The Strand’s Beyond 80

For literary travelers, the bag to carry this summer is the Strand Bookstore’s 80th birthday tote, which features a frame from Art Spiegelman’s epochal graphic novel “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale.”

“It’s the first time I’ve let the art be used,” Mr. Spiegelman said Saturday at the bookstore’s 80th anniversary party, where guests received the first shipment. “But in this case it seemed so appropriate, because so many of the books that inspired ‘Maus’ I found here.”

“We’re looking forward to 80 more years and 80 more miles,” the owner of the Strand, Nancy Bass, said.

The crowd was thick with book publishing insiders but there were some fresh faces, too.

“I send people here all the time, especially when they can’t find a book,” a concierge at the Four Seasons hotel, Jennifer Bennett, said.

“I come here because I find books to use on shoots,” a prop stylist, Lilli Rubenstein, said.

This was one party where authors felt like major celebrities. Those spotted included Fran Lebowitz, David Margolick, Mayor Koch, Kurt Anderson, Candace Bushnell, and Pete Hamill.

Paige Garber, whose husband, Robert Garber, is the marketing director of the Cato Institute, fluttered her fan in front of “The Kingdom and the Power” author Gay Talese’s face.

“I’m giving you a little adulation,” Ms. Garber said.

Lounging on the SOFA

What they wore was as much up for discussion as the art on view at the Thursday’s preview party for the Sculpture Objects and Functional Art fair, known as SOFA at the 67th Street Armory. The reason was simple: Artists and collectors served as de facto models by wearing the necklaces, brooches, and textiles on display at the fair.

Dutch artist Truike Verdegaal wore a lace collar like the ones on display at the booth of her gallery, Charon Kransen Arts of New York.

Ruth Snyderman wore a blown Pyrex necklace by Karen Gilbert, a California artist whose work she was showing at the booth for her Snyderman-Works Galleries of Philadelphia.

The chairman of the Museum of Arts & Design, which was the beneficiary of the party, was notably unadorned: Barbara Tober wasn’t in a position to pick favorites. She did, however, spend time with her husband looking at carpets made in Iran by Orley & Shabahang.

The showpiece of the Orley & Shabahang booth was “Galaxy,” which took about 11 months to make and was priced at $32,000.

“We breed our own sheep, and the relationship between the pile, the warp, and the weft is unique to each design,” proprietor Geoffrey Orley said.

Collector Joan Hardy Clark picked up a pair of cufflinks she said she planned to convert to earrings, as well as a framed child’s smock dress made of pattern paper by Toronto artist Norah Deacon.

The most crowded area of the fair was next to Boston’s Keiko Gallery, where guests happily lined to get a cup of strawberry or chocolate gelato from a pushcart in the aisle.

agordon@nysun.com