Breaking Waves (2023)

Breaking Waves (2023)
Emmy van Eijk
Sculptural book. 140 x 140 x 40 mm (closed). Unique work. Acquired from Papertrail Handmade Books, 22 January 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Breaking Waves spills over at least three categories of bookmaking: the bound blank book, designer bookbinding and sculpture. It would take a bold owner, however, to use the work in its first category. Fortunately that invitation quickly yields to another.

Photos: Left, Books On Books Collection; Right, Courtesy of the artist.

An invitation to touch and explore the textures of the cover, which consists of tracing paper, whiteboard, acrylic paint, chalk and ecoline. As the book opens, there’s the added invitation to see and feel how its exterior and the spine’s interior mimick waves rising and falling.

Photos: Left, Books On Books Collection; Right, Courtesy of the artist.

Laid flat and viewed from its edge, it can display different levels of water accumulates or diminished with the number of pages turned.

Photos: Books On Books Collection.

As with those sculptures meant to be viewed in the round, it’s hard to settle on an angle that offers the most satisfying view.

Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Images courtesy of the artist

Breaking Waves is one of several works in the Books On Books Collection that manage to capture the stillness as well as the movement, the transparency and always changing character, of water. An appreciation for Van Eijk’s technique and results grows alongside those of Camden Richards & Deborah Sibony in Water, Calling, Helen Douglas in The Pond at Deuchar and Nif Hodgson in Fluid Horizons.

A 2007 graduate of TU Delft in architecture, Emmy van Eijk has been both a practicing architect and, with the founding of Papertrail Handmade Books in 2017, a book artist. It’s no surprise then that several of her works (as yet not for sale) resonate also with the architecture-related works in the Books On Books Collection, would sit proudly with them and provide grist for appreciative comparisons and contrast. Courtesy of the artist, here is one such work.

Expectations (2023)
Emmy Van Eijk

Further Reading

“Architecture“. 12 November 2018. Bookmarking Book Art.

“Celebrating the 250th Anniversary of Steingruber’s Architectural Alphabet“. 1 January 2023. Books On Books.

“Helen Douglas“.24 February 2020. Books On Books Collection.

“Nif Hodgson“. 28 October 2021. Books On Books Collection.

“Camden Richards & Deborah Sibony“. 14 February 2024. Books On Books Collection.

Farmer, Ian. December 2023. Making Waves. Edinburgh: Upright Gallery. Accessed 31 December 2023.