Please touch: Rare, unusual and artistic books are making Miami a center of print culture

How the University of Miami’s Special Collections library came to possess one of its rarest, most valuable works — three volumes of engravings of roses commissioned by Empress Josephine Bonaparte of France that’s a masterwork of art and science — is a tale both little-known yet astounding, much like the archive itself.

The books arrived one day, unexpectedly, in a crate of rare volumes delivered to the library’s loading dock. Inside, among other gems, delighted and perplexed librarians found a complete, pristine set from the 1821 original edition of “Les Roses” by Pierre-Joseph Redouté, the most prized work by the most famous botanical illustrator in history.

A bit of detective work ascertained its surprising provenance: The crate was an unsolicited donation from eccentric wrestling fanatic and convicted murderer John du Pont, an heir to the chemical company fortune who had attended UM decades earlier. Du Pont, who died in prison, had willed the collection to UM, but no one ever told the school.

Happily, the result is that today anyone can come to UM and leaf through the hallowed books to marvel at how Redouté’s glowing illustrations of the wide variety of roses that grew in Josephine’s imperial gardens appear to pop off the page. No gloves needed, either, just clean hands. (Gloves dull tactile sensation and can lead to torn pages.)

Maybe even more amazing: “Les Roses” is just one of thousands upon thousands of precious, rare, historic, odd, unusual and simply beautiful books, maps, documents, manuscripts and esoterica available for inspection to any member of the public at UM’s Special Collections department, one of those cultural treasures that somehow escape public notice in hype-obsessed Miami.

“People can touch it, which is amazing,” said Cristina Favretto, the collection’s director since 2008, who has been on a mission to draw attention to its holdings. “People didn’t know what we had for a long time.”

But the world has been gradually discovering the collection’s riches, which range broadly from the sublime to the decidedly offbeat.

The university’s Kislak Center houses the special collections as well as books and documents dating to the early history of European colonization of Florida and the Americas, and documents and artifacts from the Age of Exploration, drawn from the vast collection of the late Miami real estate entrepreneur Jay Kislak.

In the special collections library, you will find illuminated manuscripts from the Renaissance, including a 1515 French book of prayers that once belonged to Henry W. Poor, originator of the Standard & Poor’s financial ratings, and Miami restaurant menus and Florida cookbooks going back well over 100 years, many of them describing once-popular dishes long out of vogue.

There are the archives of Pan Am and Eastern airlines, the papers of environmentalist and feminist activist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and legendary comic Jackie Gleason’s surprisingly voluminous library of books on the paranormal and occult — and, yes, you read that right.

Then there are zines, the typically home-produced booklets and publications by amateur enthusiasts on virtually any subject, from punk bands to the Beatles to political causes to family stories or social observations and more — about 16,000 of them, one of the largest collections in the country.

One of its premiere collections, an extensive archive of artists’ books — that is, books produced as works of art — is now helping draw fresh attention to Miami as a cultural attraction. The UM collection of some 2,500 artists’ books is the largest in the country and growing, Favretto said.

Tropic Bound Book Fair

Thanks in part to the burgeoning reputation of the collection, a new book fair focused on artists’ books will take place in the Miami Design District Feb. 6-9. Favretto, one of three organizers of Tropic Bound, said interest is so high that 200 artists and exhibitors from around the country and the rest of the world applied for the 70 available spots at the fair, the second edition following its under-the-radar 2023 debut.

Tropic Bound and the UM collection are helping to augment Miami’s unlikely role as a center of book and print culture, said artist and curator Amanda Keeley, whose Little Haiti-based Exile Projects publishes artists’ books. She noted the city has a tradition of printing, like the books produced on a letterpress by her Little Haiti neighbor Tom Virgin’s Extra Virgin Press, that the new fair neatly slots into.

Note to skeptics: See also the Miami Book Fair, the Books & Books indie shops, which sell Exile’s books, and the public-participation O, Miami poetry festival, whose papers happen to be stored at the UM special collections.

“We have our own ecosystem in some ways,” Keeley, who will exhibit at Tropic Bound, said. “Miami is still very much in a growing phase. When I was starting Exile Books, someone said to me, ‘you are a pioneer.’ Well, so I, along with other people, we are celebrating print culture in Miami.”

Because the fair will bring collectors and librarians from institutions far and wide, it can only help spread Miami’s rep and the work of local publishers and artists, she said.

“The institutional component that Cristina brings is really important. When Miami publications go into all these international collections, it puts this work out there. They’re like seeds you are planting,” Keeley said. “I do think that it’s amazing what they have done to create this fair. Now people can see what all the buzz is about.”

And because many of the artists’ books are produced in editions, they can be both affordable and accessible, meaning they’re not just for well-heeled collectors, said Keeley, whose Exile publications fit that bill.

‘We really like showing off our stuff’

Keeley, a Miami native who came back after moving away in her youth, said one of her first stops to see what the city had to offer was the UM special collections library, at the suggestion of Books & Books founder Mitchell Kaplan.

“It’s very inspiring. You always see something new,” she said. “It is this incredible resource we have in this community. You can just swirl through different areas of interest. And they have all this strange ephemera.”

That last, specifically the Gleason collection on the occult, is what drew filmmaker, writer and archivist Andrew Lampert on a series of ongoing visits to UM. He is now working on a book on the weird and unusual Gleason library for a new publishing imprint on “forgotten ideas and eccentric worldviews,” Further Reading Library, that he’s launching with curator Christine Burgin in April.

When he first heard about it, Lampert said, he was surprised by the unexpected juxtaposition of brilliant comic, one of the most famous people in America in his heyday, and the obscure figure of an obsessive student of ghosts, ESP, magic and telepathy. Gleason, it turns out, had amassed a collection of thousands of books that ranged from the popular yet notorious English magician, poet and flim-flammer Alesteir Crowley to the very pulpy. His family donated the books to UM after his death.

“It’s mind-blowing,” Lampert said from his home in New York. “I was kind of, what are you talking about? It’s like worlds colliding. Not only did this bizarre thing exist, it was even catalogued. What’s so interesting about is that he has everything from signed first-edition Alesteir Crowley books to paperbacks about Yetis and Sasquatch that you would have bought at the cash register at Winn-Dixie.”

The staff at UM, he said, was enthusiastic and helpful, digging up hundreds of volumes for him, Lampert said..

“It’s helping me make great discoveries,” he said. “It’s a real joy to work with them as a researcher. With the Gleason in particular, it has been such a delight.”

Favretti, the collections head, said she and her staff will extend the same level of eager and interested assistance to anyone. The collection is open by appointment every Monday to Friday.

Among those who have recently stopped in, Favretti said, are some well-known chefs looking to old menus for inspiration for new dishes, and, like Lampert, fans of zines and other subterranean cultural esoterica, like Thurston Moore, co-founder of famed alt-rock band Sonic Youth and a Coral Gables native who is back living in the city part-time.

“We really like showing off our stuff,” Favretto said.

‘A world you hold in your hand’

The establishment of the Kislak Center, which opened in 2019, has enhanced the collection’s appeal and popularity on and off campus.

Thanks to a sizeable donation from the entrepreneur’s foundation, UM converted a sealed-off ground-floor storage area next to the Richter Library into a welcoming, light-filled reading room and lecture space, while establishing a permanent exhibition gallery for the Kislak collection and a classroom for students using special collections materials.

Favretto said UM professors and students are increasingly finding their way to the collection for classes, research or inspiration as word spreads on campus about the variety, depth and sheer pleasure of its offerings. Favretti’s reference assistant, Chelsea Jacks, said it’s become a constant flow in the past few months.

Designer and book artist Jeannette Stargala said she did not know about the special collections library when she was earning her master’s in art at UM. But she began visiting as her printmaking evolved into making books as art.

Now she’s teaching at UM, and in the fall she took her non-artist students in the school’s multi-disciplinary da Vinci honors program to see and handle examples in the artists’ book collection to inspire their own projects. Their assignment for the class, which combines mindfulness with observation of nature, was to produce an artist book of their own.

Holding the books was a bridge to a distinctly tactile and physical experience for students steeped in a digital existence, and they responded remarkably, Stargala said.

“What beautiful work they did, and they are not artists. They did not even know that was a thing,” Stargala said. “For most students, it’s an unusual medium. It’s an object that if you engage, you have to speak of structure, material and content.

“Young people do everything on the phone. But if you pick up one of those books, it’s always a world you hold in your hand. It’s like, ‘wow, this really exists.’ It’s such an amazing offering that we have that.”

Stargala said she’s in equal measure thrilled about the Tropic Bound fair, which she is looking forward to.

“If you love books and you love a bookstore, behind the table at the fair you have the person who made the book or was involved in making it,” she said.

“For me it’s like a candy store.”

If you go:

What: Tropic Bound

When: Feb. 6-9

Where: Paradise Plaza, 151 NE 41 Street, Third Floor, in the Miami Design District. A new section focused on independent book, magazine and art publishers, Addendum, will be at the district’s Palm Court, 140 NE 39 Street, Third Floor.

Info: www.tropicboundfair.org.

Cost: Admission to the fair and Addendum is free but tickets must be reserved at www.eventbrite.com/o/tropic-bound-55515375283.

The University of Miami’s special collections library is open to the public by appointment most weeks from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday. For information on how to book an appointment or search materials, go to www.library.miami.edu/specialcollections or phone 305-284-9552.