At 7:00 am on the opening morning of this year’s New Orleans Jazz Fest, I was awakened by phone calls from Jeff Good of Broad Street, and Austen of Lemuria informing me that the Lemuria Book Hand had crashed down and was destroyed. They sent pictures as proof, and I worked my mind clear, defrosting my late night take of beverage and great music from Bombino at the House of Blues. My musical high crashed down to earth with this news.
I called Bob Reed, our sign guru, and he told me not to worry, he would take care of it and deal with our insurance company. Replacement was immediately underway, and now Bob has reinstated our sculpture and Lemuria’s brand symbol is back.
In 1980, to celebrate 5 years in business, Lemuria engaged local artist Keith Parker to do a wood engraving. The edition would be 100 copies, signed and numbered. Our Art Deco inspired image was of a Lemuria mermaid rising out of Lemuria’s ruins holding a book high.
In 1981, Lemuria finally got out of debt and made a little money. To celebrate, we issued graphic tshirts, also designed by Keith, of a hand holding a book exploding out of the water to surface. We had gotten our bookstore above water! All of this was visioned within the eyeball of the Wisdom Eye. This image was influenced by the tail of a whale on the surface as it is diving, and we considered the image as a homage to the great 1930 edition of Moby Dick, illustrated by Rockwell Kent.
In 1998 when Lemuria designed our present storefront, we created our entrance with the Book Hand. Banner Hall was near financial ruin when new ownership took over. Once again, our book hand signaled a re-birthing of Lemuria’s stability.
In the last few years, real books have been challenged by alternative reading devices. Lemuria thus launched a “Read Real Books” campaign, grounded by our Book Hand logo. Coupled with the recession and severe competition, the real book was challenged. Now, real book reading has stabilized in a posture of strength and rebirth once again. Justin Schultz of Flying Chair, also designed a more contemporary book hand with a modern Wisdom Eye to celebrate real book stabilization.
Our Book Hand sculpture has now been replaced and situated. Stability once again for Lemuria, has been symbolized.
Lemuria has endured the recession’s hard times. We have published our book proudly about our local community, and good ole Bob has brought our Book Hand back to us, and he has promised our new sculpture will last the lifetime of Lemuria.
By the way, our previous Book Hand collapsed because of inferior glue which eroded over the years causing our beloved sculpture to weaken. Fortunately, at 5:00 am this past April when it fell, no one was in Banner Hall or was hurt.
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