YCBA Does A Little Light Reading

“Having books bound signifies respect for the book; it indicates that people not only love to read, but they view it an important occupation.” That’s Dostoyevsky, who would know; he had been exiled to Siberia for discussing and circulating banned books. The many ways that books can be clothed, hidden, decorated, and disguised form the spine of ​“Contemporary Designer Bookbindings from the Collection of Neale and Margaret Albert,” the bookbinding show now at the Yale Center for British Art on Chapel Street through March 29.

The show itself is tucked into a corner on the second floor. If you didn’t approach it to look closely, you might think it was a minor exhibit. But there are nearly 60 works on display, by more than 30 contemporary bookbinders.

Best of all, some of them are very small. Tiny books are a specialty of collectors Neale and Margaret Albert, who are donating the pieces on display to the museum’s permanent collection. According to a New York Times interview with Neale Albert, friends asked him over the years, “‘What is it with you and little things?’… He doesn’t have a great explanation.” Curator Molly Dotson reported that Albert joked that ​“his interest in collecting small things arises from the space constraints of living in a New York City apartment.”

But who needs a reason, really? There’s something thrilling about towering over a micro-tome, as if one were a god or a literary giant. Several works by the Irish designer and maker George Kirkpatrick are especially pleasing examples. One, Atlas of the British Empire Reproduced from the Original Made for Her Majesty Queen Mary’s Doll’s House, bound by Kirkpatrick, is one and three-quarter inches high, the leather-and-paper pearl in an oyster of a leather globe seated in a rosewood box. The constellations gleam, miniaturely, inside the top of the box.

In The Neale M. Albert Collection of Miniature Designer Bindings — as much a Joseph Cornell box or Lilliputian Louise Nevelson scaffolding as a bug-sized bookshelf — Kirkpatrick tucks 50-odd volumes, including The Cardboard Court, Alphabet Salmagundi, and, of course, Gulliver’s Travels. (The ​“British Empire” globe makes a sneaky cameo.)

Kirkpatrick made both pieces for patron Neale Albert, who, a placard says, always told the artist, ​“Do what you want, and I will love it.” He clearly extended that same generosity to the other bookbinders showcased here, whether through commission or collection. ​“A designer binding is a book binding usually made on commission,” Albert told the Times, ​“and done by a binder who is not just a craftsman, but an artist.” To that end, Dotson said, he has commissioned more than 500 bindings and counting.

While Dotson has grouped together several mini-books — all of them fully readable, if one is an ant — like dainty petits fours, there are many more considerations than size at work, and many sizes represented here. Like each object on display, each display case is a clever multimedia composition, including one devoted to the art of bookbinding itself. A wee book press joins Angela James’s The Art of Binding Books (bound by Eri Funazaki). An intimidatingly dense 1840 guide called Nouvel manuel complet du reliur nests inside a walnut-and-goatskin case, in which elegant bookbinding tools — spring divider, try square, paper knife, leather knife, bonefolder — contribute utility and heft. Some of the geometric (and magnetic) shapes gracing a volume called Inside the Book (bound by James Reid-Cunningham) have in fact migrated outside the book, suggesting the way the reading experience itself transcends the written word. (For those inspired to re-wrap a book themselves, Dotson is teaching an introductory bookbinding course on Feb. 29, with materials provided. Space is limited, and registration is required.)

In another display case, designer bindings live alongside a group of ingenious ring and jewelry boxes. Elsewhere, the tiny birds perching on a book of Aesop’s fables (bound by Hannah Brown) are a pleasing echo of the larger ones in the nearby sculpture Mrs Pinckney and the Emancipated Birds of South Carolina by Yinka Shonibare. Kirkpatrick’s atlas and globe are overseen by a leather kaleidoscope made of miniature books that suggests a telescope for new horizons. Elsewhere, Dotson creates a pastoral landscape with bindings devoted to trees, mountains, and flowers. Indeed, many of the bookbinders represented here find inspiration in natural beauty, including Brown, who for Flowers from Shakespeare’s Garden: A Posy from the Plays, illustrated by Walter Crane embroidered every flower mentioned in the plays on the leather binding.

It’s easy to see how bookbinding can become an obsession, and fortunately, the museum has more where these came from. ​“While the Alberts’ promised gift complements existing book arts materials held by the Center’s Rare Books and Manuscripts department, it will significantly expand the department’s holdings of contemporary designer bindings,” Dotson explained. ​“This opens new avenues for exploring both the contemporary book arts as well as our examples of historical decorated bindings.” Get your magnifying glass — and your reading glasses — ready.