About Us
“Rosenberry Books is the Cirque du Soleil of the publishing world…”
With perceptive design acumen embued with “vivaciousness and spiritual enthusiasm,”
we combine book arts’ artistic experiments in book construction with
print-on-demand publishing,
Serving the contemporary reader, we believe that artistic book construction must serve the literary work: spacious simplicity, sacred text, or playful ebullience … such qualities can be expressed
in the very structure and typography of a book.
In Rosenberry Books editions, Jungian psychology meets Taoism; mandalas meet Christianity;
yoga meets poetry; Taoism meets Elvis: things get interesting around here!
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Creative Design & Manufacturing
We too have experimented with book construction, and the Rosenberry manufacturing process is unique.
Most people are unaware that papers are as varied in their visual, sensual and functional properties as plants in the forest. Each paper we use is selected for its unique properties, the way a traditional chairmaker selects tulip poplar for the seat, oak for the spindles….
The linen cordage we use, with its seeds and fibrous inconsistences, simply and strongly ties the books together. You can see the knotting, stitching and bows of the Japanese stab binding. There are at least a score of steps and processes involved in making each book. We work with our hands and we enjoy it.
Historical & Innovative
Diane Katz and Philip Bizzarri bring to Rosenberry Books the things we almost became: Philip an art historian, Diane an actress. Our work is anchored in our backgrounds of historical artistic forms and vibrant, enthusiastic expression.
While our books are assembled by hand, computers and digital printers make production possible. No one uses computers or printers the way we do.
We have wrestled the complexity of technology down and made it produce what human hands might have created, but more repeatedly and consistently.
We also use desktop technology in order to be versatile and adaptable. On All My Holy Mountain: A Modern Fraktur, for instance, in four different editions.
The original Peace Church Edition is also published as a Fellowship of Reconciliation special edition and a PAX Christi special edition each with forwards from the respective organizations.
For museums more interested in fraktur as an art than a spiritual expression, we publish a Folk Art Revival Edition, which replaces meditations on peace with information about the history of the art of fraktur.
Museum Stores
The Rosenberry Books wholesale department provides handmade books, kits, art and stationery for museum stores and other book and gift shops.
In 2003 the North Carolina Museum of History engaged Rosenberry to publish Pieces of History: Quilt Patterns from the North Carolina Museum of History as part of their 100th anniversary celebration.
The same African Mask Kit chosen by the Smithsonian for its National Museum of African Art gift store, was featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Fifth Avenue entrance display for their 2003 “Art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas” exhibit along with Diane’s own African Mask Kit constructions.
“In an ideal world, surely the makers and vendors of things …
would obey the inner promptings of the spirit.”
from A Short History of the Printed Word by Warren Chappell
