LOST OBJECTS 2023

By: HILOBROW
December 28, 2023

Sample LOST OBJECTS spread featuring story and art by Ben Katchor.

As HILOBROW readers know, in 2022 the LA-based art book publisher Hat & Beard Press published LOST OBJECTS (ed. Josh Glenn and Rob Walker, intro by Debbie Millman), a gorgeous book that evolved from nonfiction narratives and accompanying illustrations first published here at HILOBROW under the aegis of Project:Object.

Though most of our publicity came in 2022, Hat & Beard has continued to promote the book. Below, please find a sampling of 2023 publicity.

Lost Objects makes a wonderful gift! In December, Hat & Beard announced a whopping 30%-off sale on all titles in print! Use the checkout code THANKYOU30 when buying Lost Objects (or other in-print H&BP titles) from their website.

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Here are a few LO mentions that we encountered since posting our LO 2022 publicity roundup.

“[This is how Lost Objects, and Josh Glenn and Rob Walker’s other] Objects projects operate: By adding a ‘layer of story’ to objects, we give them significance, maybe even value, and we cause people to pay attention to them.” — AUSTIN KLEON
“With evocative storytelling and a well-edited roundup of authors, Lost Objects shows us that objects – even the most ubiquitous of them – can hold special meaning. And it’s this simple fact that somehow imbues the book with a tenderness and connection to each story.” — COOL MATERIAL
Rob Walker on NPR’s “Marketplace” (Jan. 10): “I’m not an advocate of just keeping everything forever. I’m an advocate of honoring the seemingly sort of, you know, hard to defend affection that we have for objects. And it’s because those objects are connected to other things, they’re connected to some time in our life, they’re connected to a trip we took, they’re connected to a person we met, they’re connected to a feeling we had. And that is not something to take lightly, that is more meaningful, in terms of our relationship to materialism than, you know, buying the hottest new iPhone and I think we should honor that.”

Paul Lukas shows off his LOST OBJECTS story

“It’s a really, really good book, filled with short, evocative stories about lost items ranging from the mundane (a pack of crackers) to the evocative (a silicon vagina) to the Uni Watch-ish (a baseball glove), and the writers are an all-star gallery of geniuses: Ben Katchor, Nina Katchadourian, Gary Panter, Lucy Sante, Debbie Millman, and more.” — Paul Lukas’s UNI WATCH
“Each [story] spins a unique narrative that tells a personal tale, and dives into the meaning of objects that remain present to us emotionally, even after they have physically disappeared.” — SCOTT BOMS
“Of course we lose things that can’t be photographed — friends, ideas, dreams. I’ve disconnected from twitter, so I’ve lost readers. I’ve dithered around in self-doubt and lost opportunities. And some things I’ve lost all memory of — things truly lost.” — MARTA PELRINE-BACON
“Rob Walker just published a new book with Joshua Glenn that sparks furious writing in my notebook: LOST OBJECTS: 50 Stories About the Things We Miss and Why They Matter.” — STEPHANIE AFFINITO

Here’s a cool page that LO contributor Alex Eben Meyer made, showcasing his contribution; and a page Clara Selina Bach made; and a page Susannah Breslin made too.

The Hat & Beard Press / Dublab / Invisible Republic podcast Big Table interviewed Rob Walker and yours truly about LOST OBJECTS. We’re grateful to Big Table host and Hat & Beard publisher J.C. Gabel. The episode aired in June. Listen to Rob Walker explain [in more or less these exact words]:

There was sort of a secret magic trick going on here. [Before we first collaborated, Josh and I] both, from our very different directions, had come to the conclusion that the value of objects — whether that value is economic or emotional — often came down to the story of the object. We then played with what can you do with fiction around objects [Significant Objects], and nonfiction — autobiography and personal essays — around objects [Project:Object]. We’d flipped around the dynamic — using objects to — I don’t want to say con, but convince — all these great storytellers to tell stories, whether fictional or nonfictional. [For Lost Objects], the question we asked was: What about objects we don’t own any more? What is the power of an object that you’ve lost but can’t shake? I was excited by this idea of Josh’s because it gave us the opportunity to pull the same trick with a bunch of talented artists and illustrators, too.

Here’s a Spotify link to the LOST OBJECTS episode; it’s also available via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and directly from Big Table.

Hat & Beard promoted LOST OBJECTS at the Acid-Free art book market and bazaar in Los Angeles on June 16th.

Hat & Beard was also at the San Francisco Art Book Fair, from July 13–16. You can see LOST OBJECTS on display in the image above, as well as the LOST OBJECTS posters on the wall….

The LA Art Book Fair, a celebration and international gathering for artists’ book publishers, took place on August 10–13 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA — in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles. Hat & Beard Press was there!

Nice mention of LO in Products of Design‘s Ultimate Gift Guide for 2023. Here’s an excerpt:

We have all lost something that was meaningful — and that we’ll never forget. While we may never recover it, Lost Objects will teach us something new about why it mattered in the first place, and matters still.

Products of Design is a newsletter from the School of Visual Arts (SVA)’s Product Design Master’s Program.

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LOST OBJECTS is available from online retailers, including Bookshop.org, and (as always — and along with limited-edition LO art prints) directly from Hat & Beard.

“The contributors to this book have imbued a palpable, living soulfulness into the items that have disappeared or were misplaced or given away. Now — here in this book — that love can be discovered all over again.” — Debbie Millman | “This ridiculously entertaining book performs a neat conjuring trick. You will find your own lost objects flying back to you as you read about other people’s dearly departed things. The conceit is ingenious and the beautiful illustrations make each writer’s ‘rosebud’ flare into radiant life again.” — Jenny Offill | “These micro-tales are the best of the short confessional. They leave you with that same wonderful feeling you sometimes get on one of those special nights in the corner of a bar with a few friends.” — Air Mail | “Filled with exotic and eccentric things, this book proves that discarding hoarded items is not always the best way to take existential control of our lives.” — The Daily Heller

A complete list of Lost Objects authors and illustrators, as well as a look back at 2022 LO publicity, events, and excerpts, can be found here.

LOST OBJECTS updates: 2022 | 2023.

LOST OBJECTS 2023

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