Shereen Buckland LaPlantz papers
Scope and Contents
This collection contains 9 boxes of material related to Shereen (Buckland) LaPlantz's career as an artist. The material has been been arranged in three distinct series. These are: Professional/Personal Material, Basketry and Weaving, and Book Arts.
The collection documents the evolution of Shereen (Buckland) LaPlantz's artistic interests, inspiration, ability, and process. It includes examples of her artist’s books as well as photographs of her baskets. The first part of the collection includes LaPlantz’s personal and professional material including artwork, blank stationary, scrapbook material, and her resume and artists’ statements.
The second part of the collection relates to LaPlantz’s basketry. While there are no physical baskets, the series includes the work she did prior to creating the baskets such as making sketches and color samples, as well as photographs and basketry publications and papers.
The third part of the collection is related to her artist’s book work, including her own artist’s books, artists’ books that students made in her workshops, a collection of abecedaries, and other artists’ books that she collected. This part of the collection also includes background material for the artist’s books, professional material (including workshops and assignments), photographs, and publications and papers.
Dates
- Creation: 1965-2016
Conditions Governing Access
Collection is open for research.
Conditions Governing Use
The Archives & Special Collections, University of Puget Sound, provides access to its collections to support educational, personal, and non-commercial use. Some materials in these collections may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law. Copyright laws protect published as well as unpublished materials. It is the user's responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or any other use restrictions when publishing or otherwise disseminating materials found in the collections. Physical property rights reside with the Archives & Special Collections, University of Puget Sound. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, please consult the Archives & Special Collections.
Biographical / Historical
Shereen (Buckland) LaPlantz (1947-2003) was an internationally recognized book artist, basket weaver, author, and teacher. Born Shereen Buckland on February 9, 1947, in Glendale, California, she went on to attend California State University, Los Angeles, where she studied textiles. After graduating in 1968, she continued to explore fabric design and weaving at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. In 1970, she married artist David LaPlantz, a jeweler and metalsmith.
LaPlantz's early work focused on weaving and basketry as an art form. She authored two books on basketry, Plaited Basketry: The Woven Form (1982) and The Mad Weave Book (1984), began a magazine dedicated to the craft, taught numerous workshops, and exhibited her work internationally. In the late 1980s, LaPlantz took a new direction, creating a series of baskets with small books integrated into the physical context of the work. This project marked her transition into the book arts.
Her recognition that book structures could be a combination of two- and three-dimensional formats and that the structures could tell their own story as well as provide information inspired her to write Cover to Cover: Creative Techniques for Making Beautiful Books, Journals, and Albums in 1995. It provides an overview of book structure and design, with chapters on binding, stitching, and presentation and it remains a standard work in book design. Many of the book structures in this collection are described in Cover to Cover.
LaPlantz is also well known for her books Innovative Bookbinding: Secret Compartments & Hidden Messages, published in 1997 and The Art & Craft of Handmade Books, published in 2001. In addition to her commercial books, LaPlantz created an average of twelve artists' books per year and was a committed educator, inspiring other book artists' through the hundreds of workshops she conducted. LaPlantz died on September 11, 2003. Her basketry and artists' books can be found in collections across the United States, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C.
Extent
11.7 Linear Feet (9 Bankers boxes)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
Shereen (Buckland) LaPlantz (1947-2003) was an internationally recognized book artist, basket weaver, author, and teacher. Born Shereen Buckland on February 9, 1947, in Glendale, California, she went on to attend California State University, Los Angeles, where she studied textiles. After graduating in 1968, she continued to explore fabric design and weaving at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. LaPlantz's early work focused on weaving and basketry as an art form and eventually she transitioned to book arts.
This collection contains material from three different areas of Shereen LaPlantz’s life: her professional and personal papers, her basketry and weaving practice, and her book arts practice. Material includes photographs, personal papers, resume information and artists’ statements, artists’ books (both her own and books that she collected), articles about her artistic practices, research, and artwork.
- Title
- Shereen (Buckland) LaPlantz papers
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Helen Edwards
- Date
- 2021
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Code for undetermined script
Repository Details
Part of the University of Puget Sound, Archives & Special Collections Repository
Collins Memorial Library
1500 N. Warner Street #1021
Tacoma 98416-1021 United States us
archives@pugetsound.edu