Books On Books Collection – Experimental Jetset

Automatically Arranged Alphabets (2015)

Automatically Arranged Alphabets (2015)
Experimental Jetset
Staple-stitched “zine” with screenprinted silver cover. H180 x W160 mm. 24 pages. Acquired from the Newbridge Project, 18 September 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

On their website, the studio posted an automated gif of this typographic experiment involving software-generated compositions (archived here).

Beautiful typography meets beautiful calligraphy at the other end of the spectrum of technique in the Books On Books Collection with Francesca Lohmann’s later calligraphic work An Accumulated Alphabet (2017).

Experimental Jetset (a phrase excerpted from the title of a 1994 Sonic Youth album) is an Amsterdam-based design collective founded by Danny van den Dungen, Marieke Stolk and Erwin Brinker in 1997. New York’s MoMA, clearly a fan of the studio’s work, holds a significant collection of their work. From the studio’s description of it here, their participation in MoMA’s 2012 exhibition Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language clearly influenced Automatically Arranged Alphabets, whose series of automated sketches were made in 2014-15.

Books On Books Collection – Mitsumasa Anno

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anamorphosis, n. — Oxford English Dictionary (1884-2011)

Etymology: < Greek ἀναμόρϕωσις transformation, n. of action < ἀναμορϕοῦν to transform, < ἀνά back, again + μορϕοῦν to form, < μορϕή form. Still by some pronounced anamorphōsis, after the Greek ω.

A distorted projection or drawing of anything, so made that when viewed from a particular point, or by reflection from a suitable mirror, it appears regular and properly proportioned; a deformation.
1728 E. Chambers Cycl. (at cited word), To draw the Anamorphosis, or Deformation of an Image upon the convex Surface of a Cone.
1816 T. Jefferson Writings (1830) IV. 273 It was to correct their anamorphosis of the Deity, that Jesus preached.
1846 J. Joyce Sci. Dialogues xiv. 306 These images are called anamorphoses.
1873 Athenæum 25 Jan. This bewildering object is undoubtedly an anamorphosis of a human skull.

Anno’s Magical Alphabet (1981)

Anno’s Magical Alphabet (1981)
Mitsumasa Anno and Masaichirō Anno
Hardcover, illustrated paper over boards. Mirror paper in a pocket inside back cover. H260 x W215 mm 64 pages.
Acquired from Stella & Rose, 26 July 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Like Tatyana Mavrina’s A Fairy Tale Alphabet (1969), this alphabet book is probably best enjoyed by child and adult together — at least if it is planned to be enjoyed more than once. The mirror paper that forms the tube to be placed on the center circle is delicate and requires a deft touch. Old heavy hands may require the assistance of younger, more nimble ones. Impatient young hands may require that of older, more deliberate ones.

A former mathematics teacher, Mitsumasa Anno conceived several children’s books that brought his delight in puzzles and complexity to life. In 1984, he received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1984 for his “lasting contribution to children’s literature.” This one was chosen for the Books On Books Collection not only for its contribution to the theme of alphabet-related works but also for its design, color, execution and science.

The usual presentation of letter and animal image undergoes a transformation that requires the reader/viewer to move around the book (or turn the book, best aided with a Lazy Susan) to see the anamorphic letter and animal transform into their more easily recognizable shapes.

Anno and his son have taken the alphabet-teaching task of their book seriously and, in the second half of the book, present the lowercase letters along with a new set of distorted animals. For the more unusual items (like the Russian balalaika above), there is a helpful set of clues in the book’s backmatter.

The more precocious younger reader/viewer (and even a precocious elder one) may want to look at Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait (1524) or Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors (1533) for earlier explorations of anamorphism.

Books On Books Collection – Carol DuBosch

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In these additions to the Collection, Carol DuBosch joins the art of calligraphy and the art of the fold at the hip. The subtlety and fineness in her execution of both reward multiple viewings from multiple angles and repeated manipulation.

Rainbow Alphabet Snowflake (2013)

Rainbow Alphabet Snowflake (2013)
Carol DuBosch
Star book enclosed in flap purse. H4”x W5.5”x .D75” closed, W8.5” diameter open. Edition of 20, of which this is #1. Acquired from the artist, 17 November 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.

A frequent activity in book art is the thematic challenge. In 2010 from her studio in Maleny, Queensland, Australia, Fiona Dempster initiated an annual global challenge to calligraphers to create a letter a week. The challenge ran through 2014 and generated not only outstanding works of calligraphy but artists’ books as well. Two of these works came from Carol DuBosch.

Standing at the check-out counter of my art supply shop, I found myself gazing at a cabinet filled with bright color note cards and envelopes. I decided to take home a handful and try to make a book I had just become familiar with: Snowflake Book. I realized that the colorful notecards would be perfect for the pages of a Snowflake Book. And indeed, they were! Each module page of this book is made from two of the folded notecards. I simply added another fold to one of them and cut out the rectangle window. I printed six of my alphabet designs on acetate transparencies and attached them to view in the windows. The book opens fully to form a star-shape. The front & back cover attach using hidden strong magnets. — Carol DuBosch, 16 November 2022, Correspondence with Books On Books.

No two snowflakes are alike, yet they are all snowflakes. Taking her cue from this, DuBosch offers up five distinctive alphabets in her star-cum-snowflake book structure and, in one view, goes twenty-six better with a distinctive style for each letter.

Video: Courtesy of Carol DuBosch

Following in the tradition of so many artists, DuBosch creates and teaches. This next work neatly exemplifies that, reveals some of the techniques by which she achieves the subtlety in her work, and demonstrates her mastery of each.

Alphabet of Calligraphic Tricks (2014)

Alphabet of Calligraphic Tricks (2014)
Carol DuBosch
Double-sided leporello. H4” x W4” x D.75” closed, W4’8” open. Unique. Acquire from the artist, 17 November 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.

I made this collection of techniques to share with students in class. It is compact and easy to transport and set up as a display in classes. Each page is a Gothic majuscule rendered with specified materials or tools. The caption outlines the process. The book was a project for A Letter A Week in 2014, administered by Fiona Dempster in Australia. Each participant organized a project incorporating letters and posted each week. I was able to complete two different alphabet books during the year. The binding style is a Leporello, a form of Concertina fold books. The entire book is created by overlapping pieces of cardstock folded in half. This method of binding creates a sturdy book that opens for display on both sides easily. — Carol DuBosch, 16 November 2022, Correspondence with Books On Books.

DuBosch’s concluding comment above highlights an abiding concern with what the structure of a work contributes to function. A similar function is achieved in the next very different structure that Hedi Kyle has labeled as “Interlocking Loops” and DuBosch calls a “gallery structure”.

Embossed Alphabet Gallery (2019)

Embossed Alphabet Gallery (2019)
Carol DuBosch
Gallery structure combining leporello, flag and star book forms. H6.25”x W1.25”x D.5” closed, W9” open for display. Edition of 15, of which this #1. Acquired from the artist, 17 November 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.

This book was made as an edition for a book-exchange. I wanted to use the Gallery structure and chose the alphabet as the subject. I used an embossing stencil I had made thirty years ago for the letters. I found parent sheets of the linen textured card stock, and it was excellent for the folding and embossing. I’ve always enjoyed the quote about the mystic art of writing by William Massey and was delighted to find a place for it in this structure. — Carol DuBosch, 16 November 2022, Correspondence with Books On Books.

The many ways of displaying this sculpture and its gallery of letters might cause the viewer to miss how they counterpoint the end of the quotation from William Massey’s The Origin and Progress of Letters (1763). The effect recalls the gray-white of Greek and Roman sculpture, many of which originally were painted.

Books On Books Collection – Tatyana Mavrina

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Сказочная Азбука
Skazochnaia Azbuka
A Fairy Tale Alphabet (1969)

Сказочная Азбука / Skazochnaia Azbuka / A Fairy Tale Alphabet (1969)
Tatyana Mavrina
Soft cover with dust jacket. H235 x W300 mm. 40 pages. Acquired from Design Archives, 4 February 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Tatyana Mavrina’s A Fairy Tale Alphabet (1969) is both an artist’s book and, for the non-Russian reader, a puzzle. Its landscape format and rhythmic page layout offer an easily accessible playground of color, historiated letters, architectural fantasia and folk artistry mixed with the kind of flattened layers of time and space usually associated with ikons. As a puzzle, too, it presents layers. Making out the Cyrillic letters, transliterating them into Roman letters, then translating the text into English — those mark only the first stages of the puzzle. The next stage is to recognize the fairy or folk tale embedded in and around each letter of the Russian alphabet. Links to a few are provided below.

The book feels more like a handmade work than the trade book it is (3,000 copies were printed). The boldly illustrated endpapers and their wavily truncated fly leafs are one feature of the book’s integrated artistry that lies at the root of this effect.

Another feature of design artistry is the mirroring of verso and recto pages. On the left, the key character appears as an historiated letter followed by an image. On the right, an image comes first, then the letter. In the captions to the illustrations and images, the key character appears almost always as the initial letter of at least one of the words and in lowercase within a word.

Below, the historiated letter А refers to the story character Aлёнчшка (Alyonushka), a little orphan girl with similarities to Gretel. Next comes an illustration of Алмазный дворец (the Diamond Palace), probably from the story “Whirlwind the Whistler, or the Kingdoms of Copper, Silver, and Gold”. Then comes the image of the Бочка (barrel) in which a queen and her son are cast into the sea in “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”. And finally the historiated letter Б appears, containing images from three stories. The bowl of the letter refers to the story Барин и Mужик (The Master and the Man) in which the peasant catches a coin-producing fish. The sleigh above the peasant refers to another landlord-peasant encounter in which the peasant cons the landlord out of a fur coat. For the moment, the wolves pursuing the lamb are an unsolved part of the puzzle.

Below is another example of the pattern established from the start: first the letter Й historiated with characters from Эимовье Эверей (Zimove Zeverey “The Winter Hut of Animals” by Alexei Tolstoy); then a frequent character in Russian fairy tales and poems Эайка Kосой (the Cockeyed bunny); Kот Kотофей (Kotofey the Kat has several tales of adventures, a mixed associate of Puss-in-Boots and Felix the Cat); and finally the letter К historiated with images from Колобок (Kolobok “The little round bun”, a variant of the “The Gingerbread Man“). But this is a pattern only to be broken with another in which Mavrina uses the double-page spread for just one letter.

Three quarters of the verso below displays the historiated letter against a full-bleed background, and the rest of the verso combines with the recto to display an illustrative image that bleeds off the three edges. The curving line that separates the letter from the image recalls the truncated fly leafs. So below, for the letter И we have Ивашко и Ведьма (Ivashko and the Witch) and Иван- Царевич и СерЫй Волк (Ivan Tsarevich and the Grey Wolf, a variant on the Grimm’s “The Golden Bird“).

For the Russian characters Ъ ъ, Ы ы and Ь ь that are used to affect the pronunciations of other letters, the key character naturally appears only within the words but does receive treatment as an historiated letter. Below, the letter б follows the first letter in the Russian ВбЕЗД (for “entrance by vehicle”), and in a clever variation on her pattern for historiated letters, Mavrina has the procession entering behind the letter that is filled with the flowers thrown before the carriage. Similarly in the other two-thirds of the double-page spread, the digraph Ы is filled with leaves and flowers, which appropriately is printed over the ship-swallowing monster from the tale “The fish-whale [РыБа-Кит] on which the city stands”. Of course, displaying one letter per page introduces another recurring variant on double-page spread’s pattern.

For the genius of color, design and content of her other children’s books as well as in Skazochnaia Azbuka (considered the pinnacle of her work), Mavrina received the Hans Christian Andersen Award and, until 2018, was the only Russian to do so.

Books On Books Collection – Lisa Merkin

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Bodies Making Language (2021)

Bodies Making Language (2021)
Lisa Merkin
Brocade-covered box containing six blocks and compartment with three cards. Box: H95 x W225 x D155 mm. Blocks: cube 50 mm. Cards: H105 x W205 mm. Unique work. Acquired from the artist, 20 September 2021.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of artist.

In a play known from fragments as the Alphabet Tragedy (although it sounds more of a comedy), the ancient Greek playwright Kallias had his chorus and actors mime and dance the letters of alphabet. Lisa Merkin’s book of blocks in a box shows that bending bodies to make letters has never grown old. Appropriately, her most recent image comes from Diego Rodas Feroni’s typeface Adonis (2018), which seems to recall the Greek playwright’s actors. Also in the Books On Books Collection, Vítězslav Nezval & Karl Teige’s Abeceda (1926), Pilobolus Dance Company’s Human Alphabet (2010) and Marie Lancelin, Gestes Alphabétiques (2014) have carried on the tradition of the alphabet dance.

Block 6: During his studies at UFRJ Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Diego Rodas Feroni designed the Greek God figurine typeface Adonis (2017).

Many of Merkin’s choices celebrate the more comic aspects of anthropomorphic letters: Carington Bowles’ The Comical Hotch-Potch (1782), Bowles & Carver’s The Man of Letters, or Pierrot’s Alphabet (1794), Honoré Daumier’s Alphabet comique (1836), Edward P. Cogger’s Funny Alphabet (c. 1850-64), Aaron McKinney’s The Unruly Alphabet (2010) and Jérôme Viguet’s caricatures Alphabet (2013).

Block 4: Funny Alphabet (c.1850 – 1864) by illustrator and engraver Edward P. Cogger. McLoughlin Brothers Publishing, NY.
Block 5: The Unruly Alphabet is a “lively and haunting abecedary“ book created in 2010 by the English illustrator Aaron McKinney, who sets the alphabet against a backdrop of rebellious behavior showcasing human nature.

Maybe the human body and the perfect letter have something in common. Geofroy Tory (1529) and Anthon Beeke (1970) certainly thought so — the former in a neo-Platonic, religious way and the latter in a more secular way. Although Beeke is not represented among Merkin’s blocks, she does not neglect celebrations of the female form. Most of them come from the realm of fashion: Erté’s Alphabet (1927-67), Horst P. Horst’s Vogue cover (1940), Yvette Yang’s The Fashion Alphabet (2010) and Alexia Yang’s Grotesque Beauty (2011). From the collection, Rebecca Bingham’s miniature Lady Letters (1986) could qualify for the catwalk.

Champ Fleury by Geofroy Tory Translated into English and Annotated by George B. Ives, Designed and printed by Bruce Rogers (1529)[1927]
Alphabet by Anthon Beeke, Geert Kooiman and Ed van der Elsken (1970).

Block 6: The Fashion Alphabet by Korean-born, Dutch-educated, and Paris-based artist, Yvette Yang. In 2007, Yang began creating her font fashion series with bits and pieces from the runways and magazines. This T is from her interpretation of Spring/Summer 2010.
Lady Letters (1986) by June Sidwell and Rebecca Bingham. The miniature book captures Sidwell’s designs and poses.

Historiated and figurative letters from the 6th to 15th centuries so well represent the Latin alphabet in Merkin’s box of blocks it would be greedy and thematically problematic to wish for one of the Hebrew letters from the Kennicott Bible. If there is ever a second Merkin volume to celebrate anthropomorphic letters, though, another range of languages beckons. For Ukrainian, there are the letters of Tatyana Mavrina. For Arabic, there are Mahmoud Tammam’s inventions, but then the volume would have to admit the zoomorphic, which suggests perhaps a third Merkin volume of animal alphabets.

Block 6: Horae ad usum Parisiensem (Hours of Charles of Angoulême) (ca. 1475-1500) by the French illuminator and painter Robinet Testard (fl. 1470–1531). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.
Block 2: Moralia in Job by Pope Gregory the Great (590-604). The Abbaye Notre-Dame, Cîteaux, France.

Hebrew Bible with David Kimhi’s Sefer Mikhlol (“Kennicott Bible“) (1476). Neubauer 2322. Bodleian Libraries, Oxford.
Сказочная Азбука / Skazochnaia Azbuka / A Fairy Tale Alphabet (1969) by Tatyana Mavrina.
In his Arabic letters project, Mahmoud Tammam manipulates the Arabic script ضفدع meaning “frog” to illustrate its meaning.

As shown with the Adonis letter W, Merkin’s blocks remind us of the influence of past art on the alphabets of 20th- and 21st-century designers and artists. Among the modern alphabetic variants, Dada and Surrealism make a strong showing of influence on Yvette Yang’s letter T (above) and Roman Cieślewicz’s letter i (below), and who knows, perhaps Giuseppe Maria Mitelli’s letter O influenced the Dadaists and Surrealists themselves. More than a strong showing, these styles highlight something fundamental about the alphabet and art. Both the alphabet and art ask, Are we discovering meaning or making meaning?

Block 4: Alfabeto in Sogno (1683), etchings by Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1634-1718).
Block 3: From the fantastical alphabet created by Roman Cieślewicz (1930 -1996) for Guide de la France Mystérieuse” (1964).

Every history of letters or script begins with the figuratively pictographic. Someone somewhere at some time scrawled a shape tied to a sound tied to an object — A is for Ox — and some other(s) in the same place and time recognized and accepted the discovery that this handmade shape could conjure up that object in the mind. It would have seemed magical, and they imagined that somehow meaning and reality inhered in that shape or sound waiting to be discovered.

Yet, the shapes of characters — whether Latin or Chinese or Arabic or any language — 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. That arbitrariness provides the opening for artists to use the alphabet to question our meaning-seeking behavior and our assumptions about reality, and modern artists’ anthropomorphizing the alphabet pokes fun at that behavior and those assumptions. Perhaps a fourth Merkin box — one for bodies making “asemic alphabets”?

Books On Books Collection – Roberto Beretta

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The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog (2008)

The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog (2008)
Roberto Beretta
Hardcover. H180 xW125 mm. 52 pages. Acquired from Amazon.fr. 18 September 2022.
Photos: Books On books Collection.

The title of designer Robert Beretta’s alphabet artist’s book is a pangram; it contains all the letters in the alphabet. His photos demonstrate that a sharp look all around will find them, too. Beretta’s selection for the letters B and C reflect recurrent themes that cross paths in the Books On Books Collection: the alphabet and architecture. Further Reading provides examples of works in those categories.

The observation of the alphabet all around us, not just in architecture, was well-captured by the novelist Victor Hugo. In a letter to his wife, he wrote, “Human society, the world, man in his entirety is in the alphabet. … The alphabet is a source” (Hardacre). Hugo saw letters everywhere, not just in what humankind creates but in nature as well. Throughout his alphabet and in particular with the letters XYZ, Beretta neatly captures that.

Books On Books Collection – Kenneth Hardacre

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Man and his World in the Alphabet (1991)

Man and his World in the Alphabet (1991)
Victor Hugo and Kenneth Hardacre
Softcover, sewn. H185 x W128 mm. 12 pages. Edition of 300. Acquired from Castle Hill Books, 9 June 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

In booklet form rather than broadside, Kenneth Hardacre pays homage to Victor Hugo and Hermann Zapf. The text is an extract from Hugo’s 1839 letters to his wife, published in 1910. The extract was translated by Paul Standard for Hermann Zapf’s Manuale Typographicum (1954), and Hardacre adds to his homage by typesetting the extract in Zapf’s Palatino. According to the booklet’s colophon, the papers for the cover, flyleaf and text are mould-made papers for private distribution by Hardacre and The Kit-Cat Press.

For the Books On Books Collection, Hardacre’s booklet has captured an idea that underlies both the alphabet-related and architecture-related themes in the collection. The list below provides some examples of the works reflecting those themes.

Books On Books Collection – Rudyard Kipling and Chloë Cheese

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How the Alphabet Was Made (1983)

How the Alphabet Was Made (1983)
Rudyard Kipling and Chloë Cheese (ill.)
Hardback, paper on board. Acquired from Harry Righton, 17 September 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Permission to display from Macmillan Children’s Books.

Origin stories for the alphabet have charmed makers and their audiences for ages. Rudyard Kipling’s tale from his Just So series invents the cave-dwelling girl Taffy and her father Tegumai playfully voicing sounds and words then drawing shapes to remind them of the sounds. Although Kipling as the narrator follows the pictographic principle of the origin of the alphabet, he varies from the usual sources of the letters’ inspiration. Instead of the A’s being associated with the image of an ox’s head from the word “aleph” for ox, it emerges — — expressly as a reminder of the sound “ah” — from the image of a carp’s open mouth with a feeler making the crossbar while it roots upside down in the riverbottom for food. When a mnemonic for the “yer-yer-yer” element at the beginning of the sound “yah” is needed, the tail of the upside down carp that happens to be at hand serves the need with the shape of a Y.

The story carries on from the pictographic principle to the ideographic and logographic (shapes used to represent an idea and those only for the sounds made by a word). Metonymy makes a clever appearance when Taffy’s father tells her not to worry about her drawing abilities and to rely on just a part to represent the whole. The rebus makes an appearance in a reminder to Taffy to do her chores.

At the end, Kipling steps back into the present to describe the “archaeological find” — Taffy’s alphabet necklace, made by her father and missing some letters as might be expected of such an artifact — and to provide a drawing of it as proof for the origin story as told to his eldest daughter Josephine, the “O Best Beloved” addressed in the story. Never one to miss an opportunity for a pun, Kipling’s narrator explains that the missing letters — P and Q — are the source of the saying, “Mind your P’s and Q’s”.

The illustrations provided by Chloë Cheese, presumably at the behest of the publisher, suit a trade book for the 1980s. Although more colorful, they do not precisely reproduce Kipling’s drawings included with his manuscript, which the British Library has placed online.

Just So Stories (1902)
Rudyard Kipling
Manuscript printer’s copy with original illustrations, bequeathed by Mrs Elsie Bambridge (née Kipling, second daughter of Rudyard Kipling), 14 December 1976. Paper; ff. ii+148. 370 x 280mm. Ref. Add MS 59840.
Accessed 17 November 2022.

Books On Books Collection – Abe Kuipers

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Letters (1971)

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Letters (1971)
Abe Kuipers
Self-covered set of folios. H257 x W190 closed, W380 open. 8 folios. Edition of 80. Acquired from Bubb Kuypers Auction, 22 November 2022.

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Pieter Brattinga‘s 250×250 mm Kwadraat Blad series championed the innovative typographic designs of Wim Crouwel, Gerard Unger, Timothy Epps and Christopher Evans. Theirs were radical explorations of the letterform. Even “bad boy” Anthon Beeke‘s cheeky Alphabet was based on the Baskerville typeface — at least as far as the nude female models could be posed to approximate it. At the same time, further north in The Netherlands, Abe Kuipers was pursuing a very different kind of offbeat presentation of the alphabet.

As far back as the ’40s and ’50s, Kuipers had been interested in the alphabet’s origins. In 1951, he had organized the Fifty Years of ABC for the Prinsenhof in Groningen and years later published a book based on it with Wolters-Noordhoff (Groningen). In 1971, drawing on that activity, he participated in the “Létteretét projekt”, aimed at educating the people of Groningen about letters and their origins. Like the enterprise and its manifestations, the name Létteretét is an offbeat construction. Office rooms in high rises were lit to form letters at night. A poster illustrating the origin of letters (and promoting his 1968 book) was posted on billboards, in shop windows and in schools and libraries.

Image removed. Fair use not accepted.

The bottom right corner panel reads:
this history of the letter was written and drawn by abe kuipers in may 1971. printed in silkscreen by De Ark
this print is part of the Létteretét project in Groningen.

Kuipers reconfigured this poster into an artist’s book of 80 copies. Its bright colors, ad-like images, cartoonish drawings, photos, typewriter lettering and hand-scrawled text pull the ancestors of A, B, C and D (aleph, beth, gimel and daleth) into the present in folios folded in half and loosely held by a folio formed from the poster’s title panel. Articulating aleph into the face of a cow, a cartoon businessman re-enacts the ancient Semitic sound’s naming of the animal, which wears an inverted A bridle recalling the letter’s first discovered shape. The be-suited cartoon character alludes to paleographical theory that the alphabet had its roots in signs for accounting and inventories. The letter B receives similar treatment in the vacation postcard. The character in desert clothing says beth at the pair of pup tents forming the letter B on its side, the swimsuited man explains that “tent” equals “house”, which beth designated, and, having drawn the development of the sign into its modern form, the swimsuited woman articulates the letter. And so on for all the letters of the alphabet.

Certainly Kuipers knew that there were books and exhibitions for educating the general populace about the origins of the alphabet. He had been there and done that. But it is a wonderful proposition that art and design should confront the general populace with it and that they should be aware of it in everyday life.

Books On Books Collection – Cari Ferraro

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The First Writing (2004)

The First Writing (2004)
Cari Ferraro
Leporello attached to front board; leather thong and bead closure.. H178 x W127 mm (7 x 5 in) closed; W1245 mm open (49 in). 10 panels. Edition of 50, of which this is #40. Purchased from Vamp&Tramp, 4 January 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Strange as it sounds to the Western ear, writing came before the alphabet. And like the alphabet, that ancient writing has inspired artists’ books. Two of them in the Books On Books collection are Helen Malone’s Alphabetic Codes (2005) and Cari Ferraro’s The First Writing (2004).

Crumpled Lokta paper dyed to resemble old leather and decorated with a crescent moon in gold metallic ink covers the boards of The First Writing. Just as much as old leather — and along with the interior — it evokes a painted cave wall to conjure up the archeologist Marija Gimbutas’s theory “that the first writing actually predated Sumerian businessmen by a few thousand years, and instead grew out of symbolic marks on ritual objects made to venerate the Great Mother in Old Europe”. Inspired by the archaelogist’s catalogue of marks in her book The Civilization of the Goddess, the glyphs and stylized alphabet round out Ferraro’s poetic invocation of the theory against the background of undeciphered symbols found in the 5000-year-old circular passage tombs at Knowth and Newgrange in Ireland (both described by Gimbutas). A link to Ferraro’s excellent essay on Gimbutas’s work can be found below under Further Reading.

Books On Books

Curated by Robert Bolick

Alphabet

Books On Books Collection – Experimental Jetset

Automatically Arranged Alphabets (2015)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Mitsumasa Anno

anamorphosis, n. — Oxford English Dictionary (1884-2011)

Anno’s Magical Alphabet (1981)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Carol DuBosch

Rainbow Alphabet Snowflake (2013)

Alphabet of Calligraphic Tricks (2014)

Embossed Alphabet Gallery (2019)

Further Reading/Watching

Books On Books Collection – Tatyana Mavrina

Сказочная Азбука
Skazochnaia Azbuka
A Fairy Tale Alphabet (1969)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Lisa Merkin

Bodies Making Language (2021)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Roberto Beretta

The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog (2008)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Kenneth Hardacre

Man and his World in the Alphabet (1991)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Rudyard Kipling and Chloë Cheese

How the Alphabet Was Made (1983)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Abe Kuipers

Letters (1971)

Image removed. Fair use not accepted.

Image removed. Fair use not accepted.

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Cari Ferraro

The First Writing (2004)

Further Reading

Automatically Arranged Alphabets (2015)

Further Reading

Like this:

anamorphosis, n. — Oxford English Dictionary (1884-2011)

Anno’s Magical Alphabet (1981)

Further Reading

Like this:

Rainbow Alphabet Snowflake (2013)

Alphabet of Calligraphic Tricks (2014)

Embossed Alphabet Gallery (2019)

Further Reading/Watching

Like this:

Сказочная АзбукаSkazochnaia AzbukaA Fairy Tale Alphabet (1969)

Further Reading

Like this:

Bodies Making Language (2021)

Further Reading

Like this:

The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog (2008)

Further Reading

Like this:

Man and his World in the Alphabet (1991)

Further Reading

Like this:

How the Alphabet Was Made (1983)

Further Reading

Like this:

Letters (1971)

Image removed. Fair use not accepted.

Image removed. Fair use not accepted.

Further Reading

Like this:

The First Writing (2004)

Further Reading

Like this:

Сказочная Азбука
Skazochnaia Azbuka
A Fairy Tale Alphabet (1969)