The Charm of Magpies (2018) Nick Wonham Casebound, cloth spine and paper over boards with specially printed flyleaves from Roger Grech at his Papercut Bindery. H370 x W260 mm. 27 pages unnumbered. Edition of 160 copies, of which this is #98. Acquired from Incline Press, 1 August 2022. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
A long admiration for magpies has always threatened to crowd the Books On Books Collection beyond this beautiful work from Nick Wonham and Incline Press and the relief sculpture in paper by Calvin Nichols below. But one pair of works will have to be enough for joy.
Iridescence(2016) Calvin Nicholls Acquired from the artist, 1 September 2016. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
On the Incline Press website, Graham Moss and his team write:
Collective nouns … A parliament of magpies has to be a favourite, especially if you’ve heard a group of them cackling together in the Springtime. But we prefer the alternative, a charm of magpies, which certainly suits this poem better. It is one version of a folk rhyme which has many local variants, all superstitiously foretelling the future through random occurrence.…
Magpies are often known a thugs in the garden, stealing eggs and chasing off their more delicate rivals. As printers, though, we have a fondness for them because of their “ink on paper” plumage and their latin name pica pica, which recalls the printshop unit of measure.
Left to right: Joseph Crawhall (1884), William Nicholson (1898), C.B. Falls (1930) and Christopher Wormell (1995).
As Moss and team point out on their site, the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes does not include the magpies among the counting rhymes, which is odd with so many versions to be had. Birdspot, formerly British Bird Lovers, favors Nick Wonham’s chosen version. For magpies interested in shiny trivia, the site also provides a link to a BBC television program whose theme song was based on the magpie rhyme. It was “composed and played by the Spencer Davis Group under the alias The Murgatroyd Band, just after Steve Winwood had left to join the supergroup Blind Faith with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Ric Grech”.
And to note just one touch of Nick Wonham’s subtlety, here is the page before the colophon. In all the other images, the magpies are roosting. This one in flight is also the only one in black and white. A brilliant “The End”.
Postscript: In correspondence, the artist has provided further insight on influences and his handling of color:
A note on the colour – the biggest influence on this was Rigby Graham, whose work Graham Moss introduced me to through the Old Stile Press book Kippers and Sawdust. Graham had just printed my first book, which had black and white linocuts, and was trying to inspire me to try colour. It worked; I was blown away by the majestic woodcuts and aspired to create books in a similar vein. Rigby liked an unusually coloured sky, he also liked to position his illustrations through the book so that the colours of prints on adjacent pages contrasted with each other to create dynamism and visual interest, something I have attempted in my book. Correspondence with Books On Books Collection, 9 September 2022.
Wonham also adopts and owns a compositional feature from Rigby Graham’s Kippers and Sawdust: the juxtaposition of the mechanical and the natural. His ownership is particularly apparent in his setting for the rhyme’s seventh verse.
First appearing in 1942, Samuel Winfield (Tommy) Thompson’s somewhat forgotten children’s introduction to the history of the alphabet occupies an interesting position in that line of work that includes Oscar Ogg’s The 26 Letters (1964), Tiphaine Samoyault’s Alphabetical Order (1998), Renzo Rossi’s The Revolution of the Alphabet (2009) and Don Robb’s Ox, House, Stick (2010). For a collector of children’s alphabet books and alphabet-related artists’ books, the decision whether to acquire it balances on its interior design and content.
With its overlay of second-color illustrations on the text, Thompson’s book makes for an interesting forerunner to Lyn Davies’ fine press A is for Ox. Thompson falls prey to instances of illegibility from the technique, but both enjoy instances of brilliant juxtaposition of word and redrawn images.
Among the primers of alphabet history, Thompson’s also stands out for the attention it gives to North American Indian pictorial writing. Rather than the usual Eurocentric sources, the Leni-Lenape, Dakota and Sioux Nations provide the bulk of examples of the method. The enlightened perspective, however, is undercut by a strain of cultural and historical supremacy apparent in several passages and, in particular, the perpetuation of the Walum Olum hoax and inclusion of a chapter from Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha to stand in for the absence of any similar memorialization of painted grave posts. Although Thompson is point blank on how “the invasion of the white man” prevented the growth and development of this method of writing, consider this passage describing the Leni-Lenape Penn Treaty of 1682 that was woven with perforated shell beads (wampum):
The figures of a white man and an Indian are woven in the belt, clasping hands in a true gesture of friendship. The white man is portrayed wearing a hat, as the Indian always drew the symbol of the white man. This treaty of peace was never broken or forgotten.
Except that, in the 1860s, most of the Leni-Lenape Nation was forcibly displaced to Oklahoma.
It was not until the 1990s that the so-called Leni-Lenape cosmographical poems of Walum Olum were proven to be fake, but suspicions were strong in the 1930s. All this is compounded as the book laments the ephemerality of the “Walum Olum poems” and the custom of pictorial grave posts:
Pictorial epitaphs on Indian grave posts were quite common in the early days of the new world. But knowledge of this romantic custom as well as the knowledge of the Red Man’s art of picture writing will live forever, had there been no other record of him but the beautiful “Song of Hiawatha” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Thompson’s design skills and his side note of claim to fame as reportedly the first recipient of royalties for typeface design (Thompson Quill Script) nudged the balance toward acquisition. Maybe perversely the annoying cultural dissonance also nudged the balance in that direction. The book’s presence provides the opportunity to compare it line for line with the other primers and look harder for the signs of the cultural blinkers we are wearing now. Also, with authentic pictorial cosmography available from the Navajo (Diné) Nation and with new archaeological finds from the Middle East (see below for both), perhaps it is time for a new primer against which to compare Thompson and the rest.
A review of the film Canyon del Muerto about one of the first female archaeologists, Ann Axtell Morris. What has this to do with Thompson’s book? An ironic coincidence. Morris worked for the archaeologist Sylvanus G. Morley on his Yucatán expedition. Thompson cites Morley in his bibliography. With her husband, fellow archaeologist Earl Morris, and their Navajo team, Ann Morris went on to open the Canyon del Muerto to the discoveries that led to insights into the Ancestral Puebloans, the source of Navajo cosmography. Other than papers coauthored with Earl, Ann’s accounts could only find outlet as juvenile publications. While Sylvanus and Earl may have been the combined inspiration for Indiana Jones, Ann offers the status of artist, first female archaeologist and subject of a current movie as a role model to celebrate with a sidebar in a new history of writing.
One of the pleasures of collecting alphabet-related works and living close to Oxford University is the opportunity to place new work next to older ones. An added pleasure in this case is seeing a new work made newer by a designer bookbinder.
As the foreword and afterword to this work explain, Jason Dewinetz’s redrawing of Felice Feliciano’s letterforms (c. 1460) was in fact prompted by two 20th century responses to Feliciano’s original: the first being Giovanni Mardersteig’s edition in 1960 at Editiones Officinae Bodoni and the second, also overseen by Mardersteig, being the facsimile edition issued by Jaca Book Codici over 1985-87 and separately by Belser Verlag in 1985. The Bodleian Library has both the Officinae Bodoni and Belser editions. An opportunity too good to miss and one worth sharing.
Left: Dewinetz edition. Center: Feliciano’s original in the Vatican facsimile. Right: Officinae Bodoni edition. Photo: Books On Books.
Dewinetz does not reproduce Feliciano’s commentary. His aim is to focus attention entirely on the letters. Although he has restricted his re-presentation of the letters to the recto page (whereas in Feliciano’s original, the letters after A occupy the verso and recto), he is too clever a designer not to find a way to capture the one instance in which Feliciano’s letter drawing and double-page spread interact entertainingly.
For the opening of Paul F. Gehl’s foreword, Dewinetz captures the dramatic flourish of Feliciano’s Q, whose tail crosses the double-page spread in his original. See below. Photos: Books On Books.
From the Vatican facsimile, Feliciano’s double-page spread with Q and S. Photo: Books On Books.
What happened to the letter R? Feliciano must have felt the need to give it its own double-page spread to show off a variation in coloring and tails. Like Mardersteig, Dewinetz gives the Rs each their own page. Unlike Mardersteig (and Feliciano), he places the Rs in correct alphabetical order.
Feliciano’s letter Rs from the Vatican facsimile. Photo: Books On Books.
Dewinetz’s re-drawing Q,R,R,S. Photo: Books On Books Collection.
Mardersteig follows Feliciano’s disrupted alphabetical order, but for Q and S to keep to a design that places each letter on a recto page facing a schematic drawing on the verso, Mardersteig has to forego the center-crossing tail of the Q and place S on a separate insert leaf.
Mardersteig’s QSRR sequence in the Ediciones Officinae Bodoni edition. Photo: Books On Books.
As a designer bookbinder, Mark Cockram has a deft eye and touch as he looks for and executes the designs inspired by the text. He could not resist Dewinetz’s cropped Q from the foreword by Paul F. Gehl. Taking his Q (as it were) however from the Goudy display font, he gives it a deserved prominence, stamped in black, on the double-trayed box’s spine. The choice of a different font reminds me of Eric Gill’s quip: “letter designing is still an occupation worthy of the enthusiasm of rational beings, and, though a Q which were all queue & no Q would be ‘past a joke’, it is difficult to say exactly where a tail should end”.
Left photo: Courtesy of Mark Cockram. Right photo: Books On Books Collection.
Apparently it was a tail of which Cockram could not let go. Further echoing Dewinetz’s cropping, truncated letter forms peek through the Palimpsest Parchment with which the book itself is bound (flat back). They are laserprinted on hand colored papers, colors inspired by those used in the book. Cockram also echoes the book’s color “ghosting” on the box by layering blank strips of hand colored papers beneath the cloth during the making process. The color-echoes between box and book continue with the box’s interior.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
The handsome bindings of the Vatican facsimile and Mardersteig edition have stood up to their library existence. In muted tones and gilt, they speak to the design esthetics of a different era.
Vatican facsimile binding
Officinae Bodoni edition binding
When the Dewinetz/Cockram edition joins the Vatican facsimile and Officinae Bodoni edition at the Bodleian, students of lettering, type design, bookmaking and bookbinding and their history will have a feast of an opportunity to compare and contrast.
Feliciano, Felice, & Mardersteig, Giovanni. 1985. Alphabetum romanum: Vat. Lat. 6852 : Aus der Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana (Codices e Vaticanis selecti ; v. 70). Zürich: Belser Verlag.
26 farbige Buchstaben (1986) / “26 Colored Letters“ Ursula Hochuli-Gamma Afterword Rolf Kühni Sewn paperbound. H240 x W152 mm. 36 unnumbered pages. Acquired from VGS Verlagsgenossenschaft, 7 June 2022. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Poor letter Z, even when it is giving Zen-like advice, it is relegated to the end of the queue.
Y is for ypsilon: The Ypsilon makes little sense. According to Bayern it is right in the middle. Z is for Ziel: The destination is not as important as the journey, so we should start from the beginning.
A is for Alphabet; The alphabet belongs to those who write and to those who read. B is for Buchstaben: All letters fix words in the past, but they also bring them back again.
Cognate words like “Alphabet” provide a clue that this gem of design and letter art is an abecedary, but since all nouns are capitalized in German, it is not that much of a clue. In the English edition of this abecedary (necessary for non-German speakers to appreciate Rolf Kühni’s afterword), these sayings are left in German to preserve the words to which the letters refer– as in B for Buchstaben (“letters”) and Z for Ziel (“destination”). Some are aphorisms (containing a grain of truth) like A, B and E. Some fall more toward religious or political dicta like F. Some play letter jokes as with Y, which is named Ypsilon in German and has been belabored in English as well for its superfluitie. The translations here are non-official and entirely amateurish, but the alternative translation for the letter E might withstand professional and alphabetic scrutiny.
E is for Einfache: The simple left much behind before it became simple. (Easy left much behind before it became easy.) F is for Frage: The question of “peace or freedom” will sound strange to those who have no bread.
Although this is not letterpress work (typeset on a Compugraphic, printed by Typotron AG with photoliths from Litho-Service AG, both in St Gallen, Switzerland), its artwork foreshadows how the artist would use the wooden letters that her husband, Jost Hochuli, well-known book designer/typographer, rescued from a St. Gallen printer in 1993. A peek at her Metamorphose (2014) and Zeichen, Ziffern, Lettern (2015) shows how she would go on to use them for collage, painting and inspiration.
Given the scarcity of writing online about her work and the absence of any of her works in the British Library, Ursula Hochuli-Gamma seems under-appreciated. Her exhibitions have tended to be local to St. Gallen, but her books can be acquired from Verlagsgenossenschaft St. Gallen and some booksellers.
Alphabatics (1986) Suse MacDonald Paper on board, casebound sewn. H236 x 285 mm, 56 pages. Acquired from Book Depository, 10 September 2021. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
While Suse MacDonald’s Alphabatics can find its ancestor in Bruno Munari’s ABC Con Fantasia (1960), it also finds some clever descendants in Nicolas McDowall’s A Bodoni Charade (1995), David Pelletier’s The Graphic Alphabet (1996) and Anne Bertier’s Construis-moi une lettre (2008).
As the letters are put through their acrobatic paces in three to four steps on the verso page to become the image on the right, the book gently pushes the left-to-right reading direction. Mahmoud Tammam has created animals composed of their names in Arabic script. It would be interesting to see a right-to-left Arabic version (Alefbatics?) of Alphabatics.
The Graphic Alphabet (1996) David Pelletier Paper on board, embossed with the letter A, casebound, sewn and glued. H255 x W250 mm, 32 pages. Acquired from Amazon, 24 August 2021. Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.
David Pelletier’s 1996 Caldecott Honor Book follows in the footsteps (the tumbles?) of Suse MacDonald’s Alphabatics (1986) another Caldecott Honor Book. The difference between them is a fine one depending in part on the reader’s age — or the collector’s eye. Both push the reader’s visual imagination. Both provide the words to be associated with the letter and image. MacDonald has shapes and images that turn into letters, where Pelletier has letters than turn into images (A), images whose shapes hint at letters and enact words (B and Y), letters found in images (W and X) and letters made from shapes on the page and the enacted word (Z). In a sense, Pelletier keeps the reader jumping more than does MacDonald. He crisscrosses several of the subgenres of alphabet books: wordplay and visual puns, hidden letters, conceptualism and abstraction.
One can see an affinity with Claire Van Vliet’s Tumbling Blocks for Pris and Bruce (1996) and Scott McCarney’s AlphaBooks (1981-2015), which underscores the cross-currents of alphabet books and artists’ books.
Dessine-moi une lettre (2004) Anne Bertier Casebound, sewn. H258 x W258 mm, 56 pages. Acquired from Amazon, 17 August 2021. Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.
Anne Bertier’s three alphabet books cross sub-genres of the ABCs with distinctive style and educational challenge. While the answers to the visual puzzles are offered at the end of the first and last books, considerable pleasure is missed by giving up too quickly. For the English speaker learning French, there’s the added pleasure of cementing a familiar word with Bertier’s images and discovering a new word that will also stick because of them.
Rêve-moi une lettre (2005)
Rêve-moi une lettre (2005) Anne Bertier Casebound, sewn. H135 x W132 mm, 52 pages. Acquired from Amazon, 30 August 2021. Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.
Here is the French version of the alliterative alphabet. Its opening with Alice suggests an underlying literary motif, but more likely at play is the association of the book’s title (“dream me a letter”) with Alice’s dreaming of Wonderland.
Construis-moi une lettre (2008)
Construis-moi une lettre (2008) Anne Bertier Casebound, sewn. H135 x W256 mm, 56 pages. Acquired from Amazon, 17 August 2021. Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.
The English alphabet’s “go to” for the letter A does not work for the French pomme, but from the similarity between the image here and that in Dessine-moi un lettre, there seems to be one, too, for the French alphabet. With the cognate word in French and English, the letter B is too easy. But C is for ?
With the overlap between design, art and children’s education, Bertier’s numerous large-scale exhibitions in China, Italy, Japan, Korea as well as France come as no surprise. Think of Dik Bruna, Eleonora Cumer, Katsumi Komagata or Bruno Munari.
Alfabeto (2017) Martín Gubbins Hardback. 180 x 180 mm. 60 pages. Acquired from Naranja Publicaciones, 28 July 2022. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Each letter of the Spanish alphabet is printed in sans serif across a full page to create a grid-like or plaid-like pattern. All letters are printed once in black on white paper and twice in white on black paper; with sheets facing one another. For the English-speaking reader, that’s a bonus of two pages for the ñ.
Held at normal reading length, the double-page spreads do have a plaid effect, but inspected closely, the effect becomes that of wire mesh from which the letters leap out the less tightly woven spots.
Unsurprisingly the plaids are as distinct from, and similar to, one another as letter shapes are. Sometimes, as with the letter b, an illusion of three dimensionality takes hold.
The most surprising — though they should not be — are the letters i and l. With no crossbar, bowl or curve, they cannot create a plaid pattern. Rather, their black on white, white on black patterns look like barcodes.
Gubbins One of the founding members of the Foro de Escritores (www.fde.cl) Chilean version of Bob Cobbing’s Writers Forum in London, and noted figure in the avant-garde poetry scene in Latin America. Gubbins has collaborated with the American poet and artist John M. Bennett, in whose honor
Some visual artists call this kind of work a “tapuscript“. Some throw it together under the heading of language art or concrete or visual poetry. Karl Kempton prefers the term “visual text art” over any other. Conceding the term to cover the broad genre, works like Alfabeto that cover the entire alphabet in sequence — or even play with its sequence — might deserve the sub generic term “visual alphabet art”. Kempton himself, Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich, Raffaella della Olga, Sharon Werner & Sharon Forss — as well as many of the artists in Victoria Bean and Chris McCabe’s anthology and those in Philip Davenport’s — surely provide a sufficient number of examples.
Making a lasting contribution to those traditions must be as difficult for children’s book artists and authors as blowing big blue bubbles is for baby buffaloes.
Webb, Poul. 2017-“Alphabet Books — Parts 1-8” on Art & Artists. Google has designated this site “A Blog of Note”, well deserved for its historical breadth in examples, clarity of images and insight.
A is for Ox: A Short History of the Alphabet (2006) Lyn Davies Casebound, doublures matching slipcase. Slipcase: H205 x W133 mm. Book: H197 x W128 mm. 128 pages. Acquired from The Old Bakehouse, 13 July 2021. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
There are numerous histories of the alphabet. Some are even titled the same as Lyn Davies’ A is for Ox. Several books take the letter-by-letter approach that Davies does in the second half of his book. Only one of them falls in the category of fine press book or artist’s book, and that is Richard J. Hoffman’s miniature production of the bookseller Otto Ege’s text. Benefitting from the advice of Stephen Fischer and the infrastructure of The Folio Society, Davies has secured more of a place for A is for Ox than that distinction.
One distinction is the handling of two colors across the design of the book. Davies knows book design. The burnt umber or terra cotta color is used to great effect. Chapter subtitles, section heads and running heads stand out but do not overbear. In the second half of the book, the color turns each letter of the alphabet in its section into a subdued illuminated letter. Another distinction follows on from this: the handling of images in the first half of the book. By printing in black and white the full inscriptions on stone, clay and pottery depicted in photographs, Davies enhances the experience of those images, and somehow the tinting of the images makes it easier to match the markings with the print.
Despite its brevity, A is for Ox conveys just as much as many lengthier works. Somehow with Davies in ten pages it is easier to “peg” waw as the antecedent sound for the letters F, U, V, W and Y than it is in the lengthier works. In its “A is for …” organization of its second half, the book injects some lightness without descending into silliness, leaving the latter to the children’s books and some of the comedy-prone trade books.
The Ottakar’s 2004 and Folio Society 2006 editions are out of print, which is a shame for ordering in bulk for short courses on the history of the alphabet and writing. Fortunately both are available at more-than-reasonable prices on the used book market.
Clodd, Edward. 1913. The Story of the Alphabet. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1913. Superseded by several later works, but is freely available online with line illustrations and some black and white photos.
Diringer, David, and Reinhold Regensburger. 1968. The alphabet: a key to the history of mankind. London: Hutchinson. A standard, beginning to be challenged by late 20th and early 21st century archaeological findings and palaeographical studies.
Thompson, Tommy. 1952. The ABC of our alphabet. London: Studio Publications. Not a fine press publication, but its layout, illustrations and use of two colors bear comparison with the Davies book. It too is out of print and unfortunately more rare.
Marco’s Animal Alphabet (2000) Enid Marx Color scheme and pochoir by Peter Allen (École de l’Image, Epinal) Case bound, leather spine and patterned papers on board, Fabriano doublures, 64 pages. Portfolio edition of 15, of which this is #2. Acquired from Forum Auctions, 16 December 2021. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Marco’s running verse is set in 24pt Scotch types, roman and italic. The rest of the book uses Bodoni, including the variations on the title page. The paper is 200 gsm Fabriano Artistico, 100% cotton fibres and acid-free. The patterned paper of the binding has been reconstructed for this book from a small sample. Enid Marx designed the original, and it was sold through The Little Gallery in London during the 1930s. Enid Marx was keen to have this book published for her great great nieces and nephews. A further 160 copies have been made for sale. Fifteen of these have an additional portfolio of black prints and were bound by Stephen Conway. Printing was completed in September 2000. This is copy number 2. –Colophon.
For the reader not in the know, the introduction by Graham Moss (Incline Press) explains that “Marco” was the nickname assigned to Enid Marx during her studies at the Royal College of Art, but more than that, Moss provides a warm sense of collaborating with Enid Marx (for example, A Bonnet Full of Nursery Rhymes) in life. Although this is a posthumous edition of this alphabet, Moss had the advantage of an earlier false start on it with Marx and of her insights on the idea of applying pochoir to this first formal edition (ultimately provided by Peter Allen).
It is a toss-up for which is the greater pleasure: the lines and shapes in Marco’s linocuts or the design and production by Graham Moss. Which confirms his conclusion that the posthumous collaboration is “a happy and successful one”.
The Eclectic Abecedarium by Edward Gorey (2022) Patrice Miller Flagbook. Closed: H305 x W107 mm. Open: W495 mm. Edition of 5, of which this is #1. Acquired from Aredian Press, 17 July 2022. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Patrice Miller’s flag book uses the text and color illustrations cut from The Edward Gorey House’s poster version of Gorey’s first alphabet book, The Eclectic Abecedarium (1983). Miller has mounted the text to red, blue, or green textured cardstock, which, in turn, is affixed to a red lotka-backed accordion. Black background yuzen paper with dots of bright blue, red, and green cover the boards.
Although commissioned, this flag book makes up part of a larger undertaking by Miller: “The Edward Gorey Binding Project”. Miller writes:
Fascinated with the works of Edward Gorey since high school, my binding efforts led me to embark on the challenge of rebinding (or binding) all 100+ titles authored by him, with the occasional distraction of books featuring his illustrations only. … A selection of the books have been displayed at the Edward Gorey House, Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts.
So far the project has yielded fan, star, accordion/stub, tufted red cotton velvet with covered buttons, flat-back, ribbon band, Green Thai alligator-pattern textured paper and goat skin, black lokta overlaid with ogura lace paper, calfskin and blue and green feathers from the binder’s parrot Django, silk-screened Indian cotton rag paper, sheer paper imbedded with irregular black yarn circles overlays, and vintage gold brocade bookcloth bindings. Another four to five years should see the job done!
Aredian Press works have received Distinguished Book Awards from the Miniature Book Society.
No serious collection of alphabet books or alphabet-related artists’ books can be complete without some representative of Edward Gorey’s work. This volume brings together Thoughtful Alphabets XI and XVII, two detective stories in which the plots must be deduced from pithy alphabetized directions or alphabetized descriptions underlying static black-and-white cartoon tableaus.
Just one representative — even two for one — seems hardly adequate though. Surely another is needed to qualify this collection as serious. If not a fine first edition of The Eclectic Abecedarium, the first Gorey alphabet, perhaps a variant in homage? To judge for yourself, click
In Memoriam+ (2021) Alastair Noble Booklet thread-bound to HMP boards, cover with cutout. H210 x W205 mm, 12 pages. Edition of 22, of which this is #4. Acquired from the artist, 25 April 2021. Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.
This work pays tribute to Ian Hamilton Finlay, whose Little Sparta, a garden across seven acres in Scotland, that expresses an artistic vision through typography, sculpture, installations and nature. Noble writes about the origins of his tribute:
I first visited Little Sparta twenty years ago and then again last year in July out of lockdown. Thereafter, coincidentally I found a brick buried in my garden with the work “Temple” embossed on it. Consequently this became the catalyst for a little homage in form of small installation in my garden that used the brick as a foundation to an arch made from white marble fragments that suggests the Portara for Apollo’s Temple Naxos. This installation became the stimulus for this small artist’s book completed during lockdown in my studio in Liverpool, UK. — Entry in Book Arts Newsletter, No. 138 March – mid-April 2021, p. 43.
Noble has expanded and intensified his small garden homage into a slender and rich work of book art. The sculpted structure of it — how the cover, pages, images and text work with each other — rhymes with Finlay’s art, Greek mythology and Nature. Noble’s choice of the portal to Apollo’s Temple to link the found brick and arch of marble fragments to Little Sparta and Finlay’s art finds one of its echoes in the cover’s cutout and the marble-white textured board behind it. Another echo lies in the words “metamorphosis” and “metaphoric” laid out to form an arch on the page below. And just as sonic echoes overlap one another, the words and image themselves echo across the double-page spread with the laurel leaf emblem of Daphne’s transformation to escape the pursuit of the lyre-bearing sun god and mythic patron of poets laureate.
Other overlapping echoes arise from the Greek and English word pairs on the double-page spread below. The presence of the Greek words obviously chime with Apollo’s Temple, but the presence of the English chimes more deeply with the word “metamorphic”. What is a translation if not a metamorphosis? And the rhyming of “lyre” and “liar” chimes even more deeply with “metaphoric”. What is a metaphor if not like a lyre and liar at the same time that tells us Daphne’s death is her translation into life as a tree?
Noble’s use of “meta” for his arch’s lintel also echoes Finlay’s aphoristic concrete poetry, a good example of which is The Errata of Ovid.
The Errata of Ovid (1983/4) Ian Hamilton Finlay, Gary Hincks Miniature portfolio. H76 x W80 mm. Offset printed in red and black, eight loose cards enclosed in a flap folder. Typeset in Bruce Old Style(?); illustrations by Gary Hincks; card stock unknown. Acquired from Woburn Books, 31 October 2019. Photos: Books On Books Collection
Beyond the tribute of image/word-play, Noble’s artist’s book strikes a performative echo with the history of Finlay and Hincks’ artists’ book. A few years after the publication of The Errata of Ovid, Finlay drew up ”Six Proposals for the Improvement of Stockwood Park Nurseries in the Borough of Luton”, which included a caprice with a wall and plaques. The wall in Stockwood Park stands today, presenting the text of The Errata of Ovid engraved in eight stone plaques (minus the colophon but with the addition of “For ‘Adonis’ read ’Anemone’”). So Noble’s artist’s book followed his garden installation whereas Finlay’s garden installation followed his artist’s book. If only for perfection of that echo, one might wish Finlay’s installation be transported to Little Sparta and let Luton be satisfied with its airport!
Thresholds (2020)
Thresholds: Doors, Gates & Barriers Puno Peru (2020) Alastair Noble Perfect bound paperback. H215 x 140 mm, 48 pages. Acquired from the artist, 11 May 2021. Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.
Like In Memoriam+, this work has its roots in location and a portal metaphor. While also employing juxtaposition of text and images as a structural device, it relies on images of a category of sought readymades (doors, gates and barriers) rather than a found object (like the garden brick on which the artist builds his arch) for a structuring device that is simultaneously material and metaphor.
The way Noble uses his sources of text (Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, Martin Heidegger’s “Building Dwelling Thinking” and Georg Simmel’s Bridge and Door) causes the reader/viewer to contribute to structure and metaphor. The first sentence of Bachelard’s excerpt begins “How many daydreams” and starts at the top of page 2; Heidegger’s beginning “The threshold” starts in the middle of page 26; and Simmel’s beginning “The human being” starts at the bottom of the page 2. Bachelard’s first sentence ends on page 8, Heidegger’s on page 28, and Simmel’s on page 12. Unless one has the mind of a symphonic composer or connoisseur, it is impossible to attend to all three excerpts simultaneously and turn the pages in one sequence. Instead, it is necessary to turn the pages back and forth along three tracks to absorb the excerpts, and the metaphoric effect is to open and close those doors, gates and barriers repeatedly, which is …
… what Noble’s very last page implies.
But finally, over the course of multiple readings/viewings, the linear photographic sequence on the recto pages seems to shift. Each image takes on a different aspect depending on the excerpt being followed. Combined with the back and forth page-turning, this shifting and break in the linear photographic sequence leaves the reader/viewer with the simulation of walking around, up and down and through Puno and its doors, gates and barriers.
Southern X 2006 : Open City, Ritoque Chile (2006)
Southern X 2006 : Open City, Ritoque Chile (2006) Alastair Noble Perfect bound paperback, spine taped. H215 x W218 mm, 32 pages. Acquired from Specific Object, 2 May 2021. Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.
Like Thresholds, this work, too, has its roots in location, but more akin to In Memoriam+, it draws on poetry, installation and performance. Open City is a utopian site affiliated with the School of Architecture of the Catholic University of Valparaíso. Accommodations and buildings have arisen by collective collaboration. There is no plan. One of the traditions associated with construction on the site is the reading of excerpts from the book Amereida (1967), a collective epic poem, which the school describes as “a poetic vision of the American continent”.
Reading the text takes us into the permanent question about being American from the recognition of the appearance of America seen as a discovery or gift. From the first page of the poem, the encounter with the unknown opens the possibility to begin to think of the new world as a gift, a gift. Its main sign: the Southern Cross, the light that goes up the horizon and guides in the north. — “Amereida“
Inspired by the Amereida during a sabbatical visit to the school and Open City, Noble proposed an installation: Southern X 2006. Given that the Amereida takes the Southern Cross for its main sign and that this sign appears across the night sky in the shape of a kite, Noble’s direction for his installation sculpture was set before he began.
The actual sculpture is but a piece of a larger collective artwork consisting of Manuel F. Sanfuentes Vio’s reading from the Amereida, the students’ procession in the shape of the Southern Cross to the site selected by Noble, the collective construction of the kite, the planting of poles and the placement of the kite on them — and of course this book that photographically documents the performance of the installation and textually presents the read passages of the Amereida.
Foldings (1998)
Ephemera for Foldings (1998) Kathy Bruce and Alastair Noble. Poster and staging sketches. Photo: Books On Books Collection.
With Foldings, Noble joined forces with Kathy Bruce, his wife. Six masked dancers wear costumes that are in effect human-size folios across which the pages of Un Coup de Dés have been printed front and back in French. As a prerecorded English translation is read by numerous voices corresponding to the changing fonts, the dancers rotate and display the lines being read. A performance was given as part of the exhibition A Painter’s Poet, held at the Leubsborf Art Gallery (Hunter College). This fell under the aegis of the Millennium Mallarmé celebrations in New York, the poster for which can be seen above overlaying the staging sketches for the performance. Later, as part of an installation under the title Navigating the Abyss (Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, New Jersey), the costumes were suspended from the ceiling along with a framed screen mesh reminiscent of Noble’s As if / As If (see above).
The Alphabet of Creation: An ancient legend from the Zohar(1954) Ben Shahn Hardcover, tan linen boards with red and gold decorations on cover and spine labels. H275 x 170 mm, 48 pages. Edition of 550, of which this is #497. Acquired from Midway Used and Rare Books, 7 August 2021. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Why does the alphabet begin with the letter A? There is the theory that alef‘s association in the Phoenician alphabet with the ox suggests a “needs-based” reason: food first, then shelter (B being beth meaning house). The rationale from the Zohar, however, is more entertaining and suited to the artistry of Ben Shahn.
After all of the other letters have had their say and presented their arguments, the letter A, aleph, remains:
Shahn’s artist’s book provides an example of the affinity of book art with the alphabet. The list of artists’ books and abecedaries under Further Reading offers a variety of other examples, but the reasons for that affinity may be just as mystical or speculative as the answer to the question: Why should the alphabet start with the letter A? Or, for that matter, end with the letter Z?
Drucker, Johanna. 1995. The alphabetic labyrinth the letters in history and imagination. London: Thames and Hudson. An exploration of extraordinary breadth and depth: the mythical, anthropological, archaeological, art historical, calligraphical, geographical, kabbalistic, linguistic, philosophical, religious and typographical aspects of the alphabetic labyrinth are covered in style and extensively illustrated.
Ferlauto, S., and J. Morin. 2000. The sacred abecedarium. Stevens Point, WI: SailorBOYpress. A more typographical and secular perspective to compare with Shahn’s.
Flanders, Judith. 2020. A Place For Everything: the curious history of alphabetical order. New York: Basic Books. Curious that it does not address this Hebrew parable or the needs-based theories about the origin and ordering of the alphabet; otherwise wide-ranging and informative.
Thompson, Tommy. 1952. The ABC of our alphabet. London: Studio Publications. An entertaining use of the margins and overlays on the text page to illustrate the evolution of the alphabet. Deserves a reprint.
The Blind Men and the Elephant (2019) Xiao Long Hua Sleeved paperback, exposed sewn spine. Sleeve: 305 x 305 mm. Book: H303 x W305 mm. 52 pages. Edition of 500, of which this is #178. Acquired from Northing, 18 May 2022. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Working with binding designer Zhong Yu and tbook designer Lu Min of the “One and One Half Atelier”, Shanghai-based Xiao Long Hua has found a sympathetic outlet and form for his creative vision. His first work with them is The Blind Men and the Elephant, a variation on the parable in the Buddhist sutra Tittha Sutta. It takes place in the kingdom “Mirari”, ruled by King Mirror.
Selection from One and One Half Atelier. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
As in the more traditional version, the blind men report the elephant to be of different shapes, but in this version, those shapes reflect those of the blind men themselves. Throughout the book, a blueprint grid in the background of the dark blue and light gray page serves to emphasize the geometric shapes of the characters and images and to reflect, with its reductiveness, each blind man’s rigid view of the elephant’s nature. And up to this point of the blind men’s report, the grid has been bounded intermittently by coordinate markers, some numerical, some in letters and some in Chinese characters.
Xiao Long Hua places the different shapes the blind men perceive into the mind of the king, where they become a butterfly and then transform endlessly and kaleidoscopically into other figures represented across a series of pages printed dark blue. This variation on the theme comes from the Miao (Hmong) creation song Butterfly Mother or Mother Butterfly.
The final colorless two pages consist of cut-outs inviting the readers’ hands to create more strange figures along with the king’s mind. This element of touch recurs on the cover, which on closing the reader will find is covered in fingerprints. The cover’s ink is thermochromatic, fading away under the warmth of touch, returning as it cools and waiting for our next blind touch.
Selection from One and One Half Atelier edition. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
The publishing house Qianxun Neverend has issued a shorter trade edition of The Blind Men and the Elephant. Although a thermochromatic cover proved to be too expensive, an equally interesting design feature animates the cover’s image of the butterfly transforming into the multiple figures in the king’s mind.
Prior to The Blind Men and the Elephant, Xiao Long Hua engaged primarily in illustrations, scroll painting, installation works and sculpture, some of which can be seen on his Tumblr blog. For his latest work with the One and One Half Atelier, The Great Migration, the Atelier’s site announced a multimedia installation. A comment about this work sheds light on The Blind Men and the Elephant as well; he writes, “…I want to paint a magnificent picture of the Great Migration to express those spaces and memories that are fading away, I try to blur the forms between people, animals and objects. “
Other works in the Books On Books Collection to compare with The Blind Men and the Elephant include
Like a Pearl in My Hand(2016) Carina Hesper Boxed folios. Box: H388 x W278 x D35. Folios: H330 x W220, 32 loose folios. Edition of 250, of which this is #221. Acquired from the artist, 19 December 2021. Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.
Carina Hesper’s Like a Pearl in my Hand came to the collection after its appearance in the exhibition “The Art of Reading”, 18 November 2017 to 4 March 2018, at the Meermanno Museum in The Hague, Netherlands. It was an exhibition whose curator insisted that none of the works could be under glass. They had to be touchable. Like a Pearl in my Hand is a boxed set of 32 photographic portraits, each coated in black thermochromatic ink. Only by touching the prints can you see the underlying portraits.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Taken at the Meermanno Museum in 2017.
Each portait is of a child, congenitally blind, whom Carina Hesper met through the Bethnal China orphanage between 2012 and 2016. A folded sheet (8 unnumbered pages) includes two essays and the colophon for the work. In one essay, Bettine Vriesekoop provides background on Hesper’s visit to the orphanage Bethel China as well as social and historical observations about the position of the congenitally blind in China. In the other essay, Hannes Wallrafen, once a photographer, now blind, delivers a perceptive review of what he calls the “book with black pages on my lap”. Explaining his situation, he addresses his task by explaining “how the blind see” by touch, memory and imagination. For his review, he also has the advantage of an app, TapTapSee, which enables him to take photographs before and after touching each folio and listen to an automated description of each. A quick trial will reveal the app’s limitation vis-à-vis Like a Pearl in My Hand and underscore the poignancy of Wallrafen’s concluding comment:
For anyone who does not dare pick up the book or only gently touches the pages, this book remains what it seems at first sight: a collection of black pages.
The best artists’ books engage the reader/viewer in a multisensory experience. Even so, usually sight comes first and touch, second among the senses in the experience. Like a Pearl in My Hand challenges this by making the subject of the unsighted accessible to the sighted only through the warmth of touch.
Other works in the Books On Books Collection to compare with Like a Pearl in My Hand include
The Gospel of Mary (2006) Claire Van Vliet et al. Woven binding with Barcham Green Cairo paper, housed in De Wint paper-covered and lined birch trays. Box: H320 x W274 x D42 mm. Book: H292 x W250 x D28 mm, 44 pages, center pulp-painted pop-up. Edition of 150, of which this is #27. Acquired from Thomas Goldwasser Rare Books, 18 June 2022. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Like Woven and Interlocking Book Structures (2002), Tumblr Blocks (1996) and Batterers (1996) below, The Gospel of Mary is an outstanding work of collaboration. Its pulp painting, letterpress, woven binding and layout make this work an important addition to works by Claire Van Vliet in the Books On Books Collection. Van Vliet pulp painted the centerpiece and cover below with Katie MacGregor (Whiting, Maine), who also made the pop-up papers. Andrew Miller-Brown, the Janus Press workshop printer and founder of Plowboy Press, is credited and has signed this copy with Van Vliet. Audrey Holden, who has also signed this copy and worked on Tumbling Blocks, executed the binding. Rosemary Radford Ruether, feminist thelogian, provided the commentary on the text, both of which were typeset with the assistance of Ellen Dorn Levitt, whose collection of book arts projects and teaching materials now resides at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
The four photos below provide views of the binding structure and also the layout in which the commentary embraces the gospel text.
Below, the five-part pulp-painted centerpiece and the silver paper ribbons woven into the double-page spread stand out against the more subtly pulp-painted background. The pop-up echoes the images on the Barcham Green Boxley paper used throughout for the text and commentary (see above).
The size of the work and the way that the printing, paper, pulp painting, layout of text and commentary, pop-up and binding complement one another echo the age of illuminated manuscripts and incunabula. It would make for a rewarding exhibition to juxtapose The Gospel of Mary with several of them.
The entries below were previously published on 8 August 2019 and have been moved here.
Woven and Interlocking Book Structures (2002)
Woven and Interlocking Book Structures (2002) Claire Van Vliet and Elizabeth Steiner Four slipcases containing 16 book models are enclosed with the book in a cloth-covered clamshell box. Box: H282 x W226 x D55 mm. Slipcases: H128 x W104 mm. Book: H254 x W192 mm, 144 pages. Edition of 200, of which this is #13, signed by Claire Van Vliet. Acquired from James S. Jaffe Rare Books, 1 February 2015. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
The binding models and papers used for them are:
A — Aunt Sallie’s Lament; Aunt Sallie’s Lament without Flags; Aunt Sallie’s Lament non-adhesive version; Moeraki Boulders; Designating Duet. Papers used include Elephant Hide, Fabriano cover and Miliani Ingres, French’s recycled, Marblesmith, Bristol and Saunders laid.
B — Beauty in Use; Beauty in Use with text leaves; Deep in the Territory; Night Street. Papers used include Elephant Hide, French’s recycled, Bristol, Mohawk Superfine and Fabriano cover.
C — Gioia I; Gioia II; Sing Weaving; Compound Frame. Papers used include Elephant Hide, French’s recycled, Bristol, Mohawk Superfine, Linen Index, Neenah UV Columns and Marblesmith.
D — Bone Songs; A Landscape with Cows in It; Well-Heeled. Papers used include Elephant Hide, Mohawk Superfine, Arches laid, and Fabriano text and Miliani Ingres.
Tumbling Blocks for Pris and Bruce (1996)
Tumbling Blocks for Pris and Bruce (1996) Claire Van Vliet and Audrey Holden Paper cube issued in a non-adhesive paper box housed in a clear plastic box. 58 x 58 x 58 mm. Edition of 200, of which this is #134. Acquired from Abecedarian Gallery, 21 July 2019. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Working with offcuts from Praise Basted In: A Friendship Quilt for Aunt Sallie (1995), Van Vliet and Audrey Holden cut pairs of letters of the alphabet and glued them back to back. These constitute the cube-book’s leaves, which are folded and glued to permit the book to open into a variety of shapes. Gently tossed from hand to hand, the book will resume its cube shape. “Pris and Bruce” are the Hubbards, Janus Press patrons.
Slipcase: H307 x W387 x D73 mm; Tray: H296 x W380 x D61 mm; Accordion: H270 x W356 x D33 (closed), H270 x W1115 mm (open). Edition of 500, of which this is #5, signed. Acquired from Van Vliet via Vamp & Tramp, 17 July 2020.
What is remarkable about this sculptural book is its fusion of collaborators’ efforts, of art forms, and of text, materials, techniques and structures.
In the late 1980s, Claire Van Vliet and Kathryn Lipke (née Vigesaa) were seeking a collaborative project. After Van Vliet spotted Denise Levertov’s poem “Batterers” in the American Poetry Review (1990:6), they agreed that the poem, which enfolds our abuse of the earth within a metaphor of domestic abuse, was the appropriate text to join somehow with Lipke’s series of structural artworks called Earthskins.
Earthskins (1988-96)
Kathryn Lipke (Vigesaa)
Installation views of the works created from paper pulp, clay and pigments; some reaching 69 feet in length. Photos: Courtesy of the artist.
When letterpress printers consider the reproduction of a short poem, the broadside is the most common art form adopted. Van Vliet’s adoption of it is anything but common. Instead, she has orchestrated a combination of structures and art forms. From the maroon-printed, brown linen slipcase slides a tray made of tamarack wood to which Lipke’s vacuum-formed panel of clay mixed with paper is fixed. As the black tray is lifted, layers of multi-folded paper attached to a backing appear.
The top two layers are glued and sewn with multi-stranded red thread to the third and bottom layer, displaying the names of the author, work and Van Vliet’s press. The bottom layer is glued to a backing of three strong card panels tightly glued to two wood runners, sawn or routered into a slight U shape.
As the top layer is unfolded by pulling it apart, left and right, three tabs drop down to reveal Levertov’s poem.
Van Vliet’s combination of structures and forms offers multiple orders in which to read the poem, which pleased Levertov because she liked the poem in both the stanzaic orders of 1-2-3 and 1-3-2 (correspondence with Kathryn Lipke and Claire Van Vliet, 20 July 2020). In a book-like way, the covering tray slides from its slipcover, the cover is removed, and the accordion pages unfold to be read left panel first, right panel second and center panel third, emphasizing the embedded and central metaphor.
Spread fully open, the structure assumes a single-sheet broadside form, and the “center” stanza moves from third to second in order. But there is a third order of reading, as it were. The broadside form “leans” into the art forms of print, painting and bas-relief sculpture. The text, images and design become a whole experience, an object to be taken in as a whole.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Not only in form does Batterers “lean” into the form of painting: the imagery and colors arise from the technique of pulp painting, a technique defined by the work of Marius Péraudeau in the mid-twentieth century. Pat Gentenaar’s still life Water Dragon in this collection provides another example of the technique.
Top: cover image of Marius Péraudeau: Pulp Paper Paintings (Paris: Ernst Maget, 1991). Photo taken at British Library: Books On Books. Bottom: Water Dragon (n.d.) Pat Gentenaar-Torley. Photo: Books On Books Collection.
In pulp painting, the paper is the painting. Assisted by Katie MacGregor and Bernie Vinzani in their paper studio in Whiting, Maine, Van Vliet poured different colors of paper pulp into prepared forms to create three sheets of paper on which to print and then collage into the image that suggests dual images: that of a volcano and that of a woman reclining on her side or face down. The fusion of shapes, the fusion of color and fiber in pulp painting, and the fusion of clay and pulp in the covering bas-relief (which can also be used as a stand for the broadside) fuse with the poem’s words and metaphor. Once this artwork has been experienced, reading the poem printed in a traditional book can never be the same.
breath [prospectus](2019) Edmund de Waal Papercased sewn booklet. H214 x W152 mm, 16 pages. Acquired from Lady Elena Ochoa Foster, 28 June 2022, “Sensational Books” exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries. Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.
In correspondence with Ivorypress in 2019, I first learned of Edmund de Waal’s artist’s book inspired by the later works of Paul Celan. With the help of Ivorypress, de Waal created breath as an artwork consisting of the artist’s book (in a limited edition of six), a series of vitrines, shelves and diptychs conceived as open books, and a reading room. His aim was to pay homage to the Romanian poet Paul Celan, in whose last books “there is more white page than word”, as de Waal puts it. The only way to have seen the book then would have been to fly to Madrid.
In a major surprise, a copy of the edition appeared at the formal opening of the exhibition “Sensational Books” at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries (Oxford, 28 June 2022). Heightening the surprise was Edmund de Waal’s delivering a talk about the work to open the exhibition. And capping the surprise was Lady Elena Ochoa Foster’s kind gift of this eponymous booklet describing breath. Perhaps the surprise of a long anticipation’s being met, or de Waal’s impassioned talk, or the kindness of the gift created a susceptibility to the raw emotion on, in and beneath the whiteness of this work. But no, it is objectively there. De Waal’s booklet, photos from the exhibition and the Ivorypress videos further below help to understand from where the power of breath comes.
One of the booklet’s inserts is a square of white paper (perhaps the G.F. Smith Colorplan Ice White, one of the four different papers used in the artist’s book). Opposite the insert, de Waal writes, “Your mind moves over the whiteness of the page and you try and sound what this whiteness means, its silence a place of redaction, or of held breath, or of exhalation.” The close-up of the insert turned shows the paper’s degree of translucence that de Waal uses to great effect in his artist’s book as can be seen in the videos. The close-up also gives a view of the bite of the letterpress in the raised impression from the page before and the ink-filled depth on the facing page. This kind of material contrast recurs — bite and breath, white and black, lighter and heavier papers, rougher and smoother — in the larger work in so many ways.
These visual, tactile and conceptual workings realize in small what the artist’s book accomplishes on a larger almost monumental scale. The artist’s book measures 453 x 673 x 43 mm and runs to 104 pages and is housed in a wooden box that converts to a lectern and provides storage for the translucent ceramic works on which Celan’s words are inscribed.
Another source of the larger work’s power is the porcelain slip that de Waal has brushed over parts of Celan’s poems to create a white surface on which he rewrites Celan’s words. Porcelain is de Waal’s tool. When asked what he does, he often puns in reply, “I throw pots”. The presence of porcelain slip in a work of such size, materiality and grounding in Celan’s poetry of coming to grips with the Shoah conjures a more somber pun on creativity and destruction. It establishes a paradoxical, metaphorical union of fragility, breakage and exhalation with strength, restoration and inhalation.
Showcased at “Sensational Books” exhibition, Weston Library, Oxford University. Photo: Books On Books, 8 July 2022.
Showcased at “Sensational Books” exhibition, Weston Library, Oxford University. Photo: Books On Books, 8 July 2022.
Just as the book, ceramics and lectern constitute another layer to the installation work, there are layers in the artist’s book itself, some of them hidden. The use of porcelain slip to cover Celan’s words has already been mentioned. Another layer lies in the binding, executed by Shepherds, Sangorski & Sutcliff. As was done in the early days of bookbinding, scraps of previously published material line the spine. For this purpose, De Waal collected scraps of medieval manuscripts previously used for binding. Binding within binding, centuries within centuries. By tucking away underneath the paper binding’s flap the only colored image in the booklet, an image that even looks like a scrap of illuminated manuscript, de Waal alludes to this practice.
While the scraps embedded in breath‘s binding are not materially perceptible, knowledge of it enriches the reader/viewer’s perception. Enriched perception enriches the work. As de Waal writes in the booklet and as we hear in the videos, “All books are palimpsests. As we read and reread, we re-create texts”. As readers/viewer responding to breath, each of us brings a layer to the palimpsest.
My response brings to the palimpsest another layering artist who celebrates Celan in works of book art: Anselm Kiefer. The juxtaposition provokes an intake of breath as it brings to mind Shulamith (1990) in homage to Celan’s “Todesfugue” (“Death Fugue”) or The Secret Life of Plants (2008) shown with a sound installation of Celan’s poetry and also sponsored by Ivorypress. So different from the whiteness of breath and its materiality of porcelain, wood, gold and paper, Shulamith is 64 pages made of lead, hair and ashes (1010 x 630 x 110 mm), and The Secret Life of Plants is 18 pages made of oil on lead over cardboard (1900 x 1400 x 200 mm). Both are dark and foreboding works. The artists themselves, too, differ in their roots. As told in The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010), de Waal’s family, the Viennese Ephrussis, were persecuted by the Nazis. Kiefer’s father was a soldier in the Wehrmacht, which we know from Kiefer’s infamous early works incorporating photos of him in his father’s uniform and giving the Nazi salute. Where de Waal evokes breath and whiteness, Kiefer evokes death and leadenness. Yet both fuse materiality and visual representation with text (whether explicit, implicit or hidden) to stand with Celan’s agony and creative spirit and achieve an originality, an independence that is nevertheless dependent on history.
De Waal, Edmund. 2021 “Breath“, In Paul Celan Today: A Companion, edited by Michael Eskin, Karen Leeder and Marko Pajević. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. 319-324.
Granero, Natalia, and Gunnar B. Kvaran. 2019. Anselm Kiefer: livres et xylographies: [catalogue de l’exposition, Montricher Fondation Jan Michalski pour l’écriture et la littérature du 8 février au 12 mai 2019 ; Oslo Astrup Fearnley Museet du 30 mai au 15 septembre 2019].
Personal Libraries Library (Winter 2009-10 to Spring/Summer 2021)
Imagine belonging to a library composed of selected personal libraries and housed on another continent. Imagine that the librarian who selects those personal libraries and hunts down copies of the works (preferably the same editions) needed to recreate completely those libraries also constantly harvests the libraries for connections among them and delivers them to you in the form of ephemera. It exists. I have a library card for it.
Since 2009, Abra Ancliffe, its artist/librarian, has been replicating the personal libraries of
Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), Massachusetts astronomer, educator, suffragist and librarian Robert Smithson (1938-1973), New Jersey-born land artist, sculptor and art theorist Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), Argentinian writer of fiction, poetry and essays Italo Calvino (1923-1985), Cuban-Italian writer of fiction, poetry and essays Anne B. Spencer (1882-1975), Virginia-based member of the Harlem Renaissance circle, poet, civil rights activist, teacher and librarian
Each personal library has a catalogue derived from our librarian’s research and consultation with foundations associated with each of the owners. Each library has its wish list of works needed to complete the holdings; and a Reference Library Catalogue for background on each of the owners has been added. But why these particular personal libraries? Was there a rule?
The library itself has rules (courtesy of our librarian’s fellow artist Larissa Hammond):
1 The Library is a coordinate geometry that is initiated within and between the booksets. 2 The books within each set may not be disassociated and circulate as a singularity. 3 Each individual book is zero dimensional unless activated by its faction. 4 Reference materials are considered an empty set and may not be removed from the Library.
Given such rules, it is no surprise that our librarian has included Borges. The fabulist of “The Library of Babel” once held the job of first assistant in a Buenos Aires municipal library and reportedly remarked “if I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father’s library” and “I always imagined Paradise to be some kind of a library”. Also, given such rules and the inclusion of Borges, could the Cuban-Italian Italo Calvino, a member of the Oulipo movement, be far behind?
Maria Mitchell’s personal library was the seed or germinating star of the PLL in the winter of 2009-2010 (see the item in the upper right corner of the photo above). Flowers and constellations are two themes that our librarian finds as links among the personal libraries.
Another link between the libraries are the books common to more than one library. For instance, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays appears in Maria Mitchell’s and Robert Smithson’s libraries. Perhaps there is a sort of transcendentalism driving the library! How appropriate that the first book from Mitchell’s library acquired and the first in the PLL was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays.
By virtue of these collage-like connections that our librarian draws in the periodic issues of ephemera, a book published at a later date may seem to belong equally to an earlier owner. Perhaps, as in the collages into which the ephemera can fall, “one book may hide another” to paraphrase Kenneth Koch. The issues of ephemera arrive like challenges to Robert Smithson’s notion of site and non-site works of art. They are works that depend and do not depend on their site. They arrive so similar and so different, regular enough but sporadic enough, that they are like “Miss Mitchell’s comet” — non-periodic (until it appears again).
PLL Ephemeral Issues. Left to right and top to bottom: Winter 2009/2010; Summer 2010; Winter 2011; Summer 20012; Winter 2012; Summer 2013; Winter 2013; Summer 2014; Winter 2015; Summer 2016; Winter 2016; Summer 2017; Fall/Winter 2017; Spring/Summer 2018; Fall/Winter 2018; Spring/Summer 2019; Fall/Winter 2019; Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter 2020; Spring/Summer 2019.
The ephemera themselves represent “collaborations” among the personal libraries — courtesy of our librarian’s reading of the Library’s “coordinate geometry”, of course. For the Spring/Summer 2021 issue, the first piece of ephemera listed on the blue manifest (its Bibliography) is “Paper to be Placed in a Window” (see the upper left-hand corner of the photo immediately above). Glossy black on both sides, the single folded sheet displays an astronomical photo with holes of different size punched to let light light up the constellation. According to the manifest or Bibliography, the work connects the constellation Aguila (Eagle) “in and around the Milky Way south of Cygnus” with J.B. Sedgwick’s Introducing Astronomy from Smithson’s library with Laurence Sterne’s The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman from Calvino’s. The connection with Sedgwick is obvious. The connection with Sterne’s novel may be obvious to readers familiar with its “black page”, or will be to readers here who proceed to the entry for the next of Abra Ancliffe’s works in the Books On Books Collection.
It is no surprise that Ancliffe’s work of book-art-cum-academic-treatise is part of the Laurence Sterne Trust Foundation’s permanent collection. Like Shandy Hall’s own The Black Page Catalogue (2010), The Secret Astronomy extrapolates and celebrates page 73 with the same whimsy and seriousness that the 73 writers and artists invited to make their own Black Page exercised. In its own self-publishing status, it also underscores like Simon Morris’s manifesto Do or DIY (2012) the same status of Sterne’s work as a forerunner to the self-published, self-referential works of book art of the mid- to late 20th century. It is Ancliffe’s elevation of the self-reflexive academic treatise to art status that secures The Secret Astronomy its position in the Books On Books Collection.
The rectangle of black appearing on page 173 in the first edition of Sterne’s novel faces the brief announcement of Parson Yorick’s death on page 172: “Alas, poor Yorick”. Taking off on the concept of academe’s variorum edition, Ancliffe has reproducedthe black pages from more than one hundrededitions of Sterne’s novel. What is a singularity in the novel becomes a contemplation of a regularity that reveals a material irregularity since the 1759 edition. Densities of ink have varied, oxidation occurred, spots from lint and fingerprints accumulated — even show-throughs from the next chapter’s text — so that the eye begins to read the accumulated pages for astronomical images — Tristram’s and Sterne’s secret astronomy. (The temptation to Grangerize this work by slipping into it Ancliffe’s ephemera “Paper to be Placed in a Window” is strong.) Ancliffe urges forward her case for the discovery of a secret astronomy with a series of appendices, one of which draws attention to Sterne’s use of the asterisk in the novel and proposes one of its hidden kabbalistic meanings in an equation: if star = *, and Sterne = star, then Sterne = *. There is even the dutiful source appendix listing all of the editions from which black pages have been gathered.
Pages 169-70 of the first edition of Tristram Shandy account for another famous singular, regular irregularity — the marbled page, which Tristram calls “the motly emblem of my work”. Ancliffe’s black, brown and gray marbled spine and inside covers make for an apt, ironic and artistic stroke — a reminder of the element of chance that is so characteristic of Sterne’s narrative project, of The Secret Astronomy and of the ephemera arising from the Personal Libraries Library.
From Shandy Hall’s Emblem of My Workblog, accessed 18 September 2019.
Further Reading
“Shandy Hall“. 1 January 2021. Books On Books Collection.
“Jorge Luis Borges“, last edited on 8 May 2022. Wikipedia. Accessed 15 May 2022.
“Italo Calvino“, last edited 20 April 2022. Wikipedia. Accessed 15 May 2022.
“Maria Mitchell“, last edited 8 March 2022. Wikipedia. Accessed 15 May 2022.
“Robert Smithson“, last edited 14 May 2022. Wikipedia. Accessed 15 May 2022.
“Anne B. Spencer“, last edited 25 April 2022. Wikipedia. Accessed 15 May 2022.
“How does a book reflect a distinct way of thinking about a subject? How does the page become a dynamic landscape of visual and conceptual ideas?” So begins the description for a workshop run by Ken Botnick in 2017. His two works in the Books On Books Collection answer those questions with a resounding “This is how“.
Table of Contents (2020)
Table of Contents (2021) Ken Botnick Slipcased, boards with exposed sewn binding. Slipcase: H270 x W170 mm; Book: H265 xW185 mm, 56 pages. Edition of 20, of which this is #5. Acquired from the artist, 3 May 2022. Photos: Courtesy of the artist; Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.
Table of Contents has no table of contents. Instead the whole book is a meditation on a table of contents — that of James J. Gibson’s The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966). On the inside cover, Botnick characterizes Table of Contents as a “book-length visual/textual poem” and identifies the cento as its model. Cento is short for the Latin centonibus (“patchwork”) and describes the technique of appropriating others’ lines of verse to compose an original “collage” poem. Rather than lines from poems, though, Botnick has appropriated text from Gibson’s table of contents and figure labels.
Here is Gibson’s complete table of contents:
Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, pp. ix-xiv. Internet Archive.
Here is Botnick’s selection of text:
Table of Contents Compression waves from a vibratory event How are associations between events detected? The stationary information for seeing one thing through another Radiation from a luminous source The physical reality of speech The diffusion of volatile substances The development of selective attention The superfluous appeal to memory The consequences of inadequate information The consequences of rigidity The special consequences of light Transmitted light and transparent surfaces The structuring of light by means other than reflection The structuring of light by alphabetic writing The stable and unbounded character of the phenomenal visual world The perception of chemical values in the sea The inspired air The beginning of a theory
But that is not how Botnick’s cento is presented. In calling it a “visual/textual poem”, Botnick is too modest. It is much more than visual/textual: it is visual, textual, auditory and haptic — and is so from the start, proceeding by contrasts and complements, provoking multi-sensory activity and responses.
First of all, the slipcase is more of a “slipsleeve” from which the spine protrudes for fingers and eyes to feel the exposed binding threads, the pattern of knots and the ridges of the gathered signatures. This is the sewn boards structure, credited to Gary Frost, more on that later. The spine and fore edge offer bright colors that contrast with the deeply black sleeve that displays three slanting parallel cutouts in the cloth, exposing the board it covers. The pattern those cutouts make will become a recurrent visual and tactile theme as the pages turn.
As the tightly fitting sleeve pulls away from the board-stiff book, they make a “shirring” sound together. As the front cover turns, the title page bows upward showing nine impressed parallel lines beneath the words “Table of Contents”, and when that page turns, it crackles and makes a shuffling sound as its edge drags across the following bright blue page.
Through that bright blue translucence, the pattern from the slipsleeve reappears but rearranged and multiplied into a zigzag spectrum of colors. The physical turning of the translucent page “exposes” that zigzag spectrum and the second line of text in this poem: “Compression waves from a vibratory event”. Gibson’s text refers to the perception of sound or physical vibrations, and Botnick poetically overlays this with his selection of papers and introduction of zigzag waves of color. The zigzag pattern and its rounded elements, which on some pages are scattered, elongated, cross-hatched or sharp-edged, contribute a recurrent visual syncopated rhythm through the book. Toward the end, the zigzag moves into a more consistently vertical and angular, almost helical, appearance.
First leaf turned, second leaf turning, third leaf revealed.
Zigzag pattern scattered. Zigzag pattern become helical.
To deliver other visual and haptic effects, Botnick prints his translucent papers sometimes only on their reverse sides, sometimes on both, sometimes to the point of opacity as with the first leaf and other times to the point of transforming the colors about to appear on the next sheet beneath as with the second and third leaves. Of course, this changes the feel of the sheet from one side to the other. Botnick also uses six different paper types (including one with a watermark designed for this edition and made at Dieu Donné Paper). The variety in printing and papers introduces additional tactile and visual rhythms: slick and matte, smooth and rough, dark and light, etc. Again, proceeding by contrasts and complements, provoking multi-sensory activity and responses.
Visual effects achieved by printing on both sides of translucent paper layered over fine print paper.
Visual effects achieved by printing translucent paper to near opacity on one side, spot printing on the other side and layering that sheet over a translucent paper printed on one side.
Variation of paper types.
The sewn boards structure, executed by Emdash studio member Robin Siddall, offers the most effective means of achieving the sensory effects intended with the variety of papers, ink colors and printing techniques, as well as delivering a lay-flat binding. Each four-page signature consists of two separate sheets glued to the inner edges of a narrow folded card (the board) sewn and linked to the boards of the signatures before and after. The card used for those hinges is a Japanese washi called Moriki, known for its folding strength and colors, but how particularly apt those multiple hinges and colors are for this patchwork poem.
Detail of an open signature exposing the thread sewn through the board and showing the leaves glued to the edges of the board.
Gibson defines the haptic system as that “by which animals and men are literally in touch with the environment” (p.97). On the penultimate double-page spread, Botnick reveals the environment that touched his “book-length visual/textual poem” into existence: one of pandemic, isolation, violent exposure of institutionalized racism, the “Big Lie” and insurrection. Set in the now familiar zigzag pattern, the revelatory text annotates the lines of appropriated text and the prints, connecting both with the environment and the meditation on perception. Botnick’s book is certainly a distinctive interweaving way of thinking about these threads.
It is telling that Table of Contents ends with black and gray, the colors that dominate the other work in the collection: Diderot Project (2015), which presents this pronouncement from Odilon Redon:
Even without the prismatic range of colors in Table of Contents, Botnick’s Diderot Project (2015) may outstrip the former in the number of ways in which Botnick makes not only the page but also the codex itself “become a dynamic landscape of visual and conceptual ideas”.
Diderot Project (2015)
Diderot Project (2015) Ken Botnick H290 x W194 mm, 150 pages. Edition of 70, of which this is #32. Acquired from the artist, Photos: Courtesy of the artist; Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.
Clearly, like Table of Contents, this work is a “book-length visual/textual poem”, so it offers some insights on the book artist’s favorite rhymes, rhythms, metaphors, techniques and themes. First and foremost is his taking a literary work as his muse. With Table of Contents, it is James J. Gibson’s psychology book; in this case, it is Denis Diderot’s multi-volume Encyclopédie (Encyclopedia), a decades-long project with Jean le Rond d’Alembert and 138 other contributors. Nodding to the multiple volumes of the Encyclopedia, the artist refers to the sections of his work as Volumes 1, 2 and 3, although they are bound as one binding. The three volumes’ titles follow the Encyclopedia‘s overarching categories in its “System of Human Knowledge”: Memory, Reason, and Imagination. Digitally captured images from the Encyclopedia‘s plate volumes abound.
Table of Contents
Diderot Project, however, is not a condensed version or description of the Encyclopedia. Like literary works of ekphrasis whose words meditate on a visual object, Diderot Project is book art that meditates — inversely — on a literary work. The cover to Diderot Project does not show its name where the title is expected, rather it shows the name of its object of meditation. And it displays that name in a distinctive monumental way.
The front cover’s silver slab serif italic letters in all caps on textured, triple-dyed flax paper and the back cover’s diagram in the same palette strike chords that reverberate throughout the work. The chords are both obvious and subtle. Immediately, with a pattern of silver-gray compasses and directional stars, the doublures repeat the cover’s black and silver notes but on a less textured paper. Curiously the fly leaves of the doublures are not really fly leaves because they are pasted at their fore edges to separate leaves of black paper: a subtle hint to look beneath the surface, inquire into the mechanics. (An irresistible side note on the mechanics of the binding: the binder Daniel E. Kelm, in tipping the black fly leaf to the outer printed one, extends the fly leaf further into the book as a tipped-on hinge inserted through the first two signatures. The detailed image below on the right shows the hinging edge of the fly leaf between the signatures.)
L-R: Inside back cover, doublure with compass and directional star motif; Inside front cover, doublure leaf anchored to fly leaf; Binding detailed view of hinging edge of fly leaf extending between signatures.
Following that almost-Chinese fold of a flyleaf, the half-title drops any pretense of hinting. Turning the half-title with its 3×4 grid of black, brown, tan and gray squares on translucent paper reveals that the squares have been created by printing in silver, copper, light brown tint and no ink on the reverse. Underneath the half-title leaf lies another black page with the recurring silver-gray image of four buckets linked by their handles. The pattern of buckets is parallel to the interlinked image of compass and directional star on the doublures. It is another subtle hint: this time, to look at patterns for their similarities and differences arising from the mechanics of effects, to consider the commonality of tools whether at the low or high end of culture.
