Books On Books Collection – Lu Jingren, Amanda Degener, and Peng Wu

Handmade Path (2021)

Handmade Path (2021)
Lu Jingren, Amanda Degener, and Peng Wu
Black-inked card wrapper with magnetic closure. Handbound, handsewn, handmade paper cover book. H285 x W220 x D40 mm. 268pages. Edition of 350, of which this is #152. Acquired from Amanda Degener, 5 December 2022.
Photos: Books On Books.

Handmade Path presents 57 artists of paper and book who responded to 6 questions circulated by the editors. The editors asked the artists to provide handwritten replies to the questions as well as images of both their work and of their hands.

How did you begin your practice?
Why do you still make paper / books?
What is the difference for you reading on digital device or in a book?
In what way do you understand the 5 senses of paper / book: vision, touch, hearing, smelling, tasting?
Share with us some moments; eitherbreakthroughs or break downs in your work?
What is your next dream project?

Not all of the respondents replied in handwriting, but many sent their replies on material that reflected their work. The late Richard Flavin’s contribution arrived on gampi paper. Becky Beamer inked her reply on a gray handmade sheet. Radha Pandey’s came on indigo tinted handmade paper.

An open book featuring two pages: the left page displays an artistic collage made from handmade paper with textured elements, while the right page contains handwritten notes and a quote attributed to Richard Flavin about his experience with traditional Japanese woodblock printmaking and the importance of paper quality.

Richard Flavin

Becky Beamer

Radha Pandey

Jack Mader photographed these contributions in ways that render them visually haptic. It places that fourth question — “In what way do you understand the 5 senses of paper / book: vision, touch, hearing, smelling, tasting?” — at the core of the book. You’d swear you can feel the velvet texture of Mary Heebner’s 11 pages. Or the roughness of Helmut Becker’s colored handmade sheets or of Su Jin Kim’s white sculptural responses. The request for images of the artists’ hands naturally added to this sensory effect. There’s the glutinous wetness of pulp between the fingers of Jean Michel Letellier and Helen Hiebert and the imagined smell of the ink on George Roberts’ hands.

An open book page featuring artistic content, including text and illustrations. The left side presents a colorful illustration of a red and orange figure with text, while the right side includes handwritten notes and additional text in multiple languages. The page also features images of prayer flags and a collage by Mary Heebner, along with a brief bio.

An open book displaying handwritten notes on the left and right pages, with a wooden hand sculpture holding the left page. The text discusses the differences between writing on various media and the experience of reading a physical book versus a digital device.

Mary Heebner

An open book displaying handwritten notes on textured paper, highlighted with colorful pages. The left page contains notes related to nature and communication, while the right page features reflections on trees and their interactions.

Helmut Becker

A page from an art book featuring an image of a large textured piece resembling traditional clothing made of paper, alongside a portrait of a woman gazing upwards. Text about the artist Kim Su Jin and her work is included.

Open book spread featuring a textured page with a brownish pattern on the left and a circular page with printed text in black and white on the right, surrounded by wood.

Kim Su Jin

Hands mixing and kneading soft, fibrous material on a flat surface.

Two hands submerged in a box of white, fluffy substance, possibly foam or soft material, with one hand actively manipulating it.

Left: Jean Michel Letellier’s hands. Right: Helen Hiebert’s hands.

Close-up of two hands with visible dirt and wear, one wearing a gold ring.

George Roberts’ hands.

Throughout the book are truncated pages that act almost like bookmarks. Only midway through do we learn that they bear scanned images of handmade paper from Amanda Degener and Cave Paper. Degener provides an index describing the handmade papers, which oddly appears at page 142. Not only does it function as an index, it delivers information expected in a colophon. It even describes the paper used for the book’s cover, endpapers, and the clamshell tray. But nevermind, it’s all part of diving into the artists’ process and practice.

Page displaying various handmade paper descriptions including details on materials, processes, and page references.

Quite appropriately this midway index appears just after the entry for Nakagaki Nabuo, whose response to the opening question “How did you begin your practice?” comes in the form of an autobiographical handmade artist’s book. In the pages presenting his book, we see the artist, his hands at work on the book, and Mader’s precise photography of the book and its airmail envelope, followed by the bookmark-like stub with its image of Cave Paper’s Layered Indigo Day paper.

An open book with a unique design, featuring a tree illustration and colorful splashes on one page, alongside a portrait of artist Nakagaki Nobuo. The page includes text about his journey in book design and a quote discussing the importance of sensory experiences in books.

Nakagaki Nabuo and his hands at work.

An open book displaying colorful sketches and handwritten notes that reflect personal thoughts related to the passage of time and the significance of books. The sketches include trees, mountains, and abstract shapes, with accompanying text indicating different ages.

Nakagaki’s My Life Journey

An open book displaying a watercolor illustration of a tree on the left page, accompanied by handwritten text titled 'My Life Journey' and a letter addressed with postage stamps on the right page, along with descriptions of various papers.

Verso: Nakagaki’s answer to question 6: “What is your next dream project?” Recto: “Handmade Paper Descriptions” index/colophon.

In their preface, the editors write:

Although reading is a private activity we are not alone; we are cooperating with the book, bringing it into ourselves. Reading is not only about transplanting ourselves to the beyond, but we modify ourselves to see the world differently. Our vision or purpose for Handmade Path is for you to participate in this collaboration.

Just holding Handmade Path and constantly feeling its Alphabet Dao cover, navigating its foldouts alternating Chinese with English according to the contributor, being tempted to lift a contributor’s sheet of paper from the photos, hearing the snap and creak of sewn pages turning, and absorbing the contributors’ testaments, we cannot help but be drawn into participating with the book. In doing so, we learn that, as Paulette Myers-Rich puts it, “Paper is not a substrate — it is story” (p. 197).

Books On Books Collection – Michael Hampton

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RAGE PEN (2025)

A red book titled 'RAGE PEN' by David Blackmore and Michael Hampton, displayed on a white textured background.

Black and white image of a person smashing a Christmas tree with a baseball bat in a festive setting, surrounded by decorations and presents. The photo is part of a newspaper article discussing a pop-up rage room experience.

RAGE PEN (2025)
David Blackmore and Michael Hampton
Soft cover, mitre sawn head and foot, perforated fore-edge. H210 x W148 mm. [108] pages. Edition of 100. Acquired from Folium, 13 November 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Folium, the publisher, describes RAGE PEN as “developed from a relational piece of the same name held at Chisenhale Studios 2017/18”. Per the Museum of Modern Art, relational aesthetics is

A mode of art practice that establishes spaces, situations, or environments for a variety of social interactions. In essence, the social space or interaction becomes the work of art itself. The term was popularized by French critic and curator Nicholas Bourriaud in 1998.

RAGE PEN‘s environment was a safe rage room equipped with a variety of handheld tools. Anonymous members of the public, or “ventees”, were invited to name an object that had caused them frustration, don protective equipment, and enter the shuttered room to smash said objects. The interactions filmed and photographed by David Blackmore formed the images in RAGE PEN the book. Holding the book with its mitre-sawn top and bottom edges and its perforated, still-sealed fore-edges, we might suspect that we are being invited into our very own private relational aesthetic piece.

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Books On Books Collection – Valeria Brancaforte

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Opera dei Pupi (2024)

Three stacked books titled 'Opera dei Pupi', featuring a design of curtains in red on a textured beige background.

Three panels of colorful illustrations depicting stylized figures, including warriors and women, with prominent facial features and traditional clothing.

Opera dei Pupi (2024)
Valeria Brancaforte
Casebound hardback, cloth over boards, print on front cover. Plain brown doublures. Three variants based on trim and paper.
A: H272 x W368 mm; Drap, Catalan hand-made paper.
B: H261 x W360 mm; Italian Magnani Incisione.
C: H265 x W362 mm; Somerset Velvet White 250gsm.
[20] pages with 14 prints. Each in an edition of 12, of which A is #11, B is #5, and C is #1. Acquired from the artist, 14 November 2025 and 7 February 2026.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.

Puppets and marionettes have figured in more than a few artists’ books. Ron King and Roy Fisher’s The Left-handed Punch (1986) and Anansi Company (1992) are perhaps the best known. Others include Ann Kresge’s Shadow Play (1998), Antonio Nocera’s La Valigia di Pinocchio (2015), Emily Martin’s Funny Peculiar Funny Ha Ha (2017), Hormazd Narielwalla’s Paper Dolls (2018) Erminia De Luca’s Now it’s up to you (2023), and Rachel Simmons’ Dream of the Golden Empress (2023). Valeria Brancaforte’s recent addition to the cavalcade brings to it a new cultural tradition and a welcome chance to compare how variation in paper can play into appreciation of an artist’s book.

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Books On Books Collection – Caren Florance

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L OO P (2019)

A closed book with a black cover featuring minimal text and a gold spine, resting on a black surface.

A black art book with textured pages and minimalist white markings on the cover, partially opened to reveal a golden inner page.

L OO P (2019)
Caren Florance
Handset letterpress and mixed media on Stonehenge Black, Chinese papers and found maps. Hand-stitched Z-fold dos-à-dos booklet. H193 x W143 mm. [48] pages. Edition of 16, of which this is #13. Acquired from the artist, 1 December 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.

L OO P is one to compare with Jack Oudyn’s Opening Dark Windows (2020) and Tim Mosely’s Grasping the Nettle (2020). All three of these Australian book artists create works responding to climate change. L OO P is also one to contrast with Barbara Beisinghoff’s Tau blau / Dew Blue (2013). Both thrust forward their works’ tactility, but while Beisinghoff’s offers the fond hope of natural and artistic renewal as it plays off H.C. Andersen’s fairy tale Hørren /The Flax, Florance’s embeds shards of John Bennett’s bird poem Overwintering in a back-to-back loop of despair over climate change.

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Books On Books Collection – Jean-Pierre Hébert, Harry and Sandra Liddell Reese

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In Visible Cities (2012)

A closed book with a matte gray cover, featuring small colorful dots in red, pink, and orange scattered on the front.

Opened box with an orange interior on the left and a textured black cover with colorful dots on the right.

An open book with a yellow-orange interior and a pink border, displaying small blue dots on the pages.

In Visible Cities (2012)
Jean-Pierre Hébert, Harry and Sandra Liddell Reese
Custom-made box enclosing sewn board binding with cloth spine, treated abaca/cotton paper with painted inlays, pastedowns with drawings, valley-fold folios of Niyodo Natural paper printed on Epson Stylus Pro 4800. Box: H442 x W290 mm. Book: H424 x W276 mm. [46] pages. Edition of 73, of which this is #48. Acquired from the Reeses, 9 February 2026.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of Claire Hébert and the Reeses.

More than a few artists have been drawn to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (1972/74). Its attraction is not hard to understand. Calvino supposes a series of conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan about cities across the Khan’s empire that he has not visited but Marco Polo has and which he describes for the Khan. The premise, however, is paradoxical: the fifty-five cities Marco Polo describes do not exist. Calvino’s sensuous and surrealistic prose and combinatorial arrangement of the conversations and descriptions create a book that is simultaneously inwardly and outwardly reflective. Simple but complex. Realistic but fantastical. Concrete but conceptual. A work ripe for homage and inspiration.

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Books On Books Collection – Ximena Pérez Grobet (II)

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Nagori (2023)

A sleek black folder with the embossed word 'NAGORI' on the front.

Nagori (2023)
Ximena Pérez Grobet and Kati Riquelme
Clothbound hardcover. H153 x W47 mm. Edition of 33, of which this is #14. Acquired from Ximena Pérez Grobet, 5 February 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Permission to display from Ximena Pérez Grobet.

The Japanese word nagori has several meanings. Beware translation applications, but embrace the online discoveries that lead to Ryōko Sekiguchi, the Japanese expatriate writer, and Victor Burgin, the British conceptual artist and writer, who cites her. With Sekiguchi, you will find that it means “nostalgia for the season leaving us”, the longing for the taste of an early season fruit evoked by its late season taste, or a room’s sense of waiting for the return of someone who has just left. With Burgin, before he cites Sekiguchi, you will first find nagori‘s etymology — nami-nokori, referring to the remnant, remains or traces of receding waves. Burgin’s etymological explanation is obviously the most applicable to this collaborative artists’ book, but after you have put the book aside, you may feel a lingering nostalgia for the experience of it akin to the sensuousness Sekiguchi evokes.

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Books On Books Collection – Helen M. Brunner

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Primer: Ritual Elements (Book One) (1982)

An artistic cover of a book titled 'Primer: Ritual Elements' by Helen M. Barger, featuring ancient script designs and abstract shapes.

Primer: Ritual Elements (Book One) (1982)
Helen M. Brunner
Softcover, pamphlet-stitched. H239 x W155 mm. 22 pages. Binding adapted from a design by Barbara Press, developed under the instruction of Hedi Kyle. Edition of 300. Acquired from JP Antiquarian Books, 14 February 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Primer is an unusually made booklet. Stitched with black cotton thread over three signatures, its two outer signatures are of white wove Curtis rag paper, the inner signature is of parchment or a translucent paper, and four 5-panel thumbnail accordions in translucent paper are glued to the beginning of the last outer signature. More unusual is that the booklet’s edges appear burnt into unevenness, yet there is no odor of ash. The edges of the sewing holes also appear burnt, one page has a scorch mark in its center, and even the edges of the collaged items appear to have been burnt before being photographed. The breadth of collaged items — from cave markings to cuneiform to Rosetta Stone to film strips or slides — is not unusual given the title; you would expect a primer on ritual elements to address a prehistoric to historic range of petroglyphs, pictographs, symbols, letters, photographs, etc. But most unusual — and perhaps the point of the work — is that the legible text undermines the aim suggested by the title. The script on the back cover makes the subversion plainest.

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Books On Books Collection – Claude Lothier

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Quant au Livre (2011)

A stack of colorful paper sheets in assorted shades, neatly arranged within a green folder.

Quant au Livre (2011)
Claude Lothier
Slipcase around five cased and glued softcover booklets. Slipcase: H110 x W158 x D25 mm. AEIO TTNTN: H108 x W157 mm. Niv ula: H157 x W108 mm. C’est difficile: H108 x W157 mm. TUBED/NIF: H108 x W157 mm. U: H108 x W157 mm. [28] pages each except for TUBED/NIF, which has [20], and U, which has [24]. Edition of 200. Acquired from Biblio-Net, 16 October 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection

In English, the phrase quant au livre would be “as for the book” or “concerning the book”. What is lost in translation is the phrase’s association with Stéphane Mallarmé’s volume of essays Divagations (1897) in which one section was entitled Quant au Livre. It included the essay “Le Livre, Instrument Spirituel”, which delivered the proclamation “tout, au monde, existe pour aboutir à un livre” (“everything in the world exists to end up in a book”). It was the proclamation scholars seized on to give artists’ books their metaphysical underpinning. If it swallows up everything in the world, What is a book? Many book artists have simply bypassed the discussion and jumped in with works of art that challenge how we read, how we make sense of a book, how we make sense of what a book is. Claude Lothier is one of those book artists.

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Books On Books Collection – Jaro Springer

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Gotische Alphabete (1897)

A brown book cover titled 'Gothische Alphabete' in gold lettering.

Gotische Alphabete (1897)
Jaro Springer
Casebound hardcover in leather with cover title and cover illustration in gold and blind embossing. H415 x W300 mm. 1 sheet, 8 pages, 3 sheets, 39 plates. Acquired from Antiquariat Braun, 14 November 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Every history of letters or script begins with a scrawl. Someone somewhere at some time made a mark tied to an object tied to a sound — A is for Ox — and some others in the same place and time accepted that this handmade mark or shape could conjure up that object in the mind. Perhaps it seemed magical, perhaps it seemed mundane as they imagined that somehow meaning and reality inhered in that shape or sound, the connection just waiting to be discovered.

Regardless, the shapes of characters and their relationship to the sound or meaning they represent is arbitrary, a prehistorical and historical function of social convention, a collective making by individuals. Jaro Springer’s art historical specimen book reminds us of the fantastical visual elaborations to which 15th-16th century artists’ hands would put those “shapes for sounds” we call the alphabet.

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Books On Books Collection – Susan Johanknecht

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Fugal (2025)

A close-up of a musical score with handwritten notes and lines, featuring the title 'fugal' and the name 'Susan Johanknecht' printed on the right.

Fugal (2025)
Susan Johanknecht , Claire Van Vliet, and Andrew Miller-Brown
Vertical double-sided accordion book bound in “Landscape with Cows In It” structure designed by Claire Van Vliet, cover in calendered Barcham Green India Office, interior in handmade Japanese Kozo Natural fixed to Monadnock Dulcet; slipcase of handmade paper. Slipcase: H123 x W248 x D22 mm. Book: H120 x W240 x D18 mm. [6] double-sided panels. Edition of 100, of which this is #8. Acquired from Susan Johanknecht, 26 September 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection

In the hands of multiple readers, this collaboration among Susan Johanknecht’s Gefn Press, Claire Van Vliet’s Janus Press, and Andrew Miller-Brown’s Plowboy Press becomes the “book as performance” and “book as musical score”. Fugal is an artwork that works best with several simultaneous readers/voices/viewers.

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 the opening key. The subject of Fugal is the generative process of vocal changes due to aging. The phrases of the poem have been drawn from an unidentified speech and language textbook.

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Books On Books

Curated by Robert Bolick

Author: Books On Books

Books On Books Collection – Lu Jingren, Amanda Degener, and Peng Wu

Handmade Path (2021)

Further Reading & Viewing

Books On Books Collection – Michael Hampton

RAGE PEN (2025)

Books On Books Collection – Valeria Brancaforte

Opera dei Pupi (2024)

Books On Books Collection – Caren Florance

L OO P (2019)

Books On Books Collection – Jean-Pierre Hébert, Harry and Sandra Liddell Reese

In Visible Cities (2012)

Books On Books Collection – Ximena Pérez Grobet (II)

Nagori (2023)

Books On Books Collection – Helen M. Brunner

Primer: Ritual Elements (Book One) (1982)

Books On Books Collection – Claude Lothier

Quant au Livre (2011)

Books On Books Collection – Jaro Springer

Gotische Alphabete (1897)

Books On Books Collection – Susan Johanknecht

Fugal (2025)