Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
By: Cathryn Miller
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965, poet; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Byopia Press; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Byopia Press]
Published: 2010
Place of publication: [Grasswood, Saskatchewan, Canada]
Language: eng
Subjects: Violence; Pictorial works; Booksellers and bookselling; Bombings; Iraq War, 2003-2011; Protest movements; Books and reading in art; Intellectual life; Social conditions; Censorship; Terrorism in art; In art; War and civilization; Vehicle bombs; Visual literature; Specimens; Culture in art; History in art; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Rubāʻīyāt (Omar Khayyam)
Description: This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

"The loss at al-Mutanabbi Street is not only a loss of life (which is horrendous), but a loss of cultural history. Each of us has a personal cultural history: the language we speak, the books that were read to us as children, the first books we read ourselves, the books that our parents left us. This book is a tribute to a personal family history. In a back-hand way, it also references the used book market somewhere on al-Mutanabbi Street. The edition was produced after I inherited my father's copy of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam when my mother died. (My father had pre-deceased her). It had been his father's, and before that someone else's. The pages were foxed and water damaged and the yapp-leather binding was disintegrating, so I scanned the pages, cleaned up the images, and produced a laser-printed facsimile edition with tipped-in archival inkjet print illustrations"--Artist's statement from the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"A former theatrical designer and fibre artist, Cathryn Miller switched to the book arts in 1994. She has won numerous awards for her work, and is the only Saskatchewan craftsperson to have received the Premier's Prize at Dimensions (the SCC juried craft exhibition) in two different media. Under the imprint of Byopia Press, her paper and book works are held in private collections in Canada, England, Ireland, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, and in more than 30 public collections in Canada, the United States, and England"--The Saskatchewan Craft Council website (viewed July 6, 2015).
Notes: Produced in a limited facsimile edition of 16.

Medium: Text block with tipped-in illustrations in paper cover. Laser and archival inkjet printing; acid-free 100% recycled 80# text paper, antique wallpaper, linen thread.

On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the longstanding heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community for centuries. In response to the attack, a San Francisco poet and bookseller, Beau Beausoleil, rallied a community of international artists and writers to produce a collection of letterpress-printed broadsides (poster-like works on paper), artists' books (unique works of art in book form), and an anthology of writing, all focused on expressing solidarity with Iraqi booksellers, writers and readers. The coalition of contributing artists calls itself Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.