Books On Books Collection – Laure Catugier

A Never-Ending Stone (2025)

A wrapped book titled 'A Never-Ending Stone' by Laure Catognet, published in 2025, displayed on a black background.

A Never-Ending Stone (2025)
Laure Catugier
Open spine, dos-à-dos with grey bookbinding board. 210 x H260 x 210 mm. 104 pages. Edition of 250. Acquired from Einbuch Haus, 3 December 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

A Never-Ending Stone is Laure Catugier’s first monographic catalog. Her skill with collage, alignment, shadows, materials, and the book format transform it into an artist’s book very much driven by her fascination with architecture and especially the architectural theories and practice of Oskar and Zofia Hansen. The Hansens eclectically embraced “human-scale” architecture, “environment art”, and what they called the “open form” structure, using space and time as its key elements. The Hansens also proposed that the architect should not be the all-knowing expert but should partner with clients as co-authors of their space, respecting how their interior and outside activities and relations with one another defined them and their space. Though somewhat a forerunner to User-Centered Design, Open Form radically aimed at structures that would evolve with interaction with the user and, as they unfolded, also align with nature.

For Catugier and the book form, this translates into “no hierarchy between elements; each element influences the next and modifies the original situation … no table of contents, no beginning, and no end, no reading direction: the usual order of the book is upset” (Catugier, p.9). Her publisher einBuch.haus chimes in: “By superimposing and intersecting lines through collage, Catugier multiplies the potential variations of form. Playing with scale, perspective, and framing, she disrupts the conventional Cartesian coordinates of the x, y, and z axes”.

Variable page height and width combined with exacting registration form the key with which Catugier unlocks her superimpositions, intersections, collage, and disruptions. Below is a set of spreads that demonstrates this.

Above, in the spread on the left, the triangular image that falls on the recto page is actually a small folio to itself. The triangle’s right-hand edge aligns with the shadow of the image below it. This becomes apparent when the small folio is turned to the left, and now its verso image of shadows aligns with the shadow between the air-conditioning units (the small turned folio now hides nearer of the units).

A minimalist layout featuring images of architectural elements, including a projecting ledge and a small red balcony, arranged on a white background.

An open booklet showing two photographs, one featuring architectural elements in black and white with intersecting lines and textures, and another showcasing a red column against a dark background, both arranged on white pages.

Above, in the spread on the left, a small folio displays the russet concrete window box that seems to hang above the same-colored concrete pillar. When the small folio is turned to the left, the shadow on its verso page aligns with the shadow of a balcony to create the appearance of a building’s corner.

Given these architectural snapshots presented as dynamic collages echoing the Hansens’ theories, Catugier’s degrees in architecture and design at the École Nationale Supérieure d´Architecture de Toulouse are no surprise. Her turn to photography and then video, performance, installations and finally to artist’s books has been fortunate, in particular, for book art. The dos-à-dos structure of A Never-Ending Stone neatly echoes her trajectory. The title and choice of board for the covers reflect more specifically the architectural element. It was the French engineer and builder François Coignet (1814-88), one of the early inventors of concrete in France, who described it as “a never-ending stone.”

Bracketing the 28 folios that perform the dynamic collages above are an essay by Anna-Lena Wenzel covering Catugier’s background in architecture, photography, performance, video, installation, and book design, and an interview with curator Moritz Küng highlighting from the start another Catugier passion that also has its inspiration in Oskar Hansen’s architectural work: music and sound.

Architecture is Frozen Music # (2023)

Architecture is Frozen Music # (2023)
Laure Catugier
“Open Form” binding (French fold cover with slot fastening; two pamphlet-sewn booklets attached to verso and recto edges of cover with staggered top and bottom margins). Cover: H230 x W270 mm (closed), W575 mm (open); Pamphlet verso: H197 x W180 mm (closed), W330 mm (open); Pamphlet recto: H197 x W204 mm (closed), W384 mm (open). [8] pages in each pamphlet. Edition of 100, of which this is #41. Acquired from einBuch.Haus, 1 October 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the publisher.

Hansen was commissioned to design a music pavilion “that would reflect contemporary thinking in music”, which he translated into a “search for ” ‘time and space’ qualities in music” [and a structure that would picture] the spatiality of music … enabling viewers to search for their ‘audio’ place and simultaneously experience visual transformations — to be in audio-visual space-time, and later on he would refer to design as “compos[ing] space like music” (Scott, pp. 140-47).

Catugier’s Architecture is Frozen Music project translates Hansen’s analogy into her installations and artist’s books. In Architecture is Frozen Music # (2023), she adds a French fold structure that engages the techniques of variable page height and width, registration, and dynamic collage across two facing interleaving booklets. Even the book’s fastening (see above) participates in the registration and dynamic collage techniques, which can be further appreciated by turning over the extended French fold cover (see below).

An open book or pamphlet displaying abstract graphic designs, including a clock face with minimalistic numbers and hands, set against a textured brown background.

French fold cover opened, displaying two booklets interleaved. Note the fastening slot on the left.

An artistic book spread featuring black and white architectural illustrations, with a textured brown background and printed text detailing the title and creator.

The two booklets separated, revealing the colophon. Note the difference in margins above and below from one booklet to the other, facilitated by the structure’s two spines.

A monochromatic collage of architectural spaces featuring geometric shapes and contrasting shadows, including walls, pathways, and textured surfaces.

Reverse of the extended French-fold cover, showing the collaged images that form the dynamic collage on the front of the closed book.

When the two booklets’ pages are turned, the differences in the top and bottom margins, the size of the leaves, and their positioning on the two spines become more evident.

A series of illustrated pages in a book, featuring black and white architectural sketches, including a figure climbing a wall and various building structures.

Below, the linear registration across the overlapping leaves of the two booklets suggest lined music sheets with the collage in the center playing the role of an oversized treble clef and musical note and enacting the title’s assertion that architecture is frozen music. Structure and image meet metaphor.

A collage of black and white architectural photographs featuring stairs, railings, and geometric patterns, arranged on a textured brown background.

Architecture is Frozen Music (2022)

A textured, light gray book cover with the text 'ARCHITECTURE IS FROZEN MUSIC' written in white on the bottom right corner.

Architecture is Frozen Music (2022)
Laure Catugier
Thin cardboard box; four pamphlet-sewn signatures attached to poster stock cut and folded into four overlapping flaps. Box: H218 x W258 mm; Cover: H210 xW250 mm (closed); Verso signature: H145 x W190 mm (closed); Recto signature: H155 x W190 mm (closed); Bottom signature: H162 x W172 mm (closed); Top signature: H210 x W170 mm (closed). All heights measured along sewn edge. [8] pages to each signature. Edition of 30, of which this is #14/30. Acquired from einBuch.Haus, 1 October 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the publisher.

Preceding Architecture is Frozen Music # (2023), which was part of that year’s AMBruno Project, an even more complex and smaller editioned version of Architecture is Frozen Music appeared. In every sense, it was occasioned by exhibitions of the same title. Its cover is even a fragment of an artwork made of poster paper for one of the exhibitions. It exemplifies what Dick Higgins described in 1965 and 1981: intermediality.* It also exemplifies Catugier’s interpretation of the Hansens’ concept of “open form”.

An artistic composition featuring an envelope partially opened, revealing a geometric design inside that includes stairs and architectural elements.

Book closed.

An artistic representation of a window with a grid design, printed on a flat surface resembling a fragmented paper layout.

Reverse side of extended cover. Note the binding threads along the four spines/folds.

The binding and interleaving of four pamphlet-sewn signatures, each to an edge of the square in the middle of the cover, facilitates this “open form” book. On first opening it, there is, of course, a page on top. To that degree, the artist has imposed a beginning, and once all of each signature’s pages have been turned, there seems to be an end.

A collection of layered black and white architectural photographs arranged within an open envelope on a wooden surface.

An arrangement of architectural images and sketches displayed on a wooden surface, featuring various perspectives of buildings and structural designs.

Top: book open to four interleaved signatures. Bottom: All four signatures’ pages turned.

But go back to the opening. Although the structure imposes a first page to turn, it also offers four different orientations the reader could adopt. In the orientation below, the first page turns upwards, but with a 90° reorientation to the left, it would turn as a Western codex is expected to do. Another 90°, and the first page would turn downwards. And with a third 90°, it would open as an Eastern codex is expected to do.

We might turn to the idea of the fugue as a rough analogy for this particular “open form” book. A fugue generally has a “subject” (or main theme), an “exposition” in which voices or instruments each play out the subject, then an “episode” (or connecting passages) that builds on the previous material, then further alternating “entries” in which the subject is heard in related keys until a final entry that returns to opening key. Like the fugue, Catugier’s “open form” book is more a style of composition than a structural form.

Catugier’s main theme is “architecture is frozen music”. Her technique of dynamic collages creates a “fugal” effect with at least six elements or motifs or voices. One is the architectural motif (balcony, window, stairs, vents, or even furniture such as a chair) displayed. Another is the source or direction of light. Another is the alignment of shadows cast by the architectural motifs. Another is a geometric motif arising from the motifs of architecture, light, and shadow. Another is the dimension of the folios in the signatures. And yet another is the position of the signatures along the spines.

Below in the opening of the book, the architectural motif of an external staircase “sounds” out the subject on the first page. The geometric voice picks out a circular opening atop a rectangular column crossed by parallelograms ending in square balconies. The voice of signature placement aligns and extends the rectangular column with another column on an underlying signature’s top page. When the first page is turned (upwards), the voices of folio dimension, direction of light, and shadows come into play, and we find that the underlying column has been truncated and is perpendicular to a bright column of light on a wider structure receding into shadow. The architectural voice counterpoints the perpendicular columns with stairs slanting away from them at 45°. When the bottom signature’s top page is turned (downwards), those stairs are almost fully “sounded” on the right while the balconies motif returns in the downturned bottom signature.

A collection of black and white architectural photographs arranged on a wooden surface, showcasing various building elements and textures.

A collection of overlapping black and white photographs showcasing various architectural features, arranged on a wooden surface.

Left: book open to four interleaved signatures. Right: top signature’s first page turned (upwards).

The balconies motif increases in volume as the left signature’s top page turns (leftwards) to display a balcony grating and reveal another balcony in the center.

Left: bottom signature’s first page turned (downwards). Right: verso signature’s first page turned (leftwards).

From the view on the right above to the view below, the turning of the right signature’s top page (rightwards) reveals two more balconies. We now have a passage of balcony motifs moving from left to right like musical notes on a score.

An arrangement of architectural sketches in grayscale featuring various building elements like balconies, windows, and arches, displayed on a wooden surface.

Recto signature’s first page turned (rightwards).

The spread below provides an example of the geometric motif at work. In this view, the center of the open book presents a circular ornament, rectangles of bricks, window squares in a shadowed door, and a small triangle of shadow to the ornament’s lower right. In the overlapping pages above the center are small triangles and arcs alongside rectangles and squares. Below the center are a large broken circle of light on a black square page, and, beside that, the truncated rectangles of a balcony. The geometric parallels running from the top, the center, and to the bottom are matched by another set of geometric parallels formed by stair-stepping shadows moving from the left signature, across the center in the bricks, and onto the right signature’s shadows in the steps leading to the door. Across the harmonizing center, the top and bottom of the open book perform a counterpoint of breaking geometric forms to the theme of stair-stepping shadows from left to right.

A collage of black and white architectural photographs arranged on a wooden surface, showcasing various structural elements such as stairs, windows, and walls.

Geometric motifs.

There are as well, of course, geometric parallels between the top and left, the bottom and left, and between the top and right, and the bottom and right, but enough of verbal description of the visual music. Each of the signatures and motifs can be “heard” in its own right. Likewise, each view of the open book can be “heard” in its own right. And likewise, as each page turns, new harmonies and counterpoints can be “heard”. It all leaves us with the question to be debated, to paraphrase Douglas Hofstadter’s reflection in the “Ant Fugue” chapter in Gödel Escher Bach: Is the book more than the hum of its parts? What is certain is that, in bringing together architecture, music, photography, and the book, Architecture is Frozen Music offers an exceptional example of the artist’s book as intermedia.

*“Intermedia” is a term adopted by Dick Higgins from Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1812 used “to define works which fall conceptually between media that are already known” but useful to Higgins in demystifying the avant-garde.

Split (2025)

A clear plastic envelope containing a folded sheet of paper with the word 'SPLIT' printed on it, alongside markings indicating a limited edition and the name 'Laure Cattier.'

Split (2025)
Laure Catugier
Pamphlet-sewn star book. H170 x W150 mm. [32] pages.Edition of 22, of which this is #2. Acquired from einBuch.haus, 1 October 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the publisher.

Split (2025) is another stab at the “open form” book. As a pamphlet-sewn star book without a front or back cover, it has no beginning or end.

An open book with multiple pages arranged in a fan shape, displaying various words printed on each page.

An overhead view of an open book with multiple pages fanned out in a star-like arrangement against a dark background.

It has sixteen double-page spreads. Each has a word in the upper right corner and an image in the center. Four spreads are the same, showing the word SPLIT and the binding’s single thick black thread. The heavy black thread is the drawing that illustrates the word or that the word defines or implies. In between those four, three spreads appear, each using the binding’s thread as part of the drawing on the double-page spread.

A view of a closed booklet with a black string binding, labeled 'SPLIT' on the cover.

The subjects of the drawings in each of the triads do not seem related to one another, but there is a progression from one drawing to the next. CEMETERY only requires one line intersecting the binding thread to construct the image suggesting it, ARROW requires two more lines, and KITE requires yet two more. The next triad — PATH, PHARMACY, CITY MAP — requires one line, then three, and then eight. The next triad — COMPASS, SNOW, WHEEL — requires one, then three, and one more. The next triad — DEAD END, BEAM, WINDOW — requires one, then one more, and finally two more.

An open booklet with the word 'CEMETERY' printed on the right page, and a simple cross drawn in brown ink across the center.

An open card with a simple drawing of a triangular arrow shape and the word 'ARROW' printed on the right side.

An open blank card with the word 'SPLIT' printed in black on the right page, featuring a black thread binding.

Many star book structures have front and back covers, so even if the text and images suggest no beginning or end, the covers undermine it. When exploring SPLIT, however, whether the reader chooses to turn the pages codex-style or carousel-style and whether the reader chooses the direction of adding lines or subtracting them from the images encountered, there is no beginning or end.

These four artist’s books demonstrate that Laure Catugier has found an effective muse in the Hansens’ open-form architectural theory. Her intermedial thinking, design skills, and craftsmanship have responded with inventive and outstanding artwork. It deserves a wide audience.

Bookmarking Book Art – John Eric Broaddus

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John Eric Broaddus (1943 1990) was perhaps one of the most inventive and creative artists to approach the book form. He was a prominent figure in the New York City art scene in the 1970s and 1980s, creating books before the book form even had a suggestion of acceptance in the art world. He also created one-of-a-kind costumes that he wore out on the streets of New York and in iconic places like Studio 54. He was vibrant, outlandish, and did much to contribute to the world of artistic interplay in New York City of that time. His inspired life was cut short by AIDS in 1990. but his legacy lives on in the work he left behind, a muse in itself for book artists even twenty years later.” Visual AIDS

Since first seeing references to and images of John Broaddus’ artist’s books in 2012, I have watched for opportunities to add his work to the Books On Books Collection. So many of his artist’s books were unique works and already in institutional collections or private hands, it would be a long watch. In late 2025, this appeared: “Achingly scarce work from a major figure in the early book arts movement. Minimal shelf/edge wear, else tight, bright, and unmarred. Shape book (human hand), grey painted boards, black ink lettering, cut paper forms.”

Handbook (1980)

Handbook (1980)
John Eric Broaddus
Hand-shaped boards over hand-shaped painted and cut pages, nailed tape hinge. Variable: H123 x W205 mm. [10] pages. Limited edition, unknown quantity. Acquired from Lux Mentis, 3 December 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

A colorful artistic representation of a hand, with one side painted red and the other side painted green with various patterns and markings, set against a black background.

A stylized hand sculpture featuring a colorful, patterned palm on one side and a plain gray back on a black background.

Inside front cover, first page. Last page, inside back cover.

Hand stencils may be the oldest art form. Those below from the Cuevas de las Manos in Argentina are 9,300 years old. More recent discoveries in Indonesia go back 67,800 years (Oktaviana). So no surprise that kindergarteners and book artists have carried on the tradition.

Cave wall covered with ancient handprints in various colors, showcasing prehistoric art.

Drawings at the Cuevas de las Manos in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina.
Photo: Mariano – Own work, Public Domain.

Artistic book titled 'Handbound' by Allison Smith, featuring a unique cover design that incorporates a glove attached to the book's spine.

From Keith Smith’s Structure of the Visual Book (1994).

A unique book design featuring two metallic hand shapes as covers, with a red spine and numerous pages visible in between, some pages displaying text.

A unique artistic representation of a book resembling a pair of gloves, with white fabric and intricate stitching details, standing upright against a dark background.

Miriam Schaer’s Book of Common Prayer (1996); Jules Allen’s The Book of White (2020?); Mary Kritz’s A Show of Hands (2023?).

Broaddus’ Handbook (1983) joined the tradition “before the book form even had a suggestion of acceptance in the art world”, as the dealer’s announcement points out. He produced this as one of a limited edition, but the number is uncertain. What is certain, given the painted pages and their various perforations, each copy must be unique. Two of them reside with John Cutrone (Florida Atlantic University) and others with the Jack Ginsberg Center, the University of Southern California, and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

I noticed in my copy that the third out of five folios was missing the third digit’s tip. Was it a faulty copy? Was I due a discount from the dealer? Or was it deliberate? Was the third digit’s treatment common to all the copies, making a flippant flipping off by the artist?

With Broaddus’ penchant for the outré, I liked that last interpretation, but having misinterpreted an artist’s book on more than one occasion, I asked the other collections for comparisons. John Cutrone kindly provided images of his copies so that I could check for myself. Disappointed to say, but the bird fingers in Cutrone’s copies were intact. Still, I might warm to the interpretation that my copy with its unique and precisely placed gesture is the culmination of the edition.

The Books On Books Collection copy

A colorful artistic representation of a hand, featuring one side painted red and the other green with intricate designs and patterns.

As a glance at FAU’s videos of Broaddus’ The Jell-O Book (1973) and Sphinx and the Bird of Paradise (1981-91) will confirm, his color palette is distinctive. Handbook is an enthusiastic celebration of it.

A colorful, abstract depiction of open hands in a layered design, featuring various shapes and cutouts against a black background.

The circular, square, and rectangular perforations may have been created with an eXacto knife, one of Broaddus’ frequently used tools. The missing one-third of the middle digit on the recto page, however, appears to have been torn away.

Artistic depiction of two open hands, one side painted with vibrant colors and patterns including red and blue shapes, and the other side featuring a contrasting design with geometric shapes and dots.

Recto page missing one-third of middle digit.

An open book with two hand-shaped pages, one side painted green with colorful patterns and cutouts, the other side painted blue with geometric shapes and dots.

Verso page missing one-third of middle digit.

The close patterns of circular perforations on several of the pages suggest band-aids (plasters). Perhaps he was indeed using an eXacto knife.

A colorful, artistic representation of two hands, painted with various patterns and colors, including red, green, blue, and white, against a black background.

Throughout, the painted and cut patterns combine to create a kaleidoscope. There is no “on the one hand” or “on the other hand” thought process here but rather Broaddus’ many-handed guide to the fun an artist’s handbook can be.

A two-sided artistic representation of a hand, with one side painted in bright colors and patterns, while the other side is a plain gray.

“The Tongue and Heart th’intention oft divide:
The Hand and Meaning ever are ally’de”.
(Guil. Diconson, from Bulwer’s Chirologia)

[t]he hand does not only grasp and catch, or push and pull. The hand reaches and extends, receives and welcomes — and not just things: the hand extends itself, and receives its own welcome in the hands of others. The hand holds. The hand carries … [e]very motion of the hand in every one of its works carries itself through the element of thinking, every bearing of the hand bears itself in that element. All the work of the hand is rooted in thinking.
(Martin Heidegger from What is Called Thinking?)

… what the artist’s hand, the craftsman’s hand, the poet or scholar’s hand, and the lover’s hand has always been: a means of marking, touching, selecting, interacting, molding, expressing, and refusing that remains essential to human thinking …
(Tyrus Miller from CrossPollenBlog)

Books On Books Collection – Anne-Catherine Fallen

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The Lively Dance (1983)

A vertical view of a grey booklet titled 'THE LIVELY DANCE' secured with a thin bamboo stick.

The Lively Dance (1983)
Anne-Catherine Fallen
Handbound book, sewn; endflaps secured at fore edge with bamboo twig to create wedge-shaped book. Laid flat, H223 x W157 mm; wedge fore edge, W75 mm. [18] pages. Edition of 200. Acquired from Stand 132, Zurich. 18 January 2026.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with the artists permission.

The Lively Dance is an elaborate and simple artist’s book. It consists of an eleven-line poem arranged across ten of eighteen pages displaying a stand of bamboo. Four pleated sheets of translucent paper, also displaying the stand of bamboo, overlap and bind those ten pages at the fore edge. Here is the book’s opening double-page spread with the translucent overlay first in place and then pulled back to reveal the poem’s invitation: “Come join the solemn dance”.

Open book displaying a printed image of bamboo leaves on one page, with translucent paper covering the other page.

COME JOIN THE SOLEMN DANCE

An open book with blank pages, showing a textured light gray background.

The second double-page spread with translucent overlays in place.

Lifting and holding back each translucent overlay, the reader/viewer may have the sense of wading into a stand of bamboo. Although each double-page spread displays the same image of bamboo, the overall impression is otherwise because the images on the translucent overlays differ from the one repeating underneath. Also slowing the perception of the sameness of that image underneath (or behind) the overlays, the text is physically and syntactically scattered. The eye jumps about to find the text and, having found it, jumps back and forth with its syntactic ambiguity. Is it that “the sun dances / leaping lightly over the leaves”, or is it that “leaping lightly over the leaves, we will dance”? Undoubtedly, it is both. If you have ever peered into the confusing density of a stand of bamboo, you will recognize that the syntactic jumping around echoes the visual jumping around as the eye tries to sort out the foreground from the background and vice versa.

A printed page featuring bamboo leaves in a soft green tone with text. The top text reads 'THE LIVELY DANCE' and the bottom text says 'leaping lightly over the leaves, we will dance.'

THE LIVELY DANCE
the sun dances
leaping lightly over the leaves, we will dance

An open notebook with blank, textured pages featuring a subtle pattern.

A close-up of bamboo leaves with a faded green overlay, featuring text that reads 'inhale the bitter breath' and 'the wind drifts' placed artistically among the foliage.

INHALE THE BITTER BREATH
the wind drifts
whispering gently through the leaves, we will drift

Open book pages with a textured, light-colored background.

A close-up view of bamboo leaves in soft focus, with text overlay that reads 'THE SWEET BREATH' and 'the shadows sleep' on the left, and 'settling softly on the leaves, we will sleep' at the bottom.

THE SWEET BREATH
the shadows sleep
settling softly on the leaves, we will sleep

A close-up view of an open book showing a faded, artistic representation of bamboo leaves on a translucent page, with a textured background.

RELEASE

Stood upright, the book makes it difficult to access the underlying text and images, but it adds a sculptural dance that complements the memory of what has been read and viewed in codex fashion with the book laid flat. It also reveals another and crucial set of images. Closed, the book’s wedge shape created by the twig-fastened flaps gave a clue to that other set of images. Opened, the book’s pleated attachment of pairs of folios reiterated the clue to our fingers as we paged through the codex structure.

Close-up view of a book with textured green pages, partially open, sitting on a wooden surface.

An open book with textured green and patterned pages, displayed on a wooden surface.

Behind the pleated translucent attachment with its faint green images of the bamboo forest, we find sepia images of the forest’s interior. Like the image on the double-page spreads, the sepia images are really only one repeating image. We can only view it from the top or bottom edge of the book. Looking down, we see the brown individual trunks or stems of the trees rising from the forest floor.

An artistic display of textured paper folded into multiple sections, arranged in a fan shape against a dark background.

An open accordion-style book with textured green and beige pages, showcasing a bamboo forest illustration.

An open book with pages displaying textured designs, featuring natural elements and colors, resting on a wooden surface against a dark background.

A close-up view of an open book displaying textured pages with a blend of earthy colors and natural imagery.

Looking from the bottom edge, we can see the forest floor.

One other view or step in the dance can be had with the upright display. If the cover flaps are refastened to bring the book into a star book display with the translucent overlay’s pages pulled out and its pleated edges pinched together, we have the dense stand of bamboo in the round with its sepia interior hidden away.

By now, all this playing with the codex laid flat and stood upright will have prised apart the text and perhaps reminded the reader/viewer of the meaning of other woods “lovely, dark and deep”.

Fallen describes The Lively Dance on her website here. Among her observations on her site, she notes that her house is surrounded by bamboo. Except for one entry displaying snow on bamboo, The Lively Dance seems to be her primary artistic celebration of it. It is a celebration that provides a dual personal pleasure in the collection. When I am exploring the book, I am reminded of the local stand of bamboo and its density. When I am passing the bamboo on the daily dog walks, I am reminded of The Lively Dance.

Dense bamboo foliage with tall green leaves and slender brown stems.

East Hagbourne, Oxfordshire

Books On Books Collection – Tony Broad

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Parallel Orders of Architecture (2024)

An architectural diagram illustrating classical column orders, featuring detailed engravings and a title label reading 'PARALLEL OF ORDERS OF ARCHITECTURE'.

Parallel Orders of Architecture (2024)
Tony Broad
Box with illustrated paper over boards with title board pastedown on top; enclosing three volumes. First volume: double-sided accordion with single- and triple panel inserts. Second volume: pop-up between illustrated paper over boards with magnet closure. Third volume: pop-up within French-fold box covered with illustrated paper over boards with magnet closure. Box: H137 x W413 x D45 mm. First volume: H130 x W110 x D30 mm. Second volume: H130 x W120 mm. Third volume: H130 x W120 x D38 mm. First volume: 60 panels. Second volume: spiral pop-up. Third volume: 4-layer pop-up. Unique. Acquired from the artist, 23 July 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Tony Broad’s Parallel Orders of Architecture (2024) consists of three differently structured volumes enclosed in a handmade illustrated box. The first is a double-sided accordion with single- and triple-panel inserts on both sides. The second is a single-panel pop-up book. The third is a variant on the tunnel book. With the raised outlay on its cover and the platformed interior, the box offers yet another order of structure that runs in parallel with the architectural orders from which Broad draws his inspiration.

A decorative box featuring a design of architectural drawings, including columns and classical elements, with the title 'Parallel of Orders of Architecture' prominently displayed.

Top of cover and interior of box.

A collection of intricately designed boxes featuring architectural patterns, displayed on a wooden surface. The main box is open, revealing additional compartments and a ribbon for easy access.

The three volumes placedd atop box cover; empty interior of box.

A collection of three intricately designed pop-up books featuring detailed architectural illustrations in black and white. The first book depicts a grand corridor with columns, the second contains abstract geometric shapes, and the third showcases ornate patterns and classical elements.

The three works: accordion, pop-up, and modified tunnel book.

The kaleidoscope of perspective and viewpoints offered in the accordion volume echoes the effects of Giambattista Piranesi’s Carceri d’invenzione (1745-61), especially those in the second edition. Where Piranesi invented his architectural fantasies with pen and burin, Broad relies on collage with reproductions and on book structure. For the collage work, he reproduces prints from Perspective (1604-05) by Jan Vredeman de Vries and A Parallel of the Orders of Architecture (1936) by Charles Normand.

An engraved portrait of a bearded man with curly hair, framed within an oval. The surrounding text includes Latin phrases discussing optics and vision. The image is part of a larger page featuring illustrations and artistic descriptions.

An illustrated title page for a book on perspective, featuring ornate architectural designs, decorative elements, and Latin text describing the art of perspective.

Broad’s sources of inspiration and images: left column, Charles Normand’s A Parallel of the Orders of Architecture; right column, Vredeman de Vries’ Perspective.

The accordion’s panels and its inserts play with Normand’s and Vredeman’s illustrations to generate labyrinthine and impossible structures. Staircases disappear. Valley folds sometimes reinforce, sometimes defeat, vanishing points. Arches wrap over mountain folds, coming forward and receding at the same time. Cutouts and notches in the panels multiply the views, but what can be viewed through the cutouts are parts of other panels whose perspectival lines sometimes extend, sometimes clash with, those of the framing cutout.

A three-dimensional book displaying intricate architectural illustrations featuring columns, arches, and tiled floors, arranged to create a visually engaging perspective.

A detailed artistic representation of a three-dimensional architectural scene depicted in a folded format, showcasing columns, arches, and textured floors in monochrome.

Front and rear views of the extended accordion book.

An open artist's book featuring intricate black-and-white architectural illustrations, displaying columns and arches in a zigzag format on a wooden surface.

Center: valley fold reinforcing the vanishing point. Left and right: cutouts giving onto contrasting views.

Arches wrapping over mountain folds. Notch emphasizing horizon line.

The placement of single- and triple-panel inserts adds additional asymmetry. On the front of the accordion, moving from left to right, we have an insert sequence of triple-triple-single-triple-single. On the reverse side, moving in the same direction, we have a sequence of single-triple-triple-triple. Whether perceived by turning the accordion pages codex-style or viewing their extension from above, the asymmetry of the inserts runs parallel to a symmetry of recurrent spreads and a mirror-image symmetry created by image reversal.

A handmade accordion-style book featuring intricate pen illustrations of architectural interiors, showcasing arches and tiled floors.

Asymmetry of panel inserts seen from above.

Mirror-image symmetry.

The second and slimmest of the three books turns attention to columns, with its front cover displaying half of an inverted base of a Composite Order column alongside half of a capital of an Ionic Order column. When the magnetically sealed front and back covers are prized apart, a complete Ionic capital pops up, or at least the suggestion of one created by the joining of cross-sections of two volutes.

Artistic interpretation of architectural elements featuring detailed sketches of columns and decorative motifs, arranged in a dimensional format.

Second volume displayed against a background of the first volume.

A detailed pop-up book featuring architectural diagrams and illustrations, with intricate folds and designs visible on multiple pages, displayed on a wooden surface.

Ionic capital pop up.

The third volume, displayed here against the first volume extended, highlights the Corinthian Order with the acanthus leaves and stalks that decorate its capitals.

A collection of folded paper art pieces arranged in a circle, featuring intricate architectural illustrations and a central cover with stylized botanical patterns.

Third volume displayed against background of the first volume.

When the magnetically sealed French fold cover opens, the Corinthian capital appears in two halves that will spread apart to reveal in tunnel-book fashion a headless Greek or Roman statue. The double visual pun on the leaf-covered capital hiding the caput-less but still well-endowed fig-leafless statue adds to the delight at the tunnel book’s action.

A pop-up book display featuring intricate architectural designs with columns and foliage, set against a perspective backdrop.

The Corinthian capital.

A three-dimensional pop-up book displaying intricate architectural designs with columns and a central statue.

The Corinthian capital split to reveal a caput-less and figleaf-less statue.

The views available by rearranging the accordion book on its own or by arranging displays with the other two books seem endless. Having received the

Broad’s plinth box and three artist’s book structures underscore his parallels of symmetry and asymmetry, his visual puns, and his originality. Parallel Orders of Architecture deserves its own slowly rotating plinth to offer maximum.

An artistic arrangement of a folded book displaying architectural photographs, shaped into a star-like form, placed on a wooden surface.

Recipient of the UK Society of Bookbinders’ John Purcell Award, 1st Prize, in 2024,

Chaos (2023)

A side view of a brown box labeled 'Chaos' in a decorative font, placed on a wooden surface.

Chaos (2023)
Tony Broad
Box: H200 x W170 x D70 mm. Modified flagbook: H145 x variable W90-180 mm. 44 folds. Unique. Acquired from the artist. 23 July 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Similar to the paradox of symmetry and aysmmetry in The Parallel Orders of Architecture, Broad’s next work offers us chaos — simultaneously contained and exploding, bound and unbound, intact and shattered, in color and black-and-white, linear and cyclical, dark and translucent. It contrasts a derelict pier (Hotwells Dock in Bristol) with a working pier (parallel to Glaisher Street, upstream from Deptford Creek, London).

A wooden table with an orange box containing several envelopes with images inside, labeled 'Chaos.'

An orange box containing photographs and artwork organized inside, with one visible cover labeled 'Chaos'.

Front cover and back cover.

Broad blends artist’s book structures in Chaos. An accordion of translucent parchment anchors the construction from the front cover to back cover. From either end, another accordion, cut on a slant, overlays the translucent accordion. Both the overlying and underlying accordions depict the working London pier. Images of the derelict Bristol pier occupy the orange-tinted center. Midway to that center, the overlaid accordion yields place to a modified flag book structure, which eventually takes over the center of the book.

An open artist's book featuring a series of layered photographs in shades of black, white, and orange, arranged in a folding format on a wooden table.

Chaos extended.

A zigzag folding photo book with black and white images, placed on a wooden surface with a hint of a title visible.

A close-up image of a fanned-out stack of black and white photographs, showcasing various historical scenes and details.

Details of the darker cut accordion folded over the lighter parchment accordion.

A folded photographic artwork featuring black and white images of a pier, showcasing structural details against a textured background.

A folded book or art piece featuring black and white photographs, displayed on a wooden surface.

The point at which the layered accordions shift into a four-row flag book.

The flag book structure is well-suited to weaving multiple impressions together. The layered accordions build up to this ingeniously with multiple impressions of their own. Their images of the working pier are not aligned, so already we have multiple impressions. Also, from the center of the book, we have a split-view perspective, looking out to the end of the pier simultaneously on the left and on the right.

An art book with a textured cover in muted colors, fanned open to reveal a series of black and white photographs printed on translucent pages, depicting wooden structures and water reflections.

A folded book showcasing a black and white photograph of pier supports, with reflections on water, next to a textured cover with abstract colors.

Split-view perspective. Detail from front cover moving right; detail from back cover moving left.

After the two layered accordion books become a four-row flag book, Broad introduces another effective transformation. As the structure approaches the center, a horizontally folded flag replaces the single-sheet flag in each of the four rows. In addition to intensifying the imagery, the combination draws further attention to the downward view into the water and the outward view to the end of the working pier.

A series of black and white photographs arranged in a 3D folding structure, showcasing various views of wooden supports and structures, displayed on a wooden surface.

A pop-up book structure made of black and white photographs, displaying various images that extend outward. The pages are intricately arranged, creating a dynamic three-dimensional effect against a wooden surface.

The point at which the single-sheet flag shifts to a horizontally folded flag.

Broad does not stop there. At the center of the book, where the orange-tinted images of the derelict pier appear, he introduces angular folds and cuts. These have the effect of chaos exploding from the center of the book.

An artistic installation featuring layered paper images with abstract designs in orange, black, and white, displayed on a wooden surface.

Harmonic chaos, chaotic harmony?

Finally, Chaos comes with an envelope of offcut shards to be scattered as display permits. Some of the shards bear the words from the book’s outside back cover, which gives the overall structure and its contrast of the two piers an enigmatic emotional coloring. The viewer wonders whether the author/artist once stood at the end of the now derelict pier and now stands in dreams at the end of the working pier.

An artistic display of folded paper resembling a book or sculpture, featuring a mix of colors and textures. Surrounding the main piece are paper strips with printed phrases like 'no longer', 'I can sail to you', and 'I search for you in dreams'.

An artistic display featuring a sculptural book made of layered, folded paper in various colors, arranged in a wave-like formation with scattered pieces nearby.

Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

36 Days of Type (2019)

A decorative letter 'Q' made of various colorful postage stamps, showcasing images of royalty and differing denominations against a brown background.

36 Days of Type (2019)
Tony Broad
Accordion with hardcover and raised letter Q. 110 mm square, D20 mm. [38] panels. Acquired from the artist, 23 July 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

A welcome addition to the collection’s artists’ books inspired by the alphabet.

Four colorful images in a row: the first features piano keys on a blue background, the second shows illuminated text reading 'one' on a textured background, the third displays a stylized letter 'J' in blue on a light background, and the fourth presents the letter 'G' in pink.

Key of D, electric e, flourishing f, and geometric g.

A collection of four colorful graphic designs featuring the letters H, I, J, and K, each with unique artistic styles and backgrounds.

Holographic H, incandescent i, blue j, and kingly k.

A colorful page featuring the number 5 in a fluffy text style against a gradient background.

Fuzzy 5, sigma 6, sleepy 7, and octo-legged 8.

Books On Books Collection – Sarah Maker

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Within Every Room There is an Echo of the First (2018)

A stack of triangular pyramids made of textured cards, displaying different colors and patterns, set against a dark background.

A small, folded piece of paper or booklet with a textured surface, resting on a dark background.

Within Every Room There is an Echo of the First (2018)
Sarah Maker
Diagonally halved box, painted-paper over millboard, paste paper. H65 x W65 x D65 (closed) mm, W730 (extended diagonally) mm. [45] panels Unique. Acquired from Ink and Awl, Seattle, US, 10 December 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.

This small sculptural artist’s book that enacts its title is an engineered accordion with architectural pencil drawings on paste paper. Every aspect is remarkable. The millboard “cover” is a diagonally halved cube that forms the “corner” of the room from which its echoes will unfold. The accordion spine consists of folded tabs into which the pages are pasted. The pages have been shaped so that as the book is opened (the top page being pulled by its tab), they curve against each other like artichoke leaves and then spread as the angled spine pleats push them outwards.

A sculptural book with a zigzag design, featuring textured pages in shades of gray and purple, resting on a dark surface.

An arrangement of layered, textured paper shapes in various shades of brown and gray, placed on a dark background.

A collection of variously shaped and colored wooden pieces arranged in an overlapping pattern, showcasing a range of natural hues and textures.

An artistic arrangement of layered, folded paper pages in varying shades of gray, pink, and brown, fanned out and partially stacked.

A close-up of several folded paper pieces arranged in a spiral, showcasing a mix of brown and reddish tones on a black background.

A series of abstract, curved metal shapes arranged in a zigzag pattern, showcasing a gradient of muted colors from gray to bronze against a dark background.

The engineering recalls the ingenuity of Benjamin Elbel, Ed Hutchins, and Hedi Kyle, and Within Every Room exemplifies what happens when “material meets metaphor” in the hands and mind of an original book artist. The phrase comes from Richard Minsky, founder of the Center for Book Arts in New York, whose path Maker seems to be following and extending in Seattle, Washington. In 2017, she initiated (and still runs) the online program “areyoubookenough“, a bookbinding challenge to artists to create works within a month that respond to the month’s theme. In the same year, she founded Editions Studio, a community for book artists run by book artists. All that activity — along with Within Every Room and the next work — suggests that this artist is not only a maker but a builder.

The House that Book Built (2018)

Artistic representation of a book shaped like a house, showing the spine and opened pages.

The House that Book Built (2018)
Sarah Maker
Case-bound hard cover, felt and paper over boards, seven stub-sewn gatherings of folios of cotton printmaking paper, six loose twice-folded gatherings of folios of Cave(?) paper inserted between the stub-sewn gatherings. H85 x W105 x D58 mm. [220] pages in stub-sewn gatherings; [96] pages in loose gatherings Unique. Acquired from Ink and Awl, Seattle, US, 10 December 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.

In another connection to Richard Minsky, all of the paper and boards for The House that Book Built were salvaged from recycling at the Center for Book Arts in New York City. Like the book artists’ studios and homes I have seen, The House that Book Built is stuffed to the rafters with its core material. Of course, even the roof and exterior walls enter into the spirit. It would not be the same artwork with a flat roof of asphalt tiles and plexiglas siding.

A small, creative book with a unique shape, featuring a black and gray cover and several blank pages, set against a dark background.

The color of the laid-in folios reminds me of Your House (2006) by Olafur Eliasson, which in turn reminds me how inadequate a simple side-by-side exhibition of the two works would be. Both demand the viewer’s touch.

A closed, blank book with multiple pages, viewed from the side, resting on a dark background.

Below, the laid-in folios have been removed, letting the house exhale and give more visual room to the stud-sewn gatherings of cotton printmaking paper. If viewers were allowed do this in an exhibition, they would be appreciating the contrast between the rough cotton paper and the smoother book paper just removed as well as appreciating how the house front now takes on a semblance to a Gothic window without the stained glass.

A small, book-like object with a dark cover resembling a house, featuring pages that are tightly stacked.

Your House and The House that Book Built both offer the pleasure of nosing through another’s house. Your House invites the viewer to a page-by-page meditation of laser-cut interior space while doing so. Maker’s snug abode offers the Quaker-like contemplation of the homespun that has been spun with tools made by the spinner.

A small, beige cardboard box with an angled interior, placed on a wooden surface next to several circular paper cutouts and a pointed crafting tool.

Punch cradle made specifically to punch the sewing stations for The House that Book Built.
Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Books On Books Collection – Emory Douglas

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Reparations (2010)

Close-up of a small, handmade book with the name 'Emory Douglas' printed in red and a decorative black pattern at the bottom. The book is tied with a piece of string.

Reparations (2010)
Emory Douglas
Cover enclosing leporello. Cover: H102 x W105 mm. Leporello: H89 x W95 mm (closed); W380 mm (open). [4] panels.Edition of 100, of which this is #45. Acquired from the San Francisco Center for the Book, 30 June 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the publisher.

Open book with a textured cover displaying the title 'REPARATIONS' by Emory Douglas, detailing its publication and production information.

“Emory Douglas is renowned for his iconic representations of the Black Panther Party through his work as the Party’s Minister of Culture. For decades, he communicated the power and charisma of the movement through his compelling straightforward graphic style. … The imagery for this edition was initially a painting by Mr. Douglas’ which was then translated into a 2 color, letterpress graphic. The pages of the book are a one-sided, accordion fold piece. The folded cover is made of Amate bark with hand-spun hemp and silk thread and letterpress printed in 2 colors with interior colophon page attached””–San Francisco Center for the Book

A closed art book by Emory Douglas featuring decorative elements, with the title 'REPARATIONS' prominently displayed on an open page. The cover is made of textured paper with a tribal pattern, and the book is tied with twine.

Art piece featuring the word 'REPARATIONS' in bold black letters entwined with red chains, set against a textured background with a black patterned border.

Artistic representation of the word 'REPARATIONS' with stylized figures and red chains, accompanied by a geometric black pattern at the bottom.

A close-up of an open book featuring stylized text spelling 'NATIONS' intertwined with red chains, above a decorative black and white pattern at the bottom. The page is numbered 45/100.

The chains fastened at the neck, wrist, and ankle of each letter and linking each human figure to the next propose a new orthography. What was spilled spells out the case. In the original mural on which this quietly loud artist’s book is based, the chains were colored red, white, and blue.

Happy 250th Anniversary, fellow citizens.

Bookmarking Book Art – Dave Dyment

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An artistic installation by Xu Bing titled 'Book from the Sky,' featuring an open book with text and two wooden boxes beside it. The background is plain white.

Its curatorial element makes Dave Dyment’s Artists’ Books and Multiples site an excellent resource for lovers of book art. Its existence also slyly highlights the recursive nature of his own bookwork. Book art is inherently self-referential. Be it the newspaper, a Kubrick film, a Ruscha work, a Beatles album, pop singles, TV series, photos or crossovers among media — all media constitute Dyment’s palette, brush, canvas, armature, chisel, pen, pencil, camera, sound recorder, surface and raw material for his own book art.

Books On Books Collection – Kara Walker

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Freedom: A fable: A curious interpretation of the wit of a negress in troubled times: with illustrations (1997)

Solid maroon hardcover book lying flat on a wooden surface.

A close-up view of the spine of a thick, red-covered book with embossed lettering.

An open book page featuring the title 'Freedom' by Kara Elizabeth Walker, with the subtitle 'A Curious Interpretation of the Wit of a Negress in Troubled Times' and presented by The Peter Norton Family. The design includes elegant typography with borders.

Freedom: A fable: A curious interpretation of the wit of a negress in troubled times: with illustrations (1997)
Kara Walker
Casebound, leather over boards, with plain doublures. H238 x W210 x D20 mm. [28] pages. Edition of 4000, published by the Peter Norton Christmas Project. Acquired from Los Angeles Modern Auction, 3 September 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

The book as medium has played a minor adjunct role in Kara Walker’s art. Freedom: A fable … (1997) is one of the few exceptions. Its paper engineering lifts Walker’s signature silhouettes off the page physically, and the pop-up’s association with children’s books fits well with Walker’s uneasy blend of humor, horror, the individual and the stereotype. It is also the first of her three-dimensional works, which emerged more frequently around 2007-09 and rose to the monuments of Fons Americanus (2019) and Unmanned Drone (2025).

A three-dimensional paper sculpture depicting a scene with two figures, one in a dark outfit and the other in a light color, interacting amidst stylized trees.

A three-dimensional paper sculpture titled 'Cabin' from 2009, featuring a red figure and various shaped black panels.

Source: Kara Walker, “Riots and Outrages”, The Georgia Review , Spring 2010, 64:1, pp. 59-68. Images courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins and Company, New York.

Freedom goes beyond an illustration of text. Its offset lithographs and five laser-cut pop-up silhouettes on wove paper extend and complicate the fable in the self-reflexive manner often found in artists’ books.

An open book page featuring the title 'Freedom: A Fable' by Kara Walker, along with publication details and a silhouette illustration of a ship.

An open book with blank pages featuring a small silhouette of a ship in the center.

First and last image of the book: the “Freedom” ship; opening line of the book.

An open book displaying text on a dark background, discussing themes of identity, race, and personal struggle, with a focus on a character's reflections about her brown skin and the societal implications of race.

The book’s title taunts the reader, artist, and narrator all at once (both the narrative and freedom are fables). Likewise, the black-on-white cutouts and lithographs trip up every party’s sensibilities, racial prehensions, and cultural memories. The opening display may evoke Gone with the Wind, but the heroine is the Negress. The narrator and artist matter-of-factly elevate the sexualization of “N____” to bisexual, scatological Creator/Mistress status. The abbreviated name, as if in a 19th-century tale of erotica, evokes denigrating of the “N” word. Designed to make the viewer tilt the book every which way to see what can be (and is meant to be) seen, the pop-ups evoke a feeling of prurience. In the final spreads, Walker and David Eisen, the collaborating paper engineer, use a pull tab to involve that prurience in a procreative delivery.

A pop-up book illustration featuring a winding path leading to a house, surrounded by dark silhouettes of trees and clouds.

A black paper cutout scene depicting a winding road leading to a house, surrounded by silhouettes of trees.

A paper cutout scene depicting a silhouetted figure lying beneath a palm tree, holding a flower, with a minimalist landscape featuring a sun and distant trees.

A pop-up book illustration featuring a silhouette of a person lying under a palm tree, with the text 'Thinking her deed a deep meditation' visible in the background.

A book open to a page featuring intricate black silhouette cutouts of figures, depicting a woman with a pail and a child, alongside text that highlights themes of identity and social dynamics.

An open book with layered black cutouts creating a silhouette of figures and a ship against a white background, accompanied by text on the right page discussing themes of rebirth and mystery.

A book page displaying a shadowy silhouette of a child walking hand in hand with an adult figure, along with a narrative text discussing the group's contemplation of a troubling scenario.

The power of this artwork is that it merges the self-reflexivity of the artist’s book with a self-cannibalizing societal condition.

After the Deluge (2007)

Book cover of 'After the Deluge' by Kara Walker featuring a silhouette of a woman against a backdrop of flames.

An open book resting on a wooden surface, featuring a striking cover design with red and black colors. The front cover displays the title 'After the Deluge' by Kara Walker in a stylish font, with an abstract flame-like pattern.

After the Deluge (2007)
Kara Walker
Casebound, illustrated paper over boards, black doublures. H270 x W225 mm. 120 pages. Acquired from Lacey Books, 26 August 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

The immediate spur to After the Deluge (2007) and its associated exhibition was the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The book is not a straightforward catalogue of the exhibition. Several works in the exhibition are not included; in fact, an entire wall is missing, and juxtapositions in the exhibition differ from those in the book. It is one of those books that goes beyond its proximate cause and differs from the exhibition that occasioned it.

Walker labels it a visual essay. While its blending of original work and appropriations with collage nudges it toward being an artist’s book, its structural principle is uncertain. Even the Table of Contents is puzzling. Preceded by a single-page black bleed, “Murky” begins with Walker’s brief introduction on page 7. The last page of that text concludes, however, on page 9, which is assigned to the visuals of pages 9 to 107. Perhaps 9 is a typo and should be 10. Whatever the case there, the individual labels in the Table of Contents are not given specific page references, and it is not always easy to match up the visuals with the labels.

A visual essay by Kara Walker featuring a page with a sculpture on the left and text on the right, including a list of topics such as 'Deep-Rooted Traditions' and 'The Whiteness of the Wall.'

Male Power Figure; Table of Contents.

Introduction; AP Images/Bill Haber.

The brief introduction sets out the driving analogy clearly enough though. Perhaps, when we cannot pin down the organization at every point, we have to fall back on the analogy of a murky muck:

Racist pathology is the Muck, aforementioned. In this book’s analogy, murky, toxic waters become the amniotic fluid of a potentially new and difficult birth, flushing out of a coherent and stubborn body long-held fears and suspicions.

Among the book’s other signals are the placement and handling of full-page bleeds. Contrasts of bleeds of black ink with white pages often serve to underscore juxtapositions of white western art with African artifacts and Walker’s works. Above, the single-page bleed of black preceding the Table of Contents presents us with Nkisi, a large African male power figure. In the exhibition, it loomed under a glass cover for viewing in the round. As can be seen above, and underscoring the difference between book and exhibition, it is a reduced figure, although Nkisi returns as a larger presence toward the end of the book.

The first double-page bleed is one in full color and does seem to match up with the label “Deep-Rooted Traditions” in the Table of Contents. It presents JMW Turner’s 1840 Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On). In the following double-page spread, Walker’s 1996 Untitled, a cut-out silhouette and pastel on a white background, is crowded to the right and surrounded by a full-bleed margin of black. Its pastel double-stack steamboat spews fire in the background, perhaps frightening a black silhouetted horse into a fall in the foreground. Whatever the cause, the black silhouetted girl with an upraised cudgel becomes a visualization of the expression “beating a dead horse”. In Walker’s typical perverse irony, it’s a 19th-century white painter’s condemnation of slavery followed by a 20th-century Black artist’s black cutouts, shoved off center and shoving us to conclude that slavery is a dead horse she is beating. Deep-rooted traditions, indeed.

An open book displaying two paintings; the left page features a stormy sea with ships battling high waves, while the right page showcases a fiery sunset over turbulent waters.

A silhouette of a child with a whip confronting a rearing horse, set against a softly colored background featuring a steamboat and clouds.

But slavery is not a dead horse. Its carcass has mutated into the historical, cultural, and personal condition that Walker calls “the Muck” and amniotic fluid in her introduction. The Muck and fluid juxtapose works from Walker’s American Primitives series and Middle Passages series with selections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. The full-bleeds of black on single pages and double-page spreads punctuate this maelstrom of art that includes white American primitives such as JW Barber (1798-1885), John Carlin (1813-91), WP Chappel (1800-80); the European-influenced JS Copley (1738-1815), Winslow Homer (1836-1910), and Joshua Shaw (1777-1860); the French silhouettist Auguste Edouart (1789-1861); and earlier artists such as Jean Audran (French, 1667-1756), RN Zeeman (Dutch, 1623-63), and Pieter Nolpe (Dutch, 1614-53).

The Table of Contents’ label “Middle Passages” clearly refers to the images on pages 43 to 49 and matches up with Walker’s five Middle Passages works in the upper left of the exhibition wall below. In the exhibition, however, the images proceed in an order different from that in the book.

A gallery wall displaying a variety of framed artworks, including sketches and paintings, with a focus on maritime themes.

The exhibition wall matching up with pages 43-49 (“Middle Passages”) in the book.

The order of images in pages 43-49 differing from their order on the exhibition wall, the last two of five Middle Passages works now coming after the Homer.

Also, later on, the book uses enlarged details from three of the works on this wall: RN Zeeman’s Water from his series Four Elements (ca. 1651-52), Pieter Nolpe’s The Bursting of St. Anthony’s Dike, 5 March 1651, and Winslow Homer’s The Gulf Stream (1899). Zeeman’s and Nolpe’s works are only represented by enlargements in the book, but this is not just a case of trimming to fit the book. Both are displayed across double-page spreads. Also, a full image of Homer’s The Gulf Stream appears in a double-page spread between the pages displaying three then two of Walker’s Middle Passages works. Moreover, an enlarged detail from The Gulf Stream also appears toward the end of the book. Clearly, the change of order and handling of enlargements are intentional and thematic, not simply forced by the format.

Illustration of a stormy sea with large waves and a damaged ship amidst the turmoil, featured in an open book.

An open book displaying an illustration of a waterfall and rocky landscape, featuring detailed shading and textures.

Details from Nolpe’s The Bursting of St. Anthony’s Dike, 5 March 1651; from Zeeman’s Water; and from Homer’s The Gulf Stream used later in the book.

Walker’s use of the typewritten index cards from her American Primitives series may shed light on the labels in the Table of Contents that seem difficult to align with the images in their order in the book. On the dustjacket, Walker writes:

I brought together the art in this book (and the exhibition that preceded it) thinking like a draughtsman, perhaps absurdly so, as even the typewritten texts are from an ongoing series of text pieces I think of as drawings.

An open book displaying two pages of text written in a handwritten style on lined paper, discussing themes of personality and memory.

If Walker thinks of the American Primitives index cards “as drawings”, might we ought not consider the centered labels without pagination in the Table of Contents as textual drawing, too? Stacked as they are, they certainly echo the totemic Nkisi on the facing page. In Walker’s mind, labels such as “The Failure of Containment”, “Inundation”, “Going Under”, “Darkness”, and “Black” could also be strokes of charcoal, ink, or paint as evocative of Hurricane Katrina or any natural disaster such as those used by the genre painters. The power of After the Deluge lies in its collage of the commonplaces of such disasters with the silhouetted savagery and perversity of our racist pathology. After the Deluge presents that muck as the commonplace landscape (or Lands Cave) that is the US.

An open book showing a double-page illustration featuring silhouetted figures of a boy and a girl under a branch. The background has a textured, light blue and gray color scheme.

Kara Walker’s Lands Cave from the series American Primitives (2001), pairing silhouettes of a sailor-hatted, thumbsucking white boy with a mutilated Black woman about to give birth.

If it is not easy to match up all of the images with the labels in the Table of Contents, the final three double-page spreads align unmistakably with “Portents”: a single white page facing a single black page with Nkisi looming larger now than at the start, a double-page spread of white with Walker’s Burn (1998), a silhouette image of a pig-tailed girl immolating herself as a column of smoke rises in the shape of a Black female, and then the double-page spread of black that concludes these scenes and the entire book.

An open book displaying a page with a large, intricate statue surrounded by various elements, set against a dark background.

An open book page featuring a silhouette of a girl surrounded by flames and smoke, illustrating a dynamic scene.

Open book with blank black pages on a wooden surface.

Bureau of Refugees (2008)

Cover of the book 'Kara Walker: Bureau of Refugees' featuring a silhouette of a woman holding a head, set against a geometric background in shades of brown, black, and gray.

Bureau of Refugees (2008)
Kara Walker
Casebound paperback, sewn and glued. H240 x W215 mm. 120 pages. Acquired from Judd Books, 3 March 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

To judge from images of the exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., 20 October – 21 November 2007, in New York, Bureau of Refugees (2008) does go beyond an aim at replicating that experience. But it barely exploits or challenges the codex form — less than do After the Deluge and Freedom, respectively.

A contemporary art gallery featuring abstract paintings on white walls. The artworks include geometric designs with dark tones and shapes, showcasing a variety of artistic styles.

Installation view: Bureau of Refugees
New work, Kara Walker, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY, 2007
Photo: Luciano Fileti, courtesy of Sikkema Malloy Jenkins.

The exhibition was divided between primarily figurative works and others entirely text-based. Large-scale figurative works like Authenticating the Artifact and The Treasure Hunters, left and right above, dominated one room. The show took its name, however, from a series of smaller figurative works, which in turn took its name from its source: The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands that operated from 1865 to 1872. Groupings of these smaller scale works occupied their own walls. In the Bureau’s Records, “Miscellaneous Papers” National Archives M809 Roll 23, Walker found a list of “Riots and Outrages”, and from this list, she incorporated into the titles of the figurative works the descriptions of the events and acts inspiring the images.

A collection of framed artworks arranged on a white wall, featuring contrasting silhouettes and abstract designs in dark and muted colors.

Grouping of the figurative works from the series Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands- Records, “Miscellaneous Papers” National Archives M809 Roll 23
New work, Kara Walker, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY, 2007
Photo: Luciano Fileti, courtesy of Sikkema Malloy Jenkins.
Titles of the five works on the left, Committed an outrage and July 16 Black Girl Beaten and Threatened to kill her and her sister if they did not leave the county and Committed an outrage on a freedwoman and Mr. Alexander, colored preacher brutally beaten and forced to leave.

A collection of framed silhouette artworks displayed on a white wall, featuring various figures including a bride, a mermaid, and dynamic scenes in black and white.

Another grouping of the figurative works from Bureau of Refugees series
New work, Kara Walker, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY, 2007
Photo: Luciano Fileti, courtesy of Sikkema Malloy Jenkins.
Titles of the four larger works, clockwise from the top, Freedman and Freedwoman thrown into a well in Jefferson Co. and A gang of ruffians and Bradley killed freedwoman with an axe and Between Danville + Somerville.

The second series in the show was the 52-panel Search for ideas supporting the Black Man as a work of Modern Art/Contemporary Painting. A death without end: an appreciation of the Creative Spirit of Lynch Mobs. Its title comes from the search string that Walker entered into Google to generate content for a series of panels handwritten in Sumi-e ink. Each panel (measuring 22.5 by 28.5 inches) compiles phrases that Walker culled from the search string’s results.

A gallery wall displaying multiple framed sheets of paper with handwritten text, featuring various thoughts and reflections.

Installation view of the textual series: Search for ideas supporting the Black Man as a work of Modern Art / Contemporary Painting; a death without end, and an appreciation of the Creative Spirit of Lynch Mobs
New work, Kara Walker, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY, 2007
Photo: Luciano Fileti, courtesy of Sikkema Malloy Jenkins.

The panel’s handwritten text delivers a rushing stream of consciousness, including misspellings, incomplete and ungrammatical sentences, half-scrawled letters and jumps in topic — much as occurs with the American Primitives text pieces in After the Deluge. As Merrily Kerr’s review puts it:

Search for ideas is a cacophonous brew of observations and perspectives. Here Walker explores the potential analogy between racist attitudes in America and those perpetuated by Americans overseas in texts that refer to Saddam Hussein as a “porch monkey” or Arabs as “sand niggers.” Under the rubric of aggressor and complicit victim, the text details rapes and torture, proffers that black soldiers are willing Klansmen, and asks, in the face of global jihad, “how can colored folks get on the winning side w/o giving up their hard-won right to jeans that fit …” Because the fifty-four [sic] parts are hung cheek by jowl and there is no obvious sequencing, it is unclear whether one is supposed to read them left to right, or top to bottom.

Where the exhibition separated the figurative from the textual, the book weaves them together. Three double foldouts are the closest the book comes to exploiting the codex form. The first presents two Search for ideas panels folded inwards and, when unfolded, a quadriptych of text panels. The second likewise consists of two text panels folded inwards, but when unfolded, they reveal a double-page image of the exhibition’s figurative 5-foot by 7-foot Authenticating the Artifact (2007) alongside one of the Search panels. Like the first, the third double foldout unfolds to present a quadriptych of text panels.

A page featuring handwritten text addressing themes of identity, race, and social commentary, with phrases discussing global issues and cultural perceptions.

First double foldout still folded.

A printed pamphlet with handwritten text on multiple pages discussing themes of justice, identity, and history, featuring phrases about race and societal issues.

First double foldout unfolded.

An open book featuring a stylized silhouette of a woman holding a ball, surrounded by geometric patterns in dark tones. The opposite page contains handwritten text discussing themes of motherhood and identity.

Second double foldout unfolded.

The Search panels horrify with their words while the Bureau images horrify with their figures. Not all of the figurative works focus on America’s Reconstruction past. Some arise in the post-9/11 world and, like the Search series, find their horrors in the Sudan, the Congo, and Iraq. Woven together in the book, the two series underscore Walker’s perception of, in her words,

the continuity of conflict, the creation of racist narratives, or nationalist narratives, or whatever narratives people use to construct a group identity and to keep themselves whole–such activity has a darker side to it, since it allows people to lash out at whoever’s not in the group.

When viewing Kara Walker’s art, I am reminded of the refrain from one of Carly Simon’s songs: “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you, don’t you?”. It’s a double-edged irony. The addressee is damned if he doesn’t think it’s about him and damned if he does.

Walker’s is a multi-edged irony that cuts in many directions. Walker inhabits or projects a persona who is masochist and sadist, subject and object, self-centered and self-loathing, other-obsessed and other-fearing, Slave and Mistress. As a white viewer, collector, and writer about these works of book art, am I not entangled and complicit, too, however I respond to it? Caught out in shame and privilege, am I so vain that I think this art is about me? Damned if I don’t, damned if I do. Walker’s is the art of portraying a social madness. All parties — artist and viewer — are stuck in the muck of After the Deluge (2007), the muck of racist pathology. The terrible power of Walker’s art keeps our eyes fixed on it. Where either party can find solace is uncertain.

Books On Books Collection – Ryuta Iida

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Silent Book, vol. 11

Artistic wooden sculpture resembling a geometrically abstract book, featuring angular planes and a smooth finish.

Silent Book, vol. 11 (2023)
Ryuta Iida
Altered book, camphor tree stump, and glue. H210 × W170 × D190 mm. Unique. Acquired from Fragile Books (Tokyo), 20 August 2024.
Photos: Above, courtesy of Fragile Books; below, Books On Books Collection.

The cover, door, table of contents, numbering, text, and endnotes are all filled with a series of information. I thought to stop and crystallize all the functions of the “book,” … I decided to crystallize it. It took the time to go through the hands of people, the old book that finally reached me, sealed on a pedestal, it is now ripe for its next role. (Artist’s statement)

“Crystallized” is not the first word that comes to mind when viewing and handling this eleventh in Ryuta Iida’s series Silent Book. Perhaps it does for the angled planes of the cut block of camphor wood, but for the coverless codex, folded, draped, moulded, carved, and sculpted come closer. Two names that might not spring to mind (but should) are Giambologna (Jean Boulogne) and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Like them, Iida offers us more than a single or primary vantage point from which to appreciate his work. Like Giambologna’s Abduction of a Sabine Woman (Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence) or Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne (Galleria Borghese, Rome) Silent Book must be circled and viewed in the round. The nine images below show the work turned right to left in stages.

Artistic sculpture of a book made from a camphor wood block, shaped with angular planes and a smooth, sealed edge, displayed against a neutral background.

A sculptural book titled 'Silent Book, vol. 11' by Ryuta Iida, showcasing an altered book positioned on a wooden pedestal, featuring a curved cover resembling a block of camphor wood.

Far as Silent Book is from the figurative, violent, and ornate features of the 16th and 17th century masterpieces, it still harbors its own complexities of line, shadow, texture, and form. There is a volume of dynamics between and among them that belies the work’s title. Note how the layers of pages echo the wood’s grain, and how the color and texture of the page surface contrasts with those of the book’s top edge, and how that contrast reverberates with the shifting colors of the wood. Iida has moulded and sealed the book block so that the top edge curves to a point in a duet with the cut angles of the wood block.

Artwork titled 'Silent Book, vol. 11' by Ryuta Iida, showcasing a sculptural composition of a camphor wood block and paper, featuring angular shapes and layered textures.

An artistic representation of a sculpted camphor wood book block, featuring smooth edges and a layered design.

Silent Book has many kin in the world of book art, works that make the content of a ready-made volume inaccessible and make something anew from the material object. Too often this sub-genre has been dismissed as a fetishization of the book. This overlooks how Silent Book and its kin make us think about the book as a material for making art and as a source of metaphors, and we overlook what the individual artworks are. By sealing away the content of a book, giving the book block a sinuous shape, and fusing it with a carved block of wood, Iida invites us to look afresh.

In the Books On Books Collection, several other works share this play of inaccessibility with tangibility: Barton Lidice Beneš’s Untitled (1973), Andrew Hayes’ Offset (2013), Jacqueline Rush Lee’s The First Cut and Silenda (both 2015), Doug Beube’s Red Infinity #4 (2017), Lorenzo Perrone’s Kintsugi (2018), and Chris Perry’s 217 Ripples: Sediment (2020). Of these, Offset seems closest to Silent Book. Comparison can increase appreciation of each and their sub-genre.

Both Hayes and Iida have managed to elicit a sense of action and motion from their materials. From one view of Offset, metal embraces the body of the book; from another, the book pushes the metal apart. From one side of Silent Book, the upward-angled block of wood supports the coverless codex folding over and slipping down its pedestal; from another, the book drapes a protective arm over the sideways-angled block.

Views of Offset (2013) by Andrew Hayes and Silent Book (2023)

The titling of the two works raises appreciable similarities and differences. Offset suggests the printing method of the same name, which does involve metal plates. The overall shape, however, suggests some strange assemblage of early letterpress components: the bulbous ink balls (or dabbers) with their handles, the torque bar, and the metal furniture locks. The offset position of the piece’s “handle” also reflects the title. What can’t be appreciated from the images is that Offset wobbles if touched in the slightest.

A vintage illustrated print showing two men engaged in a printing process, featuring a press and decorative plants above them.

“The two of printer’s dabbers” from Jost Amman’s 1588 deck of cards.

A wooden book press positioned on a workspace, featuring a large handle, a platform for printing materials, and two covered objects resembling human figures, with natural light illuminating the scene.

The BookBeetle Press, a portable screw press designed and built by Josef Beery. Reproduced with permission of Beery.

The title of Silent Book refers, of course, to the book block’s being sealed, an obvious visual/verbal pun. None of its information passes the lips of its pages. Like Offset, however, the title is also oblique. Although the derivation of the word book from the Old German Buche (meaning “beech”) is a debatable assumption, it’s widely accepted enough to allow that the block of wood is also a silent book.

Now imagine the substitution of a large block of pink bubble gum for the book material in Offset and Silent Book. Not a block of gum in the shape of a book, but an oversized, unchewed block of gum. Something very different to chew on now, isn’t it? The ways in which book artists manipulate the material and metaphor of the book vary every bit as much as the ways in which painters, sculptors, and other artists vary their techniques, materials, and subjects. Even within the slice of book art that focuses on physical inaccessibility, such as Marcel Broodthaers’ Pense-Bête (1964), Wolf Vostell’s Betonbuch (1971), Irwin Susskind’s Book Faced Down – Embedded in Plaster (1999), Jonathan Callan’s Rational Snow (2002), Anselm Kiefer’s Untitled (Constellation Book) (2004), Hanne Stochholm Exe’s Remake (2015), and Neil Nenner and Avihai Mizrahi’s Cover Story (2017), the variety abounds. Ryuta Iida’s series Silent Book is a resounding reminder.

Books On Books Collection – Sunkyung Cho

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This is not a stone (2017)

This is not a stone (2017)
Sunkyung Cho
Exposed spine binding with cross weave filament tape, board-covered. 170 x 170 mm. Acquired from SpazioB**K, 6 April 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Just as you think this will be another two-dimensional riff on René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images (aka Ceci n’est pas une pipe), the Chinese fold title page turns to reveal a cutout well with a stone at the bottom.

With the turn of the next two pages, it appears we are in for a series of metaphors and riddles, and something more than a three-dimensional riff on the anti-metaphor and the gap between words (symbols) and objects. First, this not-a-stone is “an apple,” but then turn the next page, and the not-a-stone is also “a sun flower”. Is there some law of commutation that applies: If not-a-stone = apple, and not-a-stone = sun flower, therefore, apple = sun flower? Because it is round, because it is vegetal?

Over the next turns, we have “the Sun” and “the earth”, then “a crystal” and “a flake of snow in the Himalyas”, then “a beetle” and “a scorpion”, and on the pairs go, each separated with the spread “This is not a stone”. All along, while being urged to deny the evidence of reality, we are asked to accept the evidence of metaphor and imagination. Naturally our inbred pattern-seeking and ludic behaviors kick in, as if this were a game of “Twenty Questions”. But the pairs run the gamut of Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and beyond.

By the last page, it is as if we are playing “Twenty Questions” with the stone itself. That is, if the “I” is the stone saying, “and this will be I”. Is the stone uttering a deliberate a-grammatical union of subject (I) and object (me)? Is it a verbal visual pun (I-eye) evoking Emersonian Transcendentalism? Perhaps this stone that says “This is not a stone” is a Cretan philosopher’s stone, and round and round we will go.

On the artist’s website (www.somebooks.kr), the product page displays this Korean expression and its translation: 하나의 돌은 돌이자 다른 모든 것이다 [“One stone is a stone and everything else”]. It does not appear anywhere in the book, so perhaps it is unfair to invoke it as confirmation of any reading of This is not a stone. On the other hand, if you are going to play “Twenty Questions” with a Cretan philosopher’s stone, cheating may be your best option.

The other works by Sunkyung Cho in the collection are wordless, except for their titles, and lean more toward children’s books than This is not a stone. Like so many artists’ books, they occupy that crossover zone discussed by Sandra Beckett, Johanna Drucker, and Carol Scott (see Further Reading).

In the beginning (2012)

In the beginning (2012)
Sunkyung Cho
Softcover, sewn, exposed spine binding with cross weave filament tape. H260 x W150 mm. [36] pages. Unknown edition, of which this is #146. Acquired from SpazioB**K, 6 April 2025. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

From the artist’s website: 빛 이전의 태초, 사회화되기 이전의 인간에 대해 생각하는 책. [“In the beginning before light, a book that thinks about people before they became socialistic.”]

A translation that resonates more with the paper, structure, and images might be “A book contemplating the primordial state of the human before light and socialization.” Such a book would, of course, not have the normalized appearance we enlightened and socialized humans expect. Hence the black oddly shaped covers and leaves across which the gray, almost headless creature crawls on all fours and begins to sprout antlers or branches.

When other creatures enter the primordial state, they are oriented to it differently, which our branch-headed forebearer notices and tries to assume but fails.

Having failed, our precursor tries to merge with one of the other creatures, but this elephant-like being will have none of him and flings the proto-human off.

Whereupon, branch-head seeks affiliation with the vegetable kingdom and climbs toward the top.

Having reached the top, our forebearer confronts and succumbs to the source of light and, having fallen and lost the semblance of antlers or branches (or both), yearns with arms outstretched for what once was.

The book’s unusual shape recalls Helmut Löhr’s Visual Poetry (1987), Kevin Osborn’s Tropos (1988), and Philip Zimmermann’s High Tension (1993), where likewise the shape contributes to meaning.

The Blue Bird (2011)

The Blue Bird (2011)
Sunkyung Cho
Exposed spine binding with cross weave filament tape, board-covered. 200 x 200 mm. [40] not including 2 illustrated fly leaves. Acquired from SpazioB**K, 6 April 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

The Blue Bird leans much more toward the children’s book end of the crossover spectrum than in the beginning. The website’s description of it — “Blue Bird and Boar’s story of how to be a child and parent” — underscores all of the physical evidence except for the delicate nature of the paper. It is hard to imagine a copy surviving childhood use. But that might well be in keeping with the tender mix of joy and sadness in the tale.

The simplicity and evocative sophistication of composition and line eliminate the need for any words to carry the narrative. In the sequence below, Boar’s protective parental handling of the egg against wind and wave ends in predictable exhaustion and birth.

The remainder of the book in which Boar introduces Blue Bird to the world of foraging, running, jumping, sky- and star-gazing is landbound. Boar climbs trees to let Blue Bird sleep there, but when returns to the ground to sleep, Blue Bird follows, preferring to nestle against Boar under the stars.

Boar’s continued efforts to teach Blue Bird about flight lead to a separation that some parents may not be ready to explain to a child.

Kiss (2015)

Kiss (2015)
Sunkyung Cho
Board-covered books, bound face-to-face, exposed spine binding with cross weave filament tape. H200 x W400 mm (open); W800 (open). [16] Chinese fold folios. Acquired from Somebooks, 6 April 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Kiss is far more whimsical. It works somewhat like a harlequinade, allowing multiple juxtapositions of images. The structure by which it does this is complex enough and the juxtapositions, subtle enough, that adult assistance is likely required. The book is actually two books joined at edges of their back covers, one opening to the left and the other, to the right.

The precision of the registration between the facing books will generate delight as a gorilla kisses a mouse. The mouse kisses a bird. The bird, a crocodile. The crocodile, a gorilla or octopus. The octopus, a mouse or frog. And so on with sharks, snakes, and others.

Among the effective subtleties that more experienced observers will note are Cho’s handling of bleeds and the facing sets of double-page spreads. The large expanses of white behind each of any two smaller figures facing each other from single pages contribute to a non-threatening delicate kiss. The larger, more threatening creatures extend across their double-page spreads and even bleed off their pages. When they meet, or when one of them meets a smaller figure, there is an edge. It may be an edge of curiosity on one side or the other or both, but it is likely also one of threat and unease.

Another subtlety is the handling of the human figure. It occurs in the recto book. Like the smaller figures, it occupies a single page with a page of white behind it. It is expressionless, regardless of what it faces whether fish or lion. Oddly, the fish seems to be curious, and the lion, reserved.

Here is another subtlety that Cho raises. The last figure in the recto book is a stone, large enough to extend over its double-page spread. No doubt it is an anthropomorphizing tendency to read something (puzzlement, curiosity, annoyance, etc.) into the silhouette of each creature confronting the stone. But it is only the stone and human that exude indifference.

For an interesting structural, line and color comparison with another osculatory work, see Antonio Ferrara’s Ventiquattromila baci (Twenty four thousand kisses) (2021).

Books On Books Collection – Anne Covell

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Anne Covell bridges the domains of book art and the book arts. The Record offers a skillfully constructed artist’s book that documents one of the first Trump Regime’s acts of depredation against history and truth. Historical Binding embodies her respect for the history of one of the book arts’ loveliest of crafts: stitching.

The Record (2017)

The Record (2017)
Anne Covell
Letterpress printed accordion on Masa paper with sumi wash and hand brayering. Housed in a 4-flap French paper enclosure with button and string ties. Enclosure: H165 x W110 x D6 mm. Book: H164 x W108 x D3 mm (closed); H327 x W1080 mm (open). 6.5 x 4.25 x .25 inches (closed), 13 x 42.5 x .25 inches (open) [36] panels. Edition of 60, of which this is #1. Acquired from the artist, 10 September 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

On January 20th, 2017, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. That same day, the official White House website (whitehouse.gov) began the digital transition to archive and replace Obama’s policies with those of the new administration. Immediately, people began to notice that key issues such as health care, education, and immigration were nowhere to be found. Keyword searches for terms such as “climate change,” “LGBT,” and “civil rights” all returned 404 errors. Even more conspicuously, the Spanish-language version and the disabled-accessible version of the site were no longer available. Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library that has been archiving webpages since 1996, captured 167 snapshots of whitehouse.gov that day. This book records the last snapshots taken of Obama’s policies before they came down, the 404 errors that followed, as well as the Internet Archive timestamps for when the information was last available and when it disappeared. (Anne Covell).

The fold-downs enact the digital shredding of the previous administration’s policies referencing existing laws that the Trump Regime opposed.

In response to the 6 January 2021 insurrection, Russell Maret and Sarah Moody published Three Constitutions, whose redactions and translations offer a view of the interim state of affairs reflecting “the cynical, ineffectual state of political discourse in the United States”. On the eve of the 25oth anniversary of the founding of the USA, will there be another work such as Covell’s or Maret and Moody’s to represent the second Trump Regime’s violation and shredding of law, judicial orders, and constitutional rights?

Historical Binding: Sewing Sampler (2025)

Historical Binding: Sewing Sampler (2025)
Anne Covell
Clamshell box. Open-spine binding with cloth-covered boards and plain doublures. Box: H330 x W120 x D45 mm. Book: H305 x W100 x D25 mm. [288] pages. Made to order. Acquired from the artist 10 September 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Spine sewing is one of the hidden book arts as it is most often covered by a case binding of paper, cloth, or leather (real or faux). Covell’s Historical Binding: Sewing Sampler:

is designed for bookbinders and book enthusiasts as a personal reference and/or for teachers/historians with a focus in book history and book conservation. This is a large folio size blank book featuring varied sewing techniques that can also be used as a ledger or unique journal or sketchbook. It includes one hardcover sampler book with the option to be housed in a custom clamshell box covered in natural linen bookcloth. The sampler includes 16 different sewing methods both sewn on supports (hemp cord, leather and taw, linen and cotton tapes, and Ramieband) and sewn without supports. The sampler highlights the historical sewing styles inherent to their structure and includes title descriptions that correspond to each sewing station. The styles progress chronologically across the spine from the earliest forms of multi-section sewing to more modern adaptations and sewing variants. (Anne Covell)

Alongside Strange Papers: A Collection of the World’s Rarest Handmade Papers (1987) by Fred Siegenthaler, Woven and Interlocking Book Structures (2002) by Claire Van Vliet and Elizabeth Steiner, and The Art of the Fold: How to Make Innovative Books and Paper Structures (2018) by Hedi Kyle and Ulla Warchol, Covell’s volume expands a sweet suite of reminders of the book arts underpinning book art.

Books On Books Collection – Ivon Illmer

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Untitled (2015)
Ivon Illmer
Book-shaped wood sculpture. Top: Almond wood, H100 x W65 x D27 mm.Bottom: Poplar wood, H123 x W78 x D27 mm. Unique. Acquired from the artist, 10 October 2014.
Photos: Books On Books.

From Ivon Illmer’s website: Books preserve history and stories. Each book has its own individual story. This ranges from loving treatment to neglect to ostracism and even burning. The arc almost inevitably stretches from the fate of the book to the fate of man. Everyone should let their imagination run wild when touching the book sculptures and invent their own story for each book. Touching is important, the haptic experience flatters the sense of touch. You “grasp” the beauty of the wood. Imagining the book sculptures in the raw piece of wood is the art. Each piece is unique in shape, structure and grain. Accessed 14 October 2024.

Illmer categorizes his work as “book sculpture / book art”. The carvings from various woods primarily celebrate the shape and tactility of the closed codex. The similitude of the exterior, right down to the fore, top and bottom edges, belies the inaccessibility of the interior.

Untitled

If simply entitled Unreadable Book or A Closed Book, these works would lead us down a narrow path of interpretation. Another easy path of interpretation could be etymological. The derivation of the word book from the Old German Buche (meaning “beech”) is a debatable assumption. Still, it’s widely accepted enough to start us down the path that, since the paper of traditional books is made from wood, so, Illmer’s carved codices just represent another way of using wood to make a book. He could have entitled them Buchmaterial, which in English also captures the same pun between the book’s content and its material. In his self-published catalogue, however, Illmer is explicit that his use of “untitled” is totemic:

… each of my books represents every book published so far. That’s why none of them has a title, and that’s why none of them is based on a real book.

Illmer leaves it to the imagination of the viewer to determine whether and how his works “interrogate” the nature of the book.

Presenting physically inaccessible books is fairly common among wood carvers, sculptors, and painters. A closed or open book appears in the hands of countless saints and Madonnas and carries with it various iconological interpretations, depending on the bearer. From the St. Servatius Cathedral Treasury in Maastricht, here’s a library of letters, scrolls and books in the hands of the Holy Kinship.

Heilige Maagschap (c.1470 )
Westphalian School

And from Lisbon’s National Museum of Antique Art, here’s a Madonna and Child with book, which seems to underscore the interpretation in Christian art that an open book in connection with Mary indicates the fulfillment of the promise.

Madonna and Child (c. 1540-1550), Unknown sculptor, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbonne, Inv 1182 Esc. Photos: Books On Books Collection, 2015, at “Pliure. Prologue (la part du feu)”, Fondation Calouste-Gulbenkian, Paris.

The fifteenth-century Van Lymborch, or Limbourg, brothers of Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry fame, however, may be the first to have created an inaccessible book for the sheer pleasure of trompe-l’oeil and trompe-le-main. They made it from a block of wood, decorated its exterior to look like a sumptuous illuminated manuscript, and gave it to their patron as a New Year’s day joke. Another two centuries later in Venice, Francesco Pianta the Younger carved shelves of inaccessible wooden books for the Chapter Room in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco (1657-75). Arranged as if recently consulted and replaced on their shelves, the books provide the studious background for inconographic and allegorical sculptural figures of “Curiosity”, “Wrath”, “Melancholy”, and others. The influence of this particular fantasy has persisted in Venice and found an enthusiastic expansionist in Livio de Marchi, whose project entitled House of Books, begun in 1990, boasted three residential-sized installations by 2025. From the spine- and cover-clad exterior walls, to the carved splayed book for a roof, to the furnishings — everything is made from wood and has a bookish allusion in its shape or function, including the pen-shaped chimney and a pencil-picket fence. The more prolific joker, however, may be Alain Stanké, whose wood sculptures suggest there is no bookish pun he would not carve.

While facetiousness and jokery also characterize the path taken by conceptual book artists by making an inaccessible book the material of the artwork, there is now an edge. Marcel Broodthaers encased his previously published books of poetry in plaster to create Pense-Bête (1964), an elaborate farewell to literary aims. Following Broodthaers, Wolf Vostell purportedly encased his paper-based booklet Betonierungen (“Concretifications”) in a 40 x 28 x 6cm slab of concrete shaped like a book (Frengel et al.), not a farewell but rather an embodied manifesto. Vostell’s Betonbuch (1971) allows for both the interpretive paths of inaccessibility and punning on the book’s material. (Further trickery may be involved; radiographic examinations are inconclusive on whether there really is a booklet embedded in there; see White, below.) Despite, or because of, its title, Barton Lidice Beneš’ inaccessible Untitled (1973) plays differently with titular punning: Beneš has almost obliterated the titles of the condensed books from the spines of his sealed Reader’s Digest Condensed Books series. Jacqueline Rush Lee’s The First Cut (2015) soaks, rolls, and dries the three volumes of the Loeb translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses into a single firewood-like chunk; its inaccessibility and title join in a punning allusion to the transformation of Daphne and others into trees or plants to escape the grasp of the gods. Lorenzo Perrone’s inaccessible Kintsugi (2018) casts yet a different titular pun by applying “repair” lines of gold glue to a presumably unbreakable and pristinely white plastered book.

Moritz Küng’s exhibition catalogue Blank. Raw. Illegible … : Artists’ Books as Statements (1960-2022) devotes one of its fifteen thematic sections to inaccessible books, including Vostell’s Betonbuch. Among the ten works included, five of them introduce puns unlike those mentioned so far. They pun on a structural or material feature of “the book”. Timm Ulrich’s Dem Leser den Rücken zukehrend (1970/76) is an hermetically sealed book dummy, whose only text is the title (“Turning your back on the reader”) appearing on the spine of the book. Richard Olson’s Perfect Bind (1978), David C. Stairs’ Boundless (1983), and Nicolas Geiser’s Le non-livre (2006) are each bound on all four sides. Les Coleman’s Glue (2002) qualifies as a fifth inaccessible book with a book-material-referring title, although it does have an accessible table of contents to let you know the different types of glue used to make the different sections of the book inaccessible.

Like art and its history in general, book art is not linear. The point of Anthony Caro’s sculptures that include inaccessible books is not “the book” as it is with the conceptualists. His works carry more directive titles and nudge the viewer’s interpretation away from the inaccessibility and toward the subject the books illustrate or support. His minimalist Book of Eden (1999) is a pulp paper sculpture and lithograph. Its title clarifies, or is clarified by, the two outline images evoking the Adam and Eve myth: an apple and buttocks. Another example is Stave (2013), entitled after his death. The title comes from the source of the work’s inspiration: “a reproduction of an illustrated musical score that Caro had chanced upon inside a catalogue for an Italian exhibition about Duccio” (Sooke). Given Caro’s aims at associating his sculptures with music (see, for example, his Concerto series), Stave is probably not far from the mark and provides a very different example of the title’s directing the viewer’s interpretation. The sculpture may present an inaccessible book, but the suggestions of stave lines and musical notations rise in metal above the open pages. Likewise, Book of Eden‘s lithograph is the minimalist distillation from the blank white paper-pulp book under it.

Stave (2013) stoneware and steel, 46 × 28 × 50 cm.
From Anthony Caro : Bronze and Book Sculptures : 5 April – 24 June 2016. London: Annely Juda Fine Art, 2016.

Anselm Kiefer’s book art is a whirlwind of the above uses of inaccessible books, allusive titles, and the untitled. The several works of his like Das Buch (1979-85) that have an inaccessible lead book hanging against an acrylic-on-canvas background make for interesting pairings with Caro’s Book of Eden. Where Caro backgrounds his blank inaccessible Bible beneath his minimalist lithograph and allusive title, Kiefer foregrounds his books. As he writes in L’Alchimie du Livre (2015):

In the beginning was the word. But in my work, first there were the books made of lead. And those books are interesting in that they are impossible to read, they are too heavy, the lead lets nothing get through, it’s a complete concealment… Lead books are perfect paradoxes then. You can neither thumb through them nor read them, and you will never know what’s inside. (Minssieux-Chamonard, 237).

Kiefer’s Mesopotamia – The High Priestess (1985-89) with its 196 lead volumes ranged across two open book cases contrasts with Francesco Pianta’s loosely shelved, allusive but decorative wooden books in Venice. The work is not background to adjacent artwork or surroundings. Neither is Kiefer’s title an indirect pun allusively signaling after something more like those of other book artists. It is indeed allusive but to something that stands apart from the form and material of the artwork. The distance makes the viewer work backwards from the inaccessibility, the volume, and distressed appearance to connect with the title. When Kiefer uses “untitled” as a title, he often adds explanatory words in brackets after it, as in Untitled (Constellation Book) (2004). Although made of lead, this work, however, is not inaccessible. Its nearly 5.5-foot pages stand open to be read “in the round”.

Johanna Drucker is one of the few writers about artists’ books who has commented at any length on Kiefer’s artist’s books:

Anselm Kiefer’s large-scale books made of heavy dull grey lead, laid open on stands designed to hold their outsized form and ponderous weight absorb the viewer into their profound depths, rather than offering themselves for communication. Such works become affective pieces rather than textual vehicles or message bearing forms, their physical, tactile presence takes the iconic and cultural resonance of book forms and plays it out through an extenuated spectrum of propositions — “what if” this were a book and a book were this, what then? Books of bread, marble, granite, soap and dried leaves pressed with flowers delicate and impossible to manipulate without destroying them. Books of lost objects, found texts, destroyed titles, remade photographs — all gaining some value by using the book form, insisting on its familiar structure as a frame to the otherwise elusive meaning of these constructions. …. (Drucker, 114-15.)

Which brings us back to Illmer’s more totemic works. Each work celebrates the grain and flaws of its material by using the book form. It could do so with a different form (beads, animals, geometric shapes, etc.), but Illmer chose the book. Although an inaccessible book, the object gains s0me value by this choice. And with the totemic title of Untitled, each work demonstrates that title matters as much as material and shape. Untitled offers the viewer’s eyes and hands the challenge that all inert totems offer: to invest its shape, grain, colors, and markings with meaning. But where do such works sit in our appreciation of artists’ books and book art? What are the distinctions between them and those of Kiefer, Caro, Coleman, Geiser, Stairs, Olson, Ulrich, Perrone, Lee, Beneš, Vostell, and Broodthaers? Keep looking and, wherever possible, touching.

Books On Books Collection – Barton Lidice Beneš

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Beauty Book; The Life of Gandhi; Untitled (1973)
Barton Lidice Beneš
Mixed media book constructions. Acquired from Rago Arts and Auction Center, 23 March 2021; Allan Stone Gallery, New York; artist.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Beauty Book (1973)
Barton Lidice Beneš
Altered book with human hair. H220 × W140 × D50 mm. Unique. Acquired from Rago Arts and Auction Center, 23 March 2021; Allan Stone Gallery, New York; artist.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Beauty Book consists of human hair wedged between anonymized painted book covers. The use of human hair in artists’ books is unsurprisingly common since it has appeared widely in art in general. Akiko Sakaizumi’s Female Sampler (2001), Diane Jacob’s The Black Hole (2003), Jenine Shereos’ Archive series (2006) and Leaf series (2011-17), Lucy May Schofield’s All the News That’s Fit to Print (20212), Karen Hardy’s Vellicate (2015) and Pull (2018), Sun Young Kang’s Hair (2018), Kellee Morgado’s Don’t Cut Your Hair It’s Beautiful (2020), Alisa Banks’ Afrocentric (????) and History of a People (2023), and Masoumeh Mohtadi’s The Sleep of Reason (2023).

The Sleep of Reason (2023)
Masoumeh Mohtadi
Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

The Life of Gandhi
Barton Lidice Beneš
Altered book with embedded nails. H197 x W140 x D86 mm. Unique. Acquired from Rago Arts and Auction Center, 23 March 2021; Allan Stone Gallery, New York; artist.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Beneš’ disrespectfully and adolescently entitled The Life of Gandhi may be the first artist’s book embedded with nails, although Lucas Samaras’ prickly Book 4 (1962) in the Museum of Modern Art might have provided inspiration. Later examples are Floating Concrete Octopus’s* Book of Nails (1992), Daniel Essig’s Book of Nails II (2003), Anne Maree Hunter’s Nailed (2005?), Sasha Meret’s Aggressive Book (2009), Werner Pfeiffer’s Difficult to Fit, Censored Nailbook, and Nailed Shut (ca. 2010-12), and manuel arturo abreu’s Kanga Book (2021). The frequency is considerably less than say treatments 0f Saint Sebastian in painting and sculpture, but the latter had centuries as a subject whereas the book nailed shut has only had decades.

Untitled (1973)
Barton Lidice Beneš
Altered volumes of Reader’s Digest, sanded and varnished. Each H197 x W140 x D85. Unique. Acquired from Rago Arts and Auction Center, 23 March 2021; Allan Stone Gallery, New York; artist.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

With his two Untitled volumes, Beneš may again lay claim to another first-of-its-kind in this category among artists’ books. Two volumes from the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books series have had their component titles almost completely sanded off. They have been sealed and varnished to constitute a work more naturally called Untitled than any other work of art assigned that ubiquitous title.

These works of book art and his 1970s mail art interactions with Aart van Barneveld and Ulises Carrión secured Beneš’ position among the Fluxus and neo-Dadaist crowd. His later AIDS-related art such as the Lethal Weapon series (199o’s), made with his infected blood, may dominate his legacy, but these three works of book art sculpture place him alongside John Latham and Dieter Roth as an original and vanguard book artist.

Books On Books Collection – iOiO Studio

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Pliplop (2020)

Pliplop (2020)
iOiO Studio
Trifold cover, side-by-side leoporellos. H120 x W105 (closed), W895 mm (open). 16 half-panels, 1 full center panel. Acquired from StudioiOiO, 6 November 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.d from StudioiOiO, 6 November 2025. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Based in Montélimar, France, and Seoul, South Korea, iOiO Studio produced this ingenious micro-edition leporello that invites its audience to behold and play. The folds and registration of images allow the viewer to find and create new shapes and color combinations. Its shapes and colors might remind viewers of Heinz Edelmann’s art for The Yellow Submarine. In its appeal to the child in the adult, it will remind book art enthusiasts of the works of Katsumi Komagata, Warja Lavater, Bruno Munari, and Peter and Donna Thomas. In its sophistication, it might remind them of the contributions to LL’Éditions leporello series. Many other connections can be found in Stephen Perkins site Accordion Publications, where Pliplop first came to my attention.

Two works that explore the curious but natural connection between children’s books and artists’ books are Johanna Drucker’s contribution to The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks and Sandra Beckett’s Crossover Picturebooks.

Books On Books Collection – Ruth E. Edwards

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Wisdom of the Ancestors (1999)

Wisdom of the Ancestors (1999)
Ruth E. Edwards
Cloth bag with painted stone amulet, hand-woven African mudcloth from Mali, containing metal ball bead chain through single-hole punched in cards, with gold talisman hanging. Bag: H145 x W135 mm. Cards: H130 x W76 mm. 30 cards. Eclectic Art and Collections 23 October 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

It appears the African ancestors had some inkling of and ancient words for the USA of 2016 and 2024.

Other expressions remind how best to learn. Others put growing anxieties about information overload in the shade of the ocean-wide context of knowledge.

The earth-tone cards “bound” with a metal ball bead chain and mudcloth bag imbue the thirty wise sayings with a further sense of the “make do” of craft and art, which carries its own wisdom

Bookmarking Book Art – “Bookmorphs from Greece and the UK” at The Hellenic Centre

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Bookmorph n. (bōk+μoρφ): a portmanteau word referring to casebound books which have been modified; an emergent branch of sculpture in which textual content is often downgraded; treatments include chewing, cutting, drilling, entombing, pulping, ripping, shooting (with a firearm), siliconising, etc; any codex fundamentally altered or warped by an artist; a site of entropic processes designed to return pages to cellulose fibre, and/or the creation of a fungal landscape; a bibliographic montrosity. Michael Hampton, arts writer, May 2025

The curators’ choice of title and epigram for this exhibition is somewhat daring. Although they have included plenty of bibliographical montrosities that fit Hampton’s definition, there are plenty of bibliographical beauties, too — even among the “monstrosities”. A strong attraction of this exhibition is that it presents so many recent works from Greek book artists. Even more attractive is its hands-on display of most of the works.

Anneta Spanoudaki’s Natura Morta (2025) is a striking case in point:

Natura Morta (2025) Anneta Spanoudaki
Paper cut on different types of paper and photography. 480 × 220 mm. Photos: Books On Books.

Another case in point is Dimitris Skourogiannis’ 100% An Artist’s Bible (2025). To be turned, its large “leaves” require metal rings on the fore-edge.

100% An Artist’s Bible (2025) Dimitris Skourogiannis
Japanese paper, cardboard, wood, fragments of porcelain objects, print, metal rings, acrylic pains, fabris, tulle, and metallic threads. 500 x 350 x 140 mm.
Photos: Books On Books.

Thick leaves seemed to be the order of the day. On heavy black card, Thodoros Brouskomatis’ 10 Artificial Prayers (2025) presents surreal collages challenging the theme of “Madonna and Child” and couplets from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “supplica a mia madre”.

10 Artificial Prayers (2025) Thodoros Brouskomatis
Printed digital artworks on photographic paper, cardboard, and leather. 300 x 250 mm.
Photos: Books On Books.

On slightly thinner card, Aris Stoidis’ To the other side and back (2025) carries a sculptural image on every page. The work straddles the borders of sculpture, photobook, and artist’s book. Stoidis writes, “Ever since my first pieces, I have been “receiving” images that I’ve materialized without really comprehending them myself. They simply exerted an inexplicable power on me.” The book comes in a plexiglas box with a papercut sculpture (not pictured here).

To the other side and back (2025) Aris Stoidis
Photographic prints on card. 270 x 270 x 20 mm.
Photos: Books On Books.

On still thinner leaves, Ismini Bonatsou’s Little Red Riding Hood (2025) nevertheless projects striking depth with its montage of papercut pages, acrylics, and pencil. Just as striking is the contemporary reversioning of the fairy tale.

Little Red Riding Hood (2025) Ismini Bonatsou
Acrylics, pencil, and papercuts. 450 x 300 mm.
Photos: Books On Books.

Given that the portmanteau term “bookmorph” comes from Michael Hampton, it seems appropriate that he has two works on display. Although one of them is under glass, 12 Chairs (bookmorph) (2012), the other is not. RAGE PEN by Hampton and David Blackmore is the UK contingent’s only work produced in 2025. Others from the UK contingent include Sarah Bodman, BOOKEND, Jonathan Callan, Joe Devlin, Stephen Emmerson, SJ Fowler, Rowena Hughes, and the Inscription Journal editors (Gill Partington, Simon Morris, Adam Smyth). RAGE PEN is also particularly appropriate because it requires a ruler to separate its perforated fore-edges. The exhibition provides one along with multiple pairs of white gloves. Really hands-on.

The participating Greek artists also include Eleni Angelou, Nikos Arvanitis, Rania Bellou, Maria Bourbou, Natassa Chelioti-Naga, Ioanna Delfino, Anna Dimitriou, Antonia Iroidou, Eleni Kastrinogianni, Peggy Kliafa, Alexia Kokkinou, Georgia Kotretsos, Nikos Kryonidis, Vasiliki Lefkaditi, Eleni Maragaki, Kyriaki Mavrogeorgi, Despina Meimaroglou, Christina Mitrentse, Fiona Mouzakitis, Kiki Perivolari, Stamatis Schizakis, Ifigeneia Sdoukou, Christina Sgouromiti, Danai Simou, Nectarios Stamatopoulos, Despina Stavrou, Evangelos Tasios, Yannis Tzortzis, and Leonie Yagdjoglou.

Congratulations and thanks to the curators — Christina Mitrentse, Fiona Mouzakitis, and Despina Stavrou — for bringing together this selection of outstanding works.

The Hellenic Centre opens at 11:00 and closes at 17:00, Tueday through Friday, so the chances to visit by the 28th of November are limited. The brief catalogue that documents the exhibition and these few photos cannot substitute for tactile engagement with the works on display. An hour and a half passed in a flicker.

Books On Books Collection – The Horn-book

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This is a “back-dated update” of sorts to Alphabets Alive!, Ashley Rose Thayer, and Andrew White Tuer.

First, the back-dating. This comes from the delightfully annoying or annoyingly delightful belated discovery of Erik Kwakkel’s 2015 entry on the history of the horn-book “Book on a Stick” in Medievalbooks. Delightful and annoying to find the truly earliest appearance of a horn-book right under my nose in the Bodleian Libraries but too late to include it in the Alphabets Alive! exhibition at the Bodleian in 2023.

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canon. Misc. 476 (14th century).

Vita gloriossime virginis Mariae atque venerabilis matris filii dei vivi veri et unici (unidentified work).Italian manuscript, Venice.
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canon. Misc. 476 (14th century). Folio 047v.

Detail

Andrew White Tuer’s History of the Horn-Book (1897) came close with its dating of the horn-book’s first appearance as 1450, but as Kwakkel writes:

The image shows Christ being brought to school by his mother. He is bringing his “textbook” to class: a hornbook, which dangles from his wrist by a string, just like many of the later specimens did … Quite intriguingly, we are shown a real medieval snapshot of how children carried their hornbook to and at school. More importantly, it shows that the hornbook was indeed a medieval invention….While no actual hornbooks appear to survive from the medieval period, these visual representations show that educating young children was also the driving force behind the production of hornbooks in the age before print.

And for the updating, here is Ashley Thayer’s Mechanical Horn-book (2025) just arrived in the Books On Books Collection.

Mechanical Horn-book (2025)
Ashley Rose Thayer
Horn-book. On stand: H192 x W160 mm. Off stand: H192 x W115 mm. Unique. Acquired from the artist, 17 October 2025.
Photos: Courtesy of the artist. Books On Books Collection.

The paddle is made of pine wood, the gears of vellum-covered bookboard, the spinning “arm” of authentic cow horn, and the wrist loop of embroidery thread by a medieval finger loop braiding technique. On dark grey-blue Khadi paper, Thayer has painted a border of the moon, a berried floral garland, and a wyvern, the heraldic emblem associated with Wessex, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom from which Alfred the Great emerged in the 9th century. On the reverse, a cross of cut red leather with five inserts of calligraphed vellum alluding to Christ’s five wounds reflects the horn-book tradition of combining religion with learning the alphabet. It also makes this horn-book reflective of Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon and Christian background.

The pointer, called an aestel in Old English, is made from poplar wood, an antique button, and antique bone. Its inclusion isn’t simply functional. Appearing alongside the Wessex wyvern, it points to that famous aestel on display at the Ashmolean in Oxford: the Alfred Jewel.

The Alfred Jewel, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Photo taken from the front by Geni CC BY-SA 4.0. Photo taken from the side by Richard M Buck CC BY SA 3.0.

If there’s ever an Alphabets Alive! redivivus, Erik Kwakkel and Ashley Thayer have provided the pointers to the other treasures in Oxford that should be included.

Books On Books Collection – LL’Editions

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Enthusiasts and collectors of artists’ books should congratulate LL’Editions (Göteborg, Sweden) on its leporello series not only for the artists enlisted so far but for the constraint to inspire them. Critics of book art have opined that book artists turned to the accordion structure in the 20th century for more freedom with visual images and another tool with which to question the notion of the book as book. LL’Editions has challenged its invited artists with a constraint: a fixed-format leporello of ten panels, nine folds and always H140 x W100 mm (closed). The works are printed on Mohawk Superfine Eggshell paper. Housed in a custom box with the title hot foiled both on its front and spine, each volume in the series is limited to 250 numbered copies.

The real pleasure in each work and across the series is how each artist handles the shape to make it dance to a personal style or stamp. With each new addition — brick by brick — LL’Editions is building a monument to book art’s most common structure.

Leporello #12 (2025)

Leporello #12 (2025)
Endre Tót
Box: 148×191×23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed); W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #70. Acquired from LL’Editions, 28 August 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.

Bespoke Eska Board 1260 G/M2, Insert: F-Flute Black 500 G/M2, Hot-foiled title on front and spine. Mohawk Superfine Eggshell Ultrawhite 175 gsm.

Endre Tót has worked with a wide range of media: telegrams, postcards, posters, actions, and artist’s books. This one self-reflexively celebrates his signature gladness statements “We are glad if we are happy”, “I am glad that I have stood here”, “I’m glad that I can write one sentence after another”, “We are glad if we can demonstrate” and so on.

I am glad to have Endre Tót’s work in the Books On Books Collection.

Leporello #11 (2024)

Leporello #11 (2024)
Alejandro Cesarco
Box: H191 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed). W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #229. Acquired from LL’Editions, 14 November 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.

These are the titles and durations of the songs making up The Cure’s 1989 album. With each song on its own panel, Cesarco (b. 1975) seems to have created a photo album to remind himself of his youth. Given his artworks referencing/co-opting/implicating/appropriating John Baldessari, Marcel Broodthaers, Félix Gonzáles-Torres, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha, and other book artists, the less-than-fans of The Cure may wonder if Cesarco is deliberately wrong-footing their expectations for his tackling the book artist’s platform. If you are one of them, consider that your horizons have been widened and that The Ramones (An Autobiography) (2008) — his list in chronological order of every Ramones song that begins with the pronoun “I” — does not neatly divide by 10.

Leporello #10 (2024)

Leporello #10 (2024)
Kay Rosen
Box: H191 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed). W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #116. Acquired from LL’Editions, 14 November 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.

There’s a lengthy and excellent essay entitle “The Gravity of Language” about Rosen’s work in Osmos Magazine (Winter 2019) by Stephanie Cristello. In it, she writes:

You will notice, by now, that the works discussed here are united by their allusions to the motions of up and down. Does this seem arbitrary to you? Or strike you as the imposition of a rule-based physics upon an artistic practice whose oeuvre certainly contains variances, divergences, and oddities–cut out for the purpose of being explored through a particular force? Perhaps. (Cristello, 2019)

Somehow this more recent artist’s book seems to confirm and repudiate the critic’s approach. As if to say, “Yes, I’m stuck in the muck despite my variances, divergences and oddities”, or “No, ducky, there’s no gravitas or gravity here”. Or perhaps it’s Rosen’s visual way of using permutations on language (starting with a common expression) to poke fun at LL’Editions’ constraint: “So you want to confine me like a duck in the muck? Well, quack, the joke’s on you”.

Leporello #9 (2024)

Leporello #9 (2024)
Pieter Laurens Mol
Box: H191 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed). W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #111. Acquired from LL’Editions, 14 November 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.

How many artists before and after Marcel Duchamp’s Prière de Toucher (1947) have played this joke in an artist’s book? Where Duchamp’s displayed work played against the usual museum injunction, Pol’s embraces and wrong-foots it with blind embossing.

Leporello #8 (2022)

Leporello #8 (2022)
Jonathan Monk
Box: H191 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed). W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #175. Acquired from LL’Editions, 14 November 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.

It helps to know or remember that in 2002, Jonathan Monk published None of the buildings on Sunset Strip with Revolver. Here, he has used his iPhone in panoramic mode to appropriate again Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966). But when Monk’s leporello is turned over, notice that this side of the Strip has been truncated. Monk’s thoughts on appropriation and self-reflexivity can also be enjoyed in the three-handed interview Books on Books (2011) with Jérôme Saint-Loubert Bié and Yann Sérandour.

Leporello #7 (2022)

Leporello #7 (2022)
Karl Holmqvist
Box: H191 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed). W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #110. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.

Here’s one to add to Bruno Munari‘s collection of squares, circles, and triangles. While the yoga may also remind you of Ric Haynes‘s Aquatic Yoga with Dangerous Foods (1984), this leporello is a welcome opportunity to experience this Swedish artist’s ability to weld language and shapes together in perceptive and humorous (and sometimes acerbic) ways. Galerie Neu in Berlin has been astute enough to hold three solo exhibitions for Holmqvist since 2013; their display of his works here provides views of his several sculptures that chime with Leporello #7.

Leporello #6 (2022)

Leporello #6 (2022)
Maurizio Nannucci
Box: H185 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H143 x W90 mm (closed). W900 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #106. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.

It’s hard to believe that Leporello #6 may be one of only three accordion books produced by this prolific and inventive artist associated with Fluxus. The other two are Sessanta Verdi Naturali (Sixty Natural Greens) (1977) and Up Above the Wor(l)d/A Guide for Aliens (1981). In Leporello #6, he has made the accordion structure, panel layout, and language reinforce one another simultaneously to create an ouroboros artwork.

Leporello #5 (2022)

Leporello #5 (2022)
Shannon Ebner
Box: H185 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H143 x W90 mm (closed). W900 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #132. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.

Since her participation in MoMA’s Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language in 2012, Shannon Ebner has been a book artist to watch for bringing the alphabet and the artist’s book together.

Her Strike (2014) concretely rewarded the alert. The textures of melting ice in Leporello #05 and concrete blocks in Strike seem to leap off the letters and paper. From the LL’Editions’ description of Leporello #05:

Ebner has selected specific materials based on their self-reflexive relationship to the subject of the writing itself. Each photographic typeface is in essence a material response to the various cultural conditions and societal pressures at hand. For Ebner’s leporello, the meteorological term RIME ICE is its single subject, though the phenomenon itself falls into two categories, soft or hard rime. In either case it is rime ice that forms when liquid droplets comprised of supercooled water freeze onto surfaces. RIME ICE is an outtake from Ebner’s recent exhibition FRET SCAPES (2022). FRET is acronym for the Forecast Reference Evapotranspiration Report, a report that is generated by climate scientists to measure the rate at which water that falls to the ground will evaporate to the sky.

Leporello #04 (2021)

Leporello #04 (2021)
Ryan Gander
Box: H191 × W148 x D23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed), W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #32. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.

Ryan Gander has repurposed his installation Staccato Reflections (2017-20) to create Leporello #04. The tiny text originates from the artist’s notebook. In Staccato Reflections, it appears in a normal-sized font in business-directory format on a freestanding reflective screen. Gander describes the installation this way in an interview in Art in America:

Staccato Reflections is based on the idea of the self in culture, the obsession with the me and the selfie and the narcissist wand. The surface is mirrored, so as you read the words, you see yourself. The work has devices in it that are self-referential. It asks you to touch the screen, and then says “don’t touch the screen.” So it seems like it is responding to you, but it’s not.” (Fullerton, 107)

Staccato Reflections (2017)
Ryan Gander
A large free standing backlit mirrored business infototem, as one would expect to see in the lobby of a corporate building. The display presents a word composition / beat poetry written by the artist, on the themes of narcissism, self reflection and the presentation of the self in everyday life, leaving the viewer with an associative but ambiguous stream of consciousness. The digital lobby sign is surrounded by a collection of domestic looking Monstera deliciosa plants (Swiss Cheese Plants).
© Ryan Gander. Photos: Youngjun Choi.

With its miniscule print requiring the enclosed rectangular plastic magnifying glass, and with its overprint in glow-in-the-dark ink of a waxing full moon, Leporello #04 marks quite a departure from the installation.

Leporello #03 (2021)

Leporello #03 (2021)
Fiona Banner
Box housing leporello. Box: H185 xW140 xD25 mm. Leporello: H140 x W100 mm. 10 panels. Numbered edition of 250, of which this #42. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.

With Leporello #03, Fiona Banner repurposes the previously repurposed conceptual artwork Bad Review. It has appeared as a C-type print with the words overlaid on a rearview mirror and as a sculpture. To reproduce the two words, Banner uses found letters photographed held up by hand and badly positioned. Is it serendipity or cheeky genius that, like readymades, the nine letters and space of Banner’s conceptual artwork fit the ten panels imposed by LL’Editions to give us another re-view?

Leporello #02 (2021)

Leporello #02 (2021)
Micah Lexier
Box housing leporello. Box: H185 xW140 xD25 mm. Leporello: H140 x W100 mm. 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #171. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.

Publisher’s description: A number of years ago Micah Lexier purchased a small paperback publication about the game of dominoes. The very end of the book consisted of a series of pages that reproduced a complete set of twenty-eight domino tiles. The images were printed on right-hand pages, four to a page, while the left-hand pages were blank. The idea was that you were supposed to cut these images out of the book and glue them to empty matchboxes to create your own do-it-yourself set. That sequence of pages, combined with the quality of their reproductions, was the inspiration for Lexier’s leporello. To that, he added two favourite print techniques – perforations and die-cut holes – to create a set of ten domino tiles. Lexier chose the denomination of each tile and its order in the leporello so that none of the thirty-four die-cut holes line up with each other, allowing each hole to be misread as a printed white domino dot.

If you stand Leporello #02 on its edge on a table and then lean forward to view the panels at eye level, the domino images seem to have grown into oversized hangings on gallery walls. You can see some of the die-cut holes if you look closely at the lower right corner below.

It’s a peculiar sensation, but it echoes Lexier’s website, which highlights mostly installations and large-scale works. Even more so it echoes Robert Birch Gallery in Toronto, which emphasizes his large wall displays. On both sites, Lexier’s play with patterns, shapes, tiles, and contrasts of black and white stands out. Although it’s not clear from those current sites, he has many book-related works. In the ’90s, he produced book sculptures in which each spine in a stack of books would have part of a life-size photo of a human subject printed on it. Properly stacked, the books display the human figure.

Taller Child (Adolescent Male) (1993) and Father and Son (1993)
Photos: CCCA Canadian Art Database Project, Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art. © Micah Lexier.

As can be seen in Leporello #02 and other works on display in the CCCA Canadian Art Database Project, Lexier likes to work with found objects. As can be seen in the book sculptures above and in the Database Project, Lexier’s art also reflects on relationships and community. Leporello #02 neatly and abstractly brings these two themes together with the found dominoes game book and the game’s communal roots.

Leporello #01 (2021)

Leporello #01 (2021)
Heimo Zobernig
Box housing leporello. Box: H185 xW140 xD25 mm. Leporello: H140 x W100 mm. 10 panels. Edition of 250, unnumbered. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.

If you extend Leporello #01 fully, you are likely at first glance to project onto it the common expression “this and that”, but thwarted, you then start looking for another phrase comprised of “His”, “IS”, “And”, but you run into “Ew” or “nEw”, which throws you into renewed pattern-seeking behavior. Should you count the “this’s” and “and’s” in each row? Maybe there’s something in the pattern of lowercasing and uppercasing? Is there anything to the fact that the word “new” never begins with an uppercase N, or that it occurs only twice? Maybe you should read the rows aloud? With that, you may remember that, in earliest writings, words were not spaced and mixed majuscule and miniscule didn’t come along until later. Now you see how the folds are the primary means of separating the words in this book. This becomes clearer if you read the book panel by panel, or page by page codex-style. But now there are other possible patterns: does the book begin with “thIs, This, thIS” and proceed to “tHis, nEw, thIS”, and so on?

Somehow the acronym “WYSIWYG” — what you see is what you get — pops to mind, but Leporello #01 seems also a case of “WYGIWYS” — what you get is what you see. Fully extended or panel by panel, Leporello #01 offers more to see than a glance will get you.

Leporello #01 continues Zobernig’s love affair with Helvetica, which is also on display in Farben Alphabet (2018) and CMYK (2013), also in the Books On Books Collection.

A Never-Ending Stone (2025)

Architecture is Frozen Music # (2023)

Architecture is Frozen Music (2022)

Split (2025)

Further Reading

Handbook (1980)

The Books On Books Collection copy

“The Tongue and Heart th’intention oft divide: The Hand and Meaning ever are ally’de”. (Guil. Diconson, from Bulwer’s Chirologia)

… what the artist’s hand, the craftsman’s hand, the poet or scholar’s hand, and the lover’s hand has always been: a means of marking, touching, selecting, interacting, molding, expressing, and refusing that remains essential to human thinking … (Tyrus Miller from CrossPollenBlog)

Further Reading and Viewing

The Lively Dance (1983)

Further Reading

Parallel Orders of Architecture (2024)

Chaos (2023)

36 Days of Type (2019)

Further Reading

Within Every Room There is an Echo of the First (2018)

The House that Book Built (2018)

Further Reading

Reparations (2010)

Further Reading

Freedom: A fable: A curious interpretation of the wit of a negress in troubled times: with illustrations (1997)

After the Deluge (2007)

Bureau of Refugees (2008)

Further Reading

Silent Book, vol. 11

Further Reading

This is not a stone (2017)

In the beginning (2012)

The Blue Bird (2011)

Kiss (2015)

Further Reading

The Record (2017)

Historical Binding: Sewing Sampler (2025)

Further Reading

Further Reading

Further Reading

Pliplop (2020)

Further Reading

Wisdom of the Ancestors (1999)

Further Reading

Further Reading

Leporello #12 (2025)

Leporello #11 (2024)

Leporello #10 (2024)

Leporello #9 (2024)

Leporello #8 (2022)

Leporello #7 (2022)

Leporello #6 (2022)

Leporello #5 (2022)

Leporello #04 (2021)

Leporello #03 (2021)

Leporello #02 (2021)

Leporello #01 (2021)

Further Reading

“The Tongue and Heart th’intention oft divide:
The Hand and Meaning ever are ally’de”.
(Guil. Diconson, from Bulwer’s Chirologia)

… what the artist’s hand, the craftsman’s hand, the poet or scholar’s hand, and the lover’s hand has always been: a means of marking, touching, selecting, interacting, molding, expressing, and refusing that remains essential to human thinking …
(Tyrus Miller from CrossPollenBlog)