The “A” team

  Tom, Alison, and me aboard Rebecca, the boat featured in Schooner Over the last three years I’ve worked with Tom Dunlop and Alison Shaw on two books and am now in the middle of a third. In each case, working with them has been a revelation. Both of them are generous and creative. They take a project absolutely as far as they can go with it. They are clever and innovative. Their work ethics are impeccable. They give me far more than I could... Read More

Photographing Martha’s Vineyard

A Guest Blog from Photographer Alison Shaw: I am lucky to live and work in what I consider to be one of the most photogenic locales anywhere. Yes, anywhere. I’ve traveled the country and many parts of the world teaching workshops and in search of new photographic subject matter. But each time my feet are firmly planted back on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, I realize this 100 square miles of sand, nestled off the south coast of Cape... Read More

An obit for books?

They say the printed book industry is dying, and I have to believe them. Sort of. Like everything else in the world, books have moved into the multi-entertainment area. Because we can’t even stand in line at the grocery store without having a television overhead – or, for us vineyard people, even make it to and from the vineyard without a couple of TVs on the ferries – we want to be constantly fed the new, the surprising, the visual. Our websites... Read More

Here’s the thing I like about being a publisher

This weekend was the WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport. And I am right in the middle of it. No, I don’t own a wooden boat. I don’t even sail except on lucky occasions when friends include me in their adventures. I’m strictly a land-locked girl, even if I live on an island, though I have taken to wearing these really neat boat shoes that my son says are too preppy for me. But last year I published  Schooner: Building a Wooden Boat on Martha’s... Read More

An independent spirit

  Eric Hoffer was an American social writer and philosopher who won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. He was also a believer in innovation and indendence. “Everywhere we look … we see something new trying to be born,” he wrote. It seems fitting that the book Schooner: Building a Wooden Boat on Martha’s Vineyard, should have been selected to win the 2011 Eric Hoffer Book Award for the art category. The awards are... Read More

Craftmanship, Captured

This book is an example of patience, brilliance, and tenacity – though I can’t lay claim to any of that. Photographer Alison Shaw started this project about 14 years before the book actually came to be. She’d gotten the idea to photograph the building of a big wooden boat at the local Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway when design started in the spring of 1996. She enticed Tom Dunlop, who she knew from her work at the newspaper the Vineyard... Read More

An adventure story

The Gannon and Benjamin Marine railway on the island of Martha’s Vineyard is at the forefront of a movement built on the past: building wooden boats the traditional way. Nat Benjamin, right, and Ross Gannon, left, are today among the premiere few boat designers and builders on either seacoast who build magnificent plan-on-frame boats- boats that explore the world. They have built or repaired boats for scores of vineyarders and visitors, including... Read More