Pamela Shirinne Smith
Pamela Shirinne Smith is a longtime resident of Abiquiu, New Mexico, where she has actively dedicated herself to the arts of the handmade book and earned an international reputation as an artisan of the ancient craft of marbling paper decoration and desig
Pamela Shirinne Smith
Abiquiu
2024 Recipient, Book Arts
Pamela Shirinne Smith is a longtime resident of Abiquiu, New Mexico, where she has actively dedicated herself to the arts of the handmade book and earned an international reputation as an artisan of the ancient craft of marbling paper decoration and design. Pam Smith moved to Santa Fe in 1971 and in 1972 she launched a 28-year career as director of the Museum of New Mexico’s Press of the Palace of the Governors, familiarly known as the Palace Print Shop. In 1979, in tandem with her museum duties, Smith started her own MarbleSmith Paper business. Pam helped to establish the Abiquiu Public Library at the historic mesa-top village in 1998 and for the next five years, she did volunteer work and public programming at the library, which included a talking book service for the visually impaired. Following her retirement from the Museum in 2001, Smith set to work on researching and writing the book Passions in Print, Private Press Artistry in New Mexico, 1834 - Present. The book, published by the Museum of New Mexico Press and released in 2006, explores the work of 28 private press printers and their collaborators who together produced some of the state’s best-known literary treasures.