Deborah Howe, Juror
Lebanon, New Hampshire

Deborah Howe is the Collections Conservator at Dartmouth College Library. Previously she headed the conservation lab at Northwestern University Library for over 10 years. She has taught classes at Columbia Center for Book and Paper, the Newberry Library and currently teaches bookbinding classes at the Book Arts Workshop at Dartmouth. She is a longstanding member of the Guild of Book Workers and on the board of directors of the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio.

Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 1979

The "Mercury Seven" went up into space in the first man occupied space vessel. For me, this encompasses the spirit of vessel as it relates to this book. This tiny "tin can" air ship/vessel took these men to a new world and brought them home again, giving them experiences beyond their imagination and to the world: new knowledge. I used the pierced vellum style binding as it allowed me to depict an alternative layer, similar to the Earth's atmospheric layer the astronauts had to penetrate. The edges are colored blue-green to reflect both the heavenly skies as well as the water, the two places where the astronauts headed and where they landed. There are seven laced in supports for the original pilots selected for the "Mercury Seven." The heads are arranged sequentially in the order that they went into space, the shape - a boomerang - is a symbolic shape of the era and refers to the boomerang table that was found in the living rooms of the military base homes. End sheets are images of the official portraits of the astronauts and the capsule that went into space. The multi colored insert is like the celestial heavens, light and airy and full of wonder. The endband colors are green for the earth, blue for the sky, yellow for the sun and orange for the fire that propels the rocket up into space.
Pierced veined vellum, vellum supports, silk endband thread, acrylic ink.
5.75 x 8.25 x 1.5 inches; 14.5 x 21 x 4 centimeters. Created 2011.