT 1
THRIFT STORE: THE PAST & FUTURE SECRET LIVES OF THINGS
WALKING MIDDLETOWN
SYNTAX MACHINE
SEEING TRILOGY
Red Charming is the production label for all projects by Emily K. Larned. The name is an imaginary bad translation, meaning "an object or an aesthetic that combines the viusally pleasing with the cerebral."
Books are manufactured objects that have been the primary receptacles of human knowledge for the past 2,000 years. The status of the book as both product of culture and producer of culture makes it a particularly poignant form in which to explore the idea that knowledge itself is produced, not an a priori fact. Engaging this concept, most Red Charming artist books are inquiries into history and science: how we know what we know... When RC books are not directly epistemological, they focus on acute observation and assist the reader in seeing an environment in a new way.
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Current Titles
Please click on the title to view an additional image of each book.
WHY DOGS SMILE AND CHIMPANZEES CRY
Why don’t haircuts hurt?
Why don’t it look like the way that it talk?
Why don’t sheep shrink when it rains?
Why don’t they give them guns?
‘Why don’t they learn English?’
Why don’t we go somewhere and love
Why don’t we try staying home?
Why don’t you carve other animals
Why don’t you do right (Get me some money, too)
Who is a Jew?
Who is a Sikh?
Who is a stranger, and what should I do?
Who is afraid of Adam Smith?
Who is afraid of the dark?
Who is afraid of Virginia Ham?
Who is Ayn Rand?
Who is baseball’s greatest hitter?
Who is baseball’s greatest pitcher?
Who is black?
For this book, the artist conducted searches-by-title on LEO, the New York Public Library’s online catalogue, by formulating questions such as ‘How do’ and ‘Where are’. The resulting lists of book titles are at once funny, poignant, strange, sad, earnest, remarkably current, and urgent. It is the age of information and everyone is looking for answers.
The titles are paired with a text by Isaac Asimov’s 1984 book How did we find out about computers?, which was located by the artist in the stacks of the NYPL. The text anticipates all the technologies of convenience we use today, from internet shopping to amazon.com search-within-a-book to weather.com to RSS feeds. Asimov’s optimism puts in relief the undercurrent of dark anxiety inherent in the titles of the books.
Search Results was produced using two technologies, that of the book and that of the computer. The book titles are handset in Stephenson Blake Grotesque no. 18 and printed letterpress. The Isaac Asimov text was designed on a Mac, and then outputted onto transparency and printed silkscreen on caution-yellow Fabriano Ingres paper. The book is bound back-to-back, with corrugated plastic Corx covers, and opens as a laptop.
2006
edition 50
8.5 x 6.5 x 1 inches
32 pages
printed silkscreen & letterpress
bound back to back in Corx covers + anti-static bag sealed with industrial numbered stickers
$675
possible catalogue keywords: computers, books, libraries, found poems
Search Results can be found in the collections of Wesleyan University, University of Washington, Multnomah County Public Library, Scripps College, University of Southern California, and Chapman University. It is reviewed by Clif Meador in the forthcoming issue of JAB.
An artist's workbook of ideas: essays, creative nonfiction, pictures, & experiments. Topics include (but are by no means limited to): Paul McCartney's solo records, Norwegian knitting patterns, natural history museums, Alain Delon vs. Jean-Paul Belmondo, category mistakes, modernity in the mid-19th century, reviews of out-of-print books, Red Pandas, grammar workbook errors, and the relative scariness of dry vs. wet monsters.
winter 2004-2005
edition 285
5.5 x 4.25 x .25 inches
96 pages
letterpress cover, photocopied interior, coptic bound
$5 individuals, $10 institutions
Revolution. Love. Death. Mathematics.
Before he was 21 years old, the 19th century French mathematician Evariste Galois failed classes and experienced his father’s suicide, published a revolutionary treatise and was expelled from school, joined the National Guard and threatened the life of the king, narrowly escaped cholera and died in a duel. He also discovered the mathematical concept of Group Theory, which has served as a model for the solution to the Rubik’s Cube and the World War II Enigma Code, as well as the crucial background theorem for Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
Galois Fields tells both these stories: the life lived as well as the life of the ideas, living on, even now, 172 years after the death of young Galois. It is a romance of ideals & ideas told in three ways: through a stunning biography, a fascinating exploration of Group Theory’s many applications and implications, and also a gorgeous visual illustration of Group Theory in 13 unique silkscreens created especially for this book.
On each page, the fantastical events of Galois’ brief life unfold in paragraphs set in Garamond Bold, printed in black, illuminated by Dutch Initial caps printed in dusky gold. Simultaneously, an explanation of Group Theory, set in Stephenson Blake Grotesque no.10 and printed in deep magenta, develops in long lines at the bottom of the page. Also on every double-page spread is a full-bleed pattern of fleur-de-lys, silkscreened in white, which radically transforms into 12 different mathematical patterns with each turn of the page.
Written, designed, illustrated, silkscreened, typeset, printed letterpress, and hand bound by Emily K. Larned of Red Charming, Brooklyn, New York.
Galois Fields is in the collections of the Library of Congress, Temple University, Wesleyan University, Lafayette College, University of Missouri at Columbia, Multnomah County Public Library, Reed College, Stanford University, Yale University, Smith College, Skidmore College, and the University of Vermont.
2004
edition 55
9 x 9 x 1 inches
32 pages
silkscreen & letterpress, Frost-inspired binding, title stamped in 22 karat gold
$850
The first installment of PARFAIT has 84 pages of decorative initials, drawings, & creative nonfiction: the value of things, pit bulls in sweaters & sharks in mittens, Goodwill’s Fashion Forecast, childhood games, 12 merits of the Pika as articulated by a fictional Japanese fan, Harveys Bristol Cream, used books to stop buying, a 1950s life insurance company’s promotional item, the things lost in moving, wax museums, the claws of crabs, various NYC locations of interest, and the recipe for the best chocolate cake. Ever.
2003
edition 250
5.5 x 4.25 x .25 inches
84 pages
letterpress cover, photocopied interior, coptic bound
$5 individuals, $10 institutions
SOLD OUT - available to standing orders only
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THRIFT STORE: THE PAST & FUTURE SECRET LIVES OF THINGS
24 striking 35 mm color photographs of the objects and interiors in thrift stores: a close-up of a rack of colored leather jackets, a stuffed animal next to spatulas, rows and rows of couches, piles of paintings and picture frames. Illuminating the photographs are four new essays (two of which extend in fold-out pages) exploring the topics of "Organization & Entropy as a Model for the Universe, Narratives of Material Culture, the Relativity of Value, and the Metaphysics of Object-ness" within the context of a thrift store. Color-copied photographs and black & white photocopied text; front & back hardcovers printed letterpress in two colors; stab bound with aluminum screw posts.
2003
edition 50
3.25 x 5.5 x .25 inches
40 pages
letterpress cover, photocopied pages, screw post bound
$100
SOLD OUT - available to standing orders only
We are thrilled to report that the limited edition Thrift Store has been expanded (in photographs, text, & dimensions) and published as a full color, hardcover, 96 pages, 5,000 copies, retailing for $12.95, book by Ig Publishing. You can buy a signed copy from Booklyn on the Buy Booklyn portion of this site.
A portrait in 24 Polaroids of one of the 14 Middletowns in the USA. It happens to be Connecticut, but the sad shabbiness of the sagging porches, peeling paint, innocuous architecture, abandoned factories, and gutted cars could be anywhere: a true Anytown, USA. The book is presented folded up, 3.25 x 3.25 x 1.25 inches, in a sleeve. Slipped out of the sleeve, the book’s 24 panels open, slowly, in many different directions, such that unfolded (to 17 x 38 inches) on a flat surface it takes the shape of a town's geography, with its blocks and dead-ends. The unpredictable process of unfolding guides the viewer through the town, as she doubles back, turns right, looks closer, turns left. The color photocopies are mounted on black Mulberry covered museum board, and hinged with the same Mulberry. The title page and colophon are printed letterpress on handmade brown St. Armand paper. The sleeve is also printed letterpress in two colors on handmade blue Khadi paper.
2002
edition 50
$210
A lyrical meditation on the precise and nearly mechanical structure of both the synthetic and the natural worlds, from the composition of cities to that of novels, from skeletal structure to that of DNA:
Machines and the machines of things, their gears and flywheels, pistons and rods: the mechanical parts, and their mechanization. Not just the round blackness of letters, but also the pontificating points of punctuation. Not just the strings of sentences, but that order of them, the what after the who.
2001
edition 35
8 x 6 x .5 inches
20 pages
letterpress printed from handset type & commercial cuts of electrical parts, aluminum cover
$975
SOLD OUT - available to standing orders only
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SEEING TRILOGY
The Seeing Trilogy, a boxed set of 3 letterpress artist books, investigates how the way we see fundamentally shapes human experience. Titles include Look See Language, Forgetting the Visual Field, and The Eye is A Camera (shown).
2000
edition 25
box measures 6 x 5.5 x 6 inches
$850
SOLD OUT - available to standing orders only
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Red Charming books can be found in the collections of:
Amherst College
Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, La Jolla
Brooklyn Museum
Bucknell University
California College of Arts and Crafts
Carnegie Mellon University
Chapman University
Columbia University
Connecticut College
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Florida Atlantic University
Getty Research Institute
Harvard University
Hofstra University
Indiana University, Bloomington
Lafayette College
Library of Alexandria, Egypt
Library of Congress
London College of Printing Elephant & Castle, UK
Long Island University
Middlebury College
Mills College
Mount Holyoke College
Multnomah County Public Library
Museum of Modern Art
New York Public Library
New York University
Oberlin College
Occidental College
Ohio University
Otis College of Art & Design
Pacific Northwest College of Art
Reed College
Scripps College
Smith College
Smithsonian Institution
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
Tate Britain, UK
Temple University
Trinity College
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, San Diego
University of Colorado, Boulder
University of Connecticut, Storrs
University of Iowa, Iowa City
University of Kansas, Lawrence
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
University of Missouri, Columbia
University of Missouri, Kansas City
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
University of Southern California
University of Vermont, Burlington
University of Washington, Seattle
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Victoria & Albert Museum, UK
Walker Art Center
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Williams College
Yale University
Selected exhibition history
2007
Poetry Books: Reading Books
Broekhuis Bookshop
Enschede, the Netherlands
2006
Evolution of Cut + Paste
Asheville Bookworks, NC
100 Artists' Books
University of Southern California
Spotlight on Special Collections
Occidental College
Artists' Books Exhibition
Smith College
Construct
Florida Atlantic University
Euclid to e-books: ideal books moving ideas
Hofstra University
Treasures of the John Wilson Special Collections
Multnomah County Public Library
2005
The Artist Turns to the Book
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
2004
Retrospective Red Charming
Parsons School of Design Library, New York City
History of Artist Books
The Seoul International Book Arts Fair, South Korea
Open House: Working in Brooklyn
Brooklyn Museum, New York
Making Meaning: the Artist Book
Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri
Binding Structures: Book Artists Look Back
Swarthmore College Library, Pennsylvania
(Self)Publish or Perish
Open Space Arts Society, Victoria BC, Canada
2003
bibliocosmos
Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Page Me
SPACES Gallery, Cleveland, OH
2002
(Re)Readings: Artists' Books Now
Gallery Lux, San Francisco
Rare Books of the Future
Center for Book Arts, New York City
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