Lucy Gellman Photo
At Skappo restaurant on Crown Street, Jack Hitt was midway through an unexpected story of culinary carnage: a venison chili gone awry just in time to impress an it’s‑still-early-in-our-relationship kind of date. He laughed as he raised his glass of red wine and drank to a future of success in the kitchen.
Across the street, Colin McEnroe had author Debby Applegate near tears with the tale of exactly how Cosmo’s “I Never Met A Breast I Didn’t Like” first landed in his lap as a freelance assignment. When O Magazine called him about it after the fact, he said, “I knew the cycle had to end.”
At Nini’s House of Tapas, Duo Dickinson had just finished a condensed PowerPoint about his life that, somehow, “let these people know what possibly qualified me as the architect on the Maurice Sendak archive.” At Bentara, Dexter Singleton was talking about his work with Collective Consciousness Theater. And channeling the fabulous spirit of the late Joan Rivers at Fornarelli’s, Todd Lyon was launching into a tale about writing a book with the icon.
This hybrid of oral history and venerable literature paved the road to the Institute Library‘s third annual Book Plates Monday evening. As the IL’s largest annual fundraiser, Book Plates brings supporters and funders of the Library together with local authors and innovators for dinner in the Ninth Square and dessert and drinks at the IL. This year, over 100 ticket buyers and their guests packed the events, which grossed around $23,000 and netted over $17,000.
“Book Plates is a great opportunity to bring new people into the library,” said Institute Library Executive Director Natalie Elicker. “You get this wonderful outpouring of support from other people in the community.” And “being able to partner with other retailers in the Ninth Square is an amazing thing … showing people that downtown is vibrant and there’s neat stuff happening here.”
Amid the laughter-laced conversations that broke out across the salad- and wine-laden dinner tables, some attendees stopped mid-sentence to examining this year’s bright and intricate plate design …
… continued with dessert from Whole G at the Institute Library’s Chapel Street home …
… a poetry reading of four delightful works from New Haven Review Editor Bennett Lovett-Graff, punctuated by Tim Kane’s melodious, full-lunged interludes on trumpet…
… a silent auction with fun and funky options and chances to “adopt” old and valuable books that are in need of conservation …
…and some toasts to friends of the Institute Library new and old.
”Two hundred twenty-two years ago, a small group of men in New Haven gathered at the state house … to adopt the constitution of the mechanic library society of New Haven. Iterations of that have persisted to that day, and are now the Institute Library. It’s an interesting story because it comes full circle … their agenda in 1793 was to advance the dissemination and discussion of useful knowledge and literature…I think they thought it was important to do things like we’re doing tonight. The first book plate that they founded shows two little cherubs, and they’re cute, but they’ve got sledgehammers and they’re pounding on an anvil. Over them is the motto: Improve The Moment. That’s what we’re doing today, and that’s what we strive to do day in and day out,” said IL Board President Greg Pepe.
“This year,” he added later in the evening, “was the best one yet.”