About Me
A fairly recent transplant to Montana, I was born and raised in the Santa Ynez Valley of California, and became immersed in the world of book conservation while attending UC Davis. I learned the basics of the trade for 3 1/2 years under Wendy Jones in the M.B. Harrison Preservation Department of Shields Library. I earned my graduate degree in Science Illustration at UC Santa Cruz, and spent a few years in rural Japan teaching English and refining my ceramics skills under the tutelage of Shino master potter, Tabei Kenji.
After returning to America, I did a short residency at the Clay Studio of Missoula, and stayed on for some time afterwards as a ceramics instructor. Around this time, I started my current job at the University of Montana, Mansfield Library’s Preservation Department. I’ve also been selling my wares on Etsy almost since their inception in 2005, and was a featured artist in October, 2005. Starting with handmade pottery, I’ve now begun to focus on hand-bound books made from a variety of materials, including recycled maps and Japanese silk-screened paper (Chiyogami).
If you are looking for someone who is serious about books, Audra’s your woman!
Wow, this is by far one of *the* coolest sites I’ve ever seen about books. Amazing stuff.
Many thanks! Hopefully I’ll have more time to devote to it in 2009! Have enjoyed the first year quite a bit.
Nice website, very informative, thank you.
Hello Mr.
First of all I want to congratullate you for this website.
I work with parchment ( goat parchment) and my company is a great producer of this material. We make many types of parchment for manuscript, calligrapher, diplomas, certificates, bookbinding… and others.
If you are interested, please take a look in our web site or send me an email for talk about it.
Best regards,
Andre Dirani