Artists’ books

In recent times the term bókverk (artists’ books) has been used for numbered books, periodicals, posters and ephemera of various kinds, whatever their subject – from duplicated and handmade self-published work to mass-produced publishers’ editions on which a great deal has been spent on the making of the object. Today most people take an artist’s book to mean a book by an artist, where the book is the work itself: the medium the artist chooses for the qualities a book has that other media lack. In 2018 the exhibition Bókverk (Artists’ Books) was put on in the Culture House to mark the 200th anniversary of the National Library. On that occasion a separate collection of artists’ books was set up as one of the Library’s special collections.

Bookbinding collection

Late in the last century the bookbinder Sigurþór Sigurðsson began collecting bindings by various bookbinders. In 2002 Sigurþór offered the collection for sale to Félag bókagerðarmanna (the union of the book and printing trades), which accepted. In 2012 it was handed over to the National and University Library of Iceland for safekeeping. The books in the collection were bound by hand by many different binders, several of whom are represented by more than one book. The collection also holds some books bound in bookbinding workshops early in the last century. The aim of the Bookbinding collection is to bring together bindings by as many of the country’s bookbinders as possible, so that it can give a full picture of the history of bookbinding in Iceland and serve research into it.