Manual / Issue 1

Hand in Hand is the inaugural issue of Manual. The phrase was first recorded in the 16th century, and early usage described the clasping of palm to palm, but the term has since come to encompass more than this literal meaning. To be hand in hand is also to be connected, joined, concurrent, well matched. Thumb through this issue to find rigorous, imaginative musings as artists and academics make solid contact, gesture wildly, and put their fingers on the pulse of new ideas.

From the Files, curator Elizabeth Williams pries open the archive to reveal Gorham Manufacturing Company’s production designs; Double Take looks at a medieval ivory diptych from the points of view of illustrator Robert Brinkerhoff and art historian Sheila Bonde; for Artist on Art cartoonist James McShane traipses through the entanglements of the intaglio printing process; in Object Lesson, curator Maureen C. O’Brien exposes John Singleton Copley’s portraits of Moses Gill and his wives; Portfolio presents loose linkages and clear couplings on the theme “hand in hand”; and How To explores Bauhaus artist Gunta Stölzl’s proposal for a double-weave textile as described by curator Kate Irvin.

Manual: a journal about art and its making, a new twice-yearly journal, uses the collections, exhibitions, and collaborations of the RISD Museum as an impetus for essays and interviews, artist interventions, and archive highlights. A fusion of academic arts journal and design magazine, Manual is a resource for engaged conversations about art, design, and the impact of creative making by curators, artists, scholars and educators.

RISD Museum director: John Smith

Manual Editor-in-chief: Sarah Ganz Blythe with S. Hollis Mickey

Editor: Amy Pickworth

Graphic designer: Derek Schusterbauer

Photographer: Erik Gould (unless otherwise noted)

Printer: Jay Buckley at Meridian