Conducted in 2011, this is the first edition, second issue, of an interview between Ben Kinmont and Seth Siegelaub. The discussion focuses on Siegelaub’s activity as a book collector, publisher, bibliographer, and dealer of antiquarian books in the history of textiles.

Seth Siegelaub (1941-2013) was a gallery owner, independent curator, publisher, event facilitator, and seminal figure in the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson’s Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, Siegelaub is described as “the single most influential figure” in the history of conceptual art. Yet, there is little written about Siegelaub’s activity as an antiquarian book dealer and bibliographer, an activity to which he devoted considerably more of his time than to art activities.

This interview was made to remedy that problem. During the interview, Siegelaub describes how he became a book collector (before being an art dealer); his life publishing Marxist literature in Paris (after being an art dealer); how he became an antiquarian book dealer; and whether he saw a connection between his activities with art and his life as a bookman.

The illustrations reproduce two of Siegelaub’s bookseller catalogues; one of Kinmont’s antiquarian bookseller catalogues about gastronomy; the title page of Theophrastus’ Libellus de odoribus (1556); the cover of Seigelaub’s Bibliographica Textilia Historiae; and a portrait of Siegelaub holding his Bibliographica. - Antinomian Press