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Books On Books Collection – Laure Catugier

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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.
An open booklet with several pages displayed, featuring minimalistic text labels such as 'City Map', 'Pharmacy', and 'Path'. The pages fan out in a star-like formation 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.
A simple drawing of a kite on an open card, with the word 'KITE' printed on the top right corner.
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.

Further Reading

“Architecture“. 12 November 2018. Books On Books Collection.

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

Burzec, Marcelina. 16 November 2025. “Home is where the Hansen is: Poland pays tribute to open form architecture pioneers“. Euro.news. May remind you of Jim Ede’s Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, England.

Deguy, Michel, and Bertrand Dorny. 1989. Le Métronome. Paris: Self-published. Interesting for a contrast and comparison on how structure in an artist’s book can analogize with music.

Higgins, Dick. 2001. “Intermedia.” Leonardo 34, no. 1: 49–54.

Hofstadter, Douglas R. 1979. Gödel, Escher, Bach : An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books. P. 191.

Hubert, Renée Riese, and Judd David Hubert. 1999. The Cutting Edge of Reading : Artists’ Books. New York City: Granary Books. See pp. 104-06 for discussion of music and structure in Deguy and Dorny’s Le Metronome.

Scott, Felicity D. 2014. “Space Educates” in Alęksandra Kedziorek and Łukasz Ronduda (eds). Oskar Hansen : Opening Modernism : On Open Form Architecture, Art and Didactics. Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Pp. 137-60.

MacCallum, Marlene, et al. 2007. The Architectural Uncanny. Corner Brook: Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery.

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.

Further Reading

“Tia Blassingame“. 17 August 2020. Books On Books Collection.

“Global Afrikan Congress“. 15 May 2023. Books On Books Collection.

“Sarah Matthews“. 15 February 2025.Books On Books Collection.

“Arial Robinson“. 15 May 2023. Books On Books Collection.

“Ruth E. Rogers“. 17 November 2025.Books On Books Collection.

“Clarissa Sligh“. 2 September 2020. Books On Books Collection.

“Carrie Mae Weems“. 14 February 2025. Books On Books Collection.

“Kara Walker“. 9 January 2026. Books On Books Collection.

Douglas, Emory et al. 2007. Black Panther : The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas. New York, NY: Rizzoli.

Douglas, Emory. “The Black Panther Party and the Struggle for a Just Society“. Arizona State University. Video, go to 18’00”.

Gabor, Nora. 18 February 2021. “Black History and Experiences through Book Arts“. The Full Text: News about library resources and services. Chicago, IL: DePaul University. Accessed 22 January 2024.

Gleek, Charlie. “Centuries of Black Artists’ Books“, presented at “Black Bibliographia: Print/Culture/Art” conference at the Center for Material Culture Studies, University of Delaware, 27 April 2019, pp. 7-8. Accessed 20 July 2020.

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).

Further Reading

“Philip Zimmermann“. Books On Books Collection.

Beckett Sandra L. 2013. Crossover Picturebooks : A Genre for All Ages. London: Routledge.

Golden Pinwheel. 23 July 2020. “Cho Sunkyunk, the many faces of illustration“. Golden Pinwheel.

Haughton, Chris. 13 September 2011. “5 1/2 months on Sunkyung’s sofa“. chrishaughton.com.

Mutty. 12 May 2020. “Sunkyung Cho – Living Objects“. Art Tribune.

Nikolajeva, Maria, and Carole Scott. 2007. How picturebooks work. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Outlaw, Christopher. 17 April 2017. “FILBo 2017“. The Bogotá Post. Accessed 30 October 2011.

Perkins, Stephen. 7 March 2023. “Antonio Ferrara, Ventiquattromila baci (Twenty four thousand kisses), Settenove edizioni, Cagli, Italy, 2021.” Accordion Publications.

Scott, Carole. 2014. “Artists’ books, Altered books, and Picturebooks”. In: B. Kümmerling‐Meibauer, ed., Picturebooks: Representation and Narration. London, New York: Routledge.

Books On Books Collection – Erica Van Horn (III)

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The hunt for Erica Van Horn’s Seven Lady Saintes has been long, but at last, in a glass case in Conway Hall at the Small Publishers Fair in London this year, there it was. Van Horn and Simon Cutts (co-founders of Coracle Press) have been a regular feature of the Small Publishers Fair since its first occurrence in 2002 at Royal Festival Hall.

Conway Hall, owned by the charity Conway Hall Ethical Society, first opened in 1929 and is named after Moncure Daniel Conway (1832-1907), an anti-slavery advocate and biographer of Thomas Paine. It has hosted the Fair since its second outing in 2003. In 2025, it had a cameo appearance in the spy drama series Slow Horses as the unlikely host for an ultra-right mayoral candidate’s campaign event. The setting provided the kind of sardonic humorous dig that Van Horn would appreciate (if she were a regular television viewer).

With stained-glass colors, Seven Lady Saintes splashes its own brand of sardonic humor across a stiff-card leporello produced in 1985 at the Women’s Studio Workshop Print Center in Rosendale, New York.

Seven Lady Saintes (1985)

Seven Lady Saintes (1985)
Erica Van Horn
Clear plastic-coated white-thread envelope, self-covered leporello, watercolor paper. Envelope: H270 x W215 mm. Leporello: H250 x W205 mm (closed), W3040 mm (open). 16 panels, including covers. Edition of 90, artist’s proof. Acquired from the artist 1 November 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Van Horn uses a sophisticated child-like style of text and image to laugh slyly, wryly, and grimly at religion and patriarchy. Her summaries parody the descriptions in the handouts usually available in museums, convents, and churches or in the flood of hagiographies long on the market. The sophisticated-naivete of the drawing in Seven Lady Saintes appears in other works such as La ville aux dames (1983) and With or Without (2010). If the story of her plan for a series of four children’s books had turned out differently from the account in Scraps of an Aborted Collaboration (1994), we would have even more evidence of the influence of children’s books on many artists’ books that the Huberts propose in The Cutting Edge of Reading (1999).

Martha, patron sainte of cooks and housewives

Agatha, patron against fire and diseases of the breast

Fina, patron sainte of San Gemignano

Reparata, formerly patron sainte of Florence

Lucy, patron sainte of Syracuse and diseases of the eye

Ursula, patron sainte of teachers and young girls

Cecilia, patron sainte of music and musicians

Walking the Portes (2025)

Walking the Portes: Winters in Paris 2014-2019 (2025)
Simon Cutts and Erica Van Horn
Casebound, book cloth over boards, blind stamped and inked spine, photo pastedown in recess on front cover, plain doublures. H182 x W132 mm. 216 pages. Edition of 300. Acquired from Books about Art, 15 September 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

In the early 2000s, a series of hardbacks appeared called “Writer and the City”. John Banville covered Prague; Peter Carey, Sydney; Justin Cartwright, Oxford; Ruy Castro, Rio de Janeiro; David Leavitt, Florence; and Edmund White, Paris. White’s was the first, and it set the tone with its content and title: The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris. An enterprising paperback publisher might be enticed to reissue them and, allowing for a Parisian double-dip, to add Walking the Portes. Besides, I prefer Simon and Erica’s Paris to Edmund White’s, and Walking the Portes pairs better with Anne Moeglin-Delcroix’s Ambulo Ergo Sum (2015) anyway.

It is Simon’s plan to ride out to each of the entrances to Paris (the portes) and walk back to the apartment in the Marais. When it turns out that instead of twenty-one portes there are thirty-nine, Erica firmly responds accordingly:

In introducing Ambulo Ergo Sum, her extended essay on Hamish Fulton, Richard Long, and herman de vries, Moeglin-Delcroix writes:

The analysis of some artists’ books … should make it possible to show how the emphasis has been progressively placed no longer on landscape but on the search for the best means, differing according to the various artists, of rendering an experience in the strongest sense of the word: a lived experience of the world, a personal practice, that is to say, a deliberate way of being inthe world rather than before it. The walking body is the touchstone of this, because walking compels one to supersede the limits of a purely visual experience of nature to become the experience of the whole artist, with his body, in nature. (p. 6)

Whether Walking the Portes is an artists’ book or not, it does what Moeglin-Delcroix describes. It renders these artists’ lived experiences of Paris and their deliberate way of being in the world together.

Further Reading

“Erica Van Horn (I)“. 29 December 2020. Books On Books Collection.

“Erica Van Horn (II)“. 13 September 2025. Books On Books Collection.

Bates, Julie. 2023. “Erica Van Horn’s creative exercises“. Irish Studies Review, 31(1), 139–158. Interviewed Van Horn at the 2025 Small Publishers Fair, Conway Hall, London.

Bury, Stephen. 2015. Artists’ Books : The Book as a Work of Art 1963-2000. London: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. P. 111 shows a near life-size sleeved copy of Seven Lady Saintes, but mis-dates it as 1989.

Hubert, Renée Riese, and Judd David Hubert. 1999. The Cutting Edge of Reading : Artists’ Books. New York City: Granary Books. Pp. 207, 211-12.

Kuhl, Nancy. 2010. The Book Remembers Everything: The Work of Erica Van Horn. Clonmel: Coracle Press. Until the acquisition of Seven Lady Saintes, Nancy Kuhl’s The Book Remembers Everything (2010) was the only means in the Books On Books Collection by which to gain a sense of Van Horn’s more painterly bookworks such as La Ville aux dames (“second state”) (1983), a unique work that appeared in the 1986 Chicago exhibition “The Book Made Art“. Van Horn’s works are archived in the Beinecke Library at Yale University: Prints, Papers, Materials in the Digital Library, and the Simon Cutts Constructed Archive. Several, including Seven Lady Saintes, are viewable online at the Fleet Library Rhode Island School of Design. Accessed 27 November 2025.

Statue of Santa Reparata in the crypt in the Romanesque foundations of Santa Maria Maggiore, Florence. Photo: Books On Books Collection.

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 of Fig. 0.

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.

Further Reading

“Alphabets Alive! – Criss-cross Row (Horn-books)“. 19 July 2023. Books On Books Collection.

“Ashley Rose Thayer “. 9 July 2023. Books On Books Collection.

“Movables Now and Then“. 31 August 2024. Bookmarking Book Art.

“Kevin M. Steele“. 18 July 2023. Books On Books Collection.

“Andrew White Tuer“. 26 December 2022. Books On Books Collection.

Kwakkel, Erik. 10 April 2015. “Book on a Stick“. Medievalbooks. Leiden. Accessed 10 November 2025.

Books On Books Collection – Erica Van Horn (II)

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Descriptions of Literature by Gertrude Stein: Handwritten by Erica Van Horn (2019)

Cover of the book 'Descriptions of Literature' by Gertrude Stein, handwritten by Erica Van Horn, featuring a light purple fabric texture with the title and author's name in contrasting text.

Descriptions of Literature by Gertrude Stein: Handwritten by Erica Van Horn (2019)
Erica Van Horn
Limited edition (unknown quantity). H157 x W146 mm. [144] pages. Acquired from Books about Art, 2 July 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Appropriation has its reasons. Gertrude Stein’s description of literature with which Erica Van Horn begins her scribal appropriation of sixty-six of Stein’s exacting and elusive apothegms is particularly appropriate. In the brief afterword, Van Horn explains that she has always been proud of her handwriting and loves writing by hand. So, this book “shows that the next and best is to be found out when there is pleasure in the reason” as its next folio shows: Van Horn’s pleasure in the reason is her pleasure in the reason.

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Books On Books Collection – William Wondriska

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A Long Piece of String (2010 [1963])

Cover of 'A Long Piece of String' by William Wondriska, featuring an illustration of a red elephant and a piece of string.

A Long Piece of String (2010 [1963])
William Wondriska
Casebound, illustrated paper over boards, illustrated pasteboards. H185 x W290 mm. [44] pages. Acquired from Thrift Books, 25 May 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

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Books On Books Collection – Suzanne Moore (III)

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Dreamings (2023)

Dreamings (2023)
Suzanne Moore
Artist’s manuscript. Softcover, handsewn. Cloth-covered box with handwritten and painted title pastedown on the spine. H368 x W178 mm. 17 pages. A unique edition. Acquired from the artist, 15 April 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection and artist.

Dreamings (2023) follows the artist’s Question Series, begun in 2008 considering questions of life and art while exploring the letter Q – “that quirky letter of distinct design” as Moore calls it. Other works in the series include:

Thirteen Questions  (2008), drawn from Pablo Neruda’s The Book of Questions (1991) [Libro de las preguntas (1974)], unknown location.*

Studies in Love the Question (2016), now at the Letterform Archive.

Inquiry (2019), unknown location.*

Seeing Red: Seven Questions (2019), unknown location.*

Trust (2019), now at the Boston Athenaeum.

The Question (2021), drawn from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. Now at Baylor University.

Your Question, Please (2022), unknown location.*

Rescuing Q (2023), now at the Bodleian Libraries.

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Books On Books Collection – Kitty Crowther

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Va faire un tour (1995)

From the first wordless illustration onwards in Kitty Crowther’s Va faire un tour, you don’t have to know French to know that the book’s title means imperatively “take a walk” — or maybe even “take a hike” — in English. There is no mistaking the tone of Maman’s character nor the reaction of her little one stomping along, circling the globe, even under bodies of water, oblivious to characteristic scenery and inhabitants.

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