A Day In The Life - Tamsin Clark

This month we asked Tamsin Clark the director of Tender Books.

6.30am - I’m usually up early and try to read a bit before the day begins. This quiet space in the day is a bit sacred and I find I get my best ideas at the bookends of the day. Reading widely for pleasure and curiosity steers my thoughts for the Tenderbooks selection.
I’m currently in deep with Baby Driver, the engrossing memoir by Jan Kerouac. Alongside I’m taking in Milkweed Smithereens, a collection of poems and diary excerpts by Bernadette Mayer. Today I put my bookmark in this page:

last summer’s woodland sunflowers and bee balm remind us of black

cherries eaten in a hurry

while the yard grows in the moonlight

shrinking like a salary ...

10.00am - Arriving at the shop in Cecil Court I meet my Tender family Ben and Harri. We start the day taking deliveries, cleaning, tidying shelves, reviewing the inbox and orders to pack.

11.00am - The Tenderbooks window display changes every week and today was a very fun installation to celebrate The Gourmand’s Mushroom, a collection of stories and recipes published by The Gourmand and Taschen. Here the window was transformed into a little forest complete with a bed of growing oyster mushrooms supplied by the sustainable fruit and veggie specialists Natoora.

12.00pm - I’m happy to see a fresh shipment of books arriving at Rejina Pyo’s beautiful new store on Golborne Road where we curate a selection of titles. Rejina’s new space was originally a 19th-century grocery store and still holds many of its original features including an elegant Carrara marble counter. Just look at that gorgeous tiled floor! Our new selection includes artist books and monographs by inspiring women makers including Marlene Dumas, Magdalene Odundo, Kaye Donachie, Coco Capitan and Nicola L.

1.00pm - Time for lunch and a sweet treat. The chic Korean matcha cafe Tokkia just opened nearby on Monmouth Street. Today I was tempted by a kumquat flavoured salt bread pastry, so delicious!

2.00pm - We have deliveries of fresh stock every day so there’s always the delight of something new to look at. Here are some zines, artist books and catalogues in my towering pile to photograph for the website. I’m enjoying Sorties from Action Motion Press, a beautiful miniature book studying representations of women over time, and L is for Look! a fun survey of photobooks for children.

3.00pm - Today we’re counting inventory for SIN BUG by poet-activist CAConrad, our latest project published under the Tenderbooks Imprint. We held a reading and launch in December with CA, with an installation of one of their poems in the window—a real highlight of last year for us. The first edition is selling fast and we’re nearly ready for a second. To accompany their reader of poems and essays we also produced a limited edition t-shirt. It’s a wearable poem!

4.00pm - A special moment in the week is the time I spend photographing, cataloguing and arranging our stock of rare books. Recently for London Fashion Week we collaborated with our lovely neighbour Paul who runs November Books on a selection of out-of-print titles relating to everyday fashion and style. Here’s an incredible lookbook documenting the early years of the Comme des Garcons brand released in 1982 with photography by Bruce Weber, Sarah Moon and Peter Lindbergh. This was a private publication only available for staff and clients but the care and attention taken in its production are extraordinary.

6.00pm - We host one or two events at the shop every week for independent publishers. This evening it’s the launch of a gorgeous artist book Cue the Cue by Jack O’Brien published by one of our favourite imprints Bierke. Jack describes the book as a ‘ghost of a fashion magazine’ and it’s been so cleverly designed to mimic the look of a magazine in the return pile with its covers ripped off. There’s also a loose leather bootlace that looks slinky under the shrink wrap and acts as a curious bookmark. Here’s Jack demonstrating a nifty manoeuvre for turning the bookmark into a portable handbag strap :)

10.00pm - Back home for a bowl of pasta and a chance to mull over the day.
On my table at home I usually have a favourite book open to browse through and recently
I’ve been revisiting the beauty that is Paul Elliman’s September. Its 600 pages contain
images of gestures and the body in motion. This is a nostalgic one for me because it’s one of the first books I hunted down to stock at the newly opened Tenderbooks in 2014. Every time I open the glossy pages it's somehow totally fresh, like I'm experiencing the work for the first time. Turning pages at the end of the day is soothing and I’m already wondering about what I’ll hold in my hands tomorrow.