THE SHOP AT MCBA offers a unique and irresistible array of book art, supplies and gifts. This includes a distinctive assortment of cards, stationery, handcrafted journals, decorative and marbled paper, artists' books, original prints, art supplies, instructional books and much more. We represent over 150 local and national book artists, and feature rotating displays of our inventory. We have something interesting for everyone from the serious book art collector to the first time visitor. New items are always arriving, so visit us often and get inspired! For more information about The Shop or product availability, please contact us at 612.215.2520 or email us.

HOURS
Monday: 10am - 5pm
Tuesday: 10am - 9pm
Wednesday: 10am - 5pm
Thursday: 10am - 5pm
Friday: 10am - 5pm
Saturday: 10am - 5pm
Sunday: 12 noon - 4pm

GIFT CERTIFICATES ARE NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE!
Simply enter your desired amount, and check out via PayPal.
If you would like us to mail the gift certificate to someone else, simply leave the recipient's name and address in the "Note to Seller" field before check-out. Otherwise, the gift certificate will be mailed to the purchaser, at the shipping address provided by PayPal.

Select amount:

Twenty Dollars $20.00 USD Twenty-five Dollars $25.00 USD Thirty Dollars $30.00 USD Forty Dollars $40.00 USD Fifty Dollars $50.00 USD Seventy-five Dollars $75.00 USD One Hundred Dollars $100.00 USD

Members receive a 10% discount on most purchases at The Shop at MCBA. For information on becoming a member, click here.

THE MOST UNIQUE SHOPPING IN THE TWIN CITIES!
Our experts at The Shop at MCBA have pulled together some great gift suggestions for all of your loved ones -- check out our Facebook page for even more photos and samples of our gift ideas!

ROBOTS!!! Visit our new Kids' section for great hands-on get-creative activity kits, pop-up and board books, stocking-stuffer toys and games, and much more. Plus, for kids of ALL ages -- an awesome nerdy selection of robot-making kits, robot books, robot magnets... everything robot!

GIVE THE GIFT OF HANDMADE: MCBA's selection of beautiful hand-bound blank books and journals, diaries/datebooks, bookish jewelry and accessories, handmade artist's books, broadsides and fine press prints is unmatched, in the Cities or anywhere.

SOMETHING UNIQUE FOR MOM: Forget another sweater, get something that truly appeals to that most special book-lover, journal-keeper or aspiring writer in your life. The Shop at MCBA offers everything from bookplates and journals to unique stationery sets and handcrafted writing implements destined to become heirlooms.

ARTIST'S BOOKS
The Shop at MCBA features one-of-a-kind and limited edition artist's books by more than 100 artists -- and new works are always coming in. Works are available from $1 to over $1,000. Here's a peek at just one highlight from our shelves:

Mayflies of the Driftless Region
by Gaylord Schanilec / Midnight Paper Sales, 2005.
7 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches. 88 pages.

Dry Fly Entomology by Frederic M. Halford, published in London in 1897, was the inspiration for Gaylord Schanilec's Mayflies of the Driftless Region. Halford, the Victorian innovator and popularizer of modern fly-fishing, scientifically described and surveyed the principal British mayflies of his time, but he did not claim his work as a comprehensive entomological treatise. Instead, Dry Fly Entomology was aimed at providing anglers with a basic, working understanding of the nature of aquatic insects. Mayflies of the Driftless Region can make no such claim; it is not a field guide. Instead, it is a study of mayflies by an artist.

Gaylord writes, "I began this project with little practical knowledge of mayfly entomology. It was not the information in Halford’s Dry Fly Entomology that caught my attention, but rather the detailed wood engravings that illustrated it. While Mayflies of the Driftless Region may provide useful information for fishermen and women of similar naïveté, the essence of the book is art. I have created 13 depictions of mayflies, color wood engravings with each hue printed from a separate block of end-grain maple. These images are the result of careful microscopic study of specimens collected from streams near my home in rural Wisconsin." Schanilec's exquisite wood engravings are accompanied by text by University of Wisconsin-River Falls biology professor and entomologist Clarke Garr.

A limited edition of 300 copies was bound in quarter leather by Gregor Campbell with paper made by hand for the edition by Mary Hark. The limited edition is issued in a slipcase. A special edition of 50 copies was bound in full calf skin by Jill Jevne, and contained in a custom enclosure, designed by her, and incorporating a selection of flies hand-tied for the edition by David Lucca. The images in this edition were printed on Gampi Torinoko, a delicate hand-made paper produced in Japan. The special edition also includes a separate leather-hinged portfolio containing an extra set of prints and progressive proofs of one image. 50 additional copies of the book were made available in loose sheets for custom binding. A less expensive trade edition is now avaliable, printed on a commercial Monadnock paper in an edition of 1,000 copies. All of the type is printed from the original hand set metal. Whereas in the limited edition the type is printed in a variety of colors, here it is all black, with the exception of the title page. The images are printed from the original blocks. The format of the book is smaller than the limited edition, measuring approximately 6 inches by 9 inches. It is bound in full cloth and comes with a dust jacket.

REFERENCE BOOKS, EXHIBITION CATALOGS AND ANTHOLOGIES
The Shop features hundreds of books on a variety of topics from "how to"s and reference books to academic studies and exhibition catalogs. Here's a review of just one:

The Book as Art presents more than 100 of the most engaging women's artist books created by major fine artists such as Meret Oppenheim, May Stevens, Kara Walker, and Renee Stout and distinguished book artists such as Susan King, Ruth Laxson, Claire Van Vliet, and Julie Chen. Chosen from the over-800 unique or limited-edition artist's books held by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the selected works explore the form as a container for ideas. Descriptions of the works are accompanied by colorful illustrations and reflections by their makers, along with essays by leading scholars and a lively introduction by the most famous book artist in our culture, best-selling author Audrey Niffenegger. The exquisitely crafted objects in the The Book as Art are sure to provoke unexpected and surprising conclusions about what constitutes a book. The Book as Art documents the exhibition of the same name, on display in 2006 at the Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC.