Books On Books Collection – Thomas Stauss

Magic Metamorphosis (2025)

Three books are arranged on a wooden surface. The book on the left has a plain leather cover, the center book titled 'Magic MetaMorphoSis' features a colorful illustration of a lizard, and the right book is a pink cover with the same title and an intricate black and white image on the bottom.

Magic Metamorphosis : The Secrets of a Rare Italian Picture Album Revealed (2025)
Thomas Stauss
Slipcased two volumes. Slipcase: H375 x W230 x D53 mm. Both vols: H362 x W225 mm. Facsimile: [336] pages. Explanatory vol: 256 pages. Acquired from Amazon, 2 September 2026.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. See end of entry for credits to photographs in Magic Metamorphosis.

Collectors who can describe their collections and their searches without prompting yawns or worse are almost as rare as unicorn horns. Thomas Stauss knows how to tell a story. With his background in acquiring antique games and magicians’ apparatus, he was well equipped to recognize what the oddly organized portfolio volume in a Parisian book shop was meant to be — a “blow book”, a trick book that at first appears to be completely blank but then, with a magical breath blown over it, displays a set of themed images that, with another breath blown, changes into yet another set, and then another, and so on. But whoever commissioned these sets of watercolors in the 1600s had not had the finishing touches made before the sets were bound in a single volume. With a familiar and unassuming style, Stauss turns his discovery and its transformation into a page-turning read that is as magical as any blow book.

An open book with an illustrated map on the left page and text on the right page. The map depicts buildings and gardens, including the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, while the text discusses a scientific research project related to a significant find in Paris.

Until now, Ricky Jay’s Magic Magic Book (1994) could be considered the definitive work on this book structure and conjuror’s apparatus that arose in the wake of Gutenberg’s printing press. Thomas Stauss’s study now takes center stage and assumes that leading role. Perhaps his training in hydrology and geology — as well as his collector’s focus — instilled the curiosity and patience to accomplish this. Also he has been studying the history of science for over 25 years and, somewhere along the way, acquired the skills in bibliographical science necessary for this project. Stauss wears his scholarship lightly though. Discovery, fact, explanation, and conjecture proceed with fine balance and an engaging pace.

After the prologue recounting his discovery of Disegni Antichi Bizzarri [“Bizarre antique drawings”] Stauss’s first chapter introduces the history, nomenclature, structure, and working of the blow book. Its various methods of construction are clearly described and shown by diagram and photography, and the production team should be lauded for the quality and positioning of images with the explanatory text. No better description of how a performer worked the audience with a blow book has occurred since the mid-17th-century picaresque novel by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, and Stauss uses it to conclude the chapter.

An open book with a detailed illustration on the left page depicting a historical scene with several people and a man presenting an image, and text on the right page introducing Chapter 1 of the book.

An open book displaying illustrated pages, featuring a figure wearing armor alongside two dark, horned creatures with fiery hair.

An illustrated engraving from the second complete edition of Grimmelhausen's works, depicting a ragged beggar named Springinsfeld playing a musical instrument. He is surrounded by various musical instruments and magical props, including cups, balls, and a triangular magic padlock. — From *Magical Metamorphosis*, p. 29.

The second chapter delves into the history of Disegni Antichi Bizzarri itself and provides details on its collation, pagination, binding, geographical origins, dating, and provenance. The photography of the portfolio volume by Stauss and the Basel University Library is stunning.

Open book page featuring a detailed illustration of fish on the left side and text about Italian picture albums on the right.

An open book displaying an illustration of fantastical creatures amid flames, with a dragon-like figure coiling, a bird-like creature, and a humanoid figure interacting with a large, mythical beast.

In the third chapter, Stauss rewards us with the results of his research into the pictorial motifs not only of Disegni Antichi Bizzarri but also of blow books from before 1584 to 1870. Stauss provides visually convincing links of influence on the artist of Disegni Antichi Bizzarri from Hans Memling, Conrad Gessner, Ulisse Aldrovandi, Jan Jonston, Jacob de Gheyn II, Giovanni Battista Crescenzi, Giovanna Garzoni, Octavianus Monfort, Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer, Nicolas Robert, Guillaume Toulouze, and the album called Raccolta di disegni di animali (Modena, c. 1650).

An open book displaying Chapter 3 titled 'The Visual Worlds,' featuring a detailed illustration of men in historical attire pointing towards an array of marine and terrestrial creatures above a wooden bookshelf.

A table displaying various categories related to historical works, including headings for women, men, soldiers, birds, jugglers, devils, animals, and more, with various illustrations and notes.

The fourth chapter presents the history of blow books from 1550 through 1870 in greater detail and extensive illustration.

Adding to the definitive nature of Magic Metamorphosis, the fifth chapter delivers the surprise of over two hundred reproductions of the watercolor drawings from the oldest known blow book: Libro dei Diavolo (early 17th century), which resides in the New York Public Library. The images are accompanied by the entirety of Louise George Clubb’s essay that, similarly to Stauss’s rescue of Disegni Antichi Bizzarri, established the true nature of this work that had been misidentified for nearly half a century as a sampler of a commedia dell’arte troupe’s wares and repertoire.

A two-page spread featuring a chapter title about the oldest known blow book, accompanied by an artistic illustration of a mythical creature with horns and smoke rising from its hands on the left page.

A colorful illustration from a book showing five figures in traditional attire, holding hands and dancing in a line on a grassy area.

Stauss’s final chapter brings the blow book into the 21st century and his readers to the brink of enjoying his transformation of his discovered album into a facsimile working blow book. Although graciously giving ace-conjuror Ricky Jay the last word in the chapter, Stauss introduces his readers to the blow book’s possible transformation into an object of higher art.

A black-and-white illustration of a donkey with human features, wearing a coat, sitting at a piano and reading sheet music, alongside text from an epilogue discussing new perspectives on a topic.

A page of a book featuring an orange background with text entries on one side and an illustration of a monkey on the bottom left.

Stauss notes that art historian Nancy Princenthal looked at Jay’s The Magic Magic Book and wrote in 1996 of the blow book from an art historical perspective, but he notes it only in passing. Princenthal was dismissive of any kinship between the blow book and book art:

The magic book has only an incidental kinship to elaborately structured bookworks built around accordion folds and gatefolds, cutouts and pop-up elements, whether historical or contemporary (as in the recent work of Scott McCarney, Clifton Meador, Margot Lovejoy, or Carol Barton). — Princenthal, p. 186.

Stauss underplays his alert observation of two 21st century blow books that are works that Princenthal’s roll-call of book artists would appreciate. The first is Horst Antes’ Flickbuch (2000); the second, Julie Chen’s & Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder’s Book of Hours (2021). Both of these works — as well as Jay’s two-volume set and the other serious contemporary blow book Stauss mentions, Ernst Strouhal’s Gespräch mit einem Esel (2019) — are in the Books On Books Collection. As with all of the other chapters, the photography illustrating these works is superb. They will entice institutional and individual collectors of artists’ books.

A side view of a closed book with a textured brown cover and a white spine featuring alternating striped patterns.

Including the spread of blank pages, there are eight transformations. Their printing order is 1) the spread of blank pages, 2) demons, 3) pike men and musketeers, 4) land animals and insects, 5) birds and insects, 6) sea creatures, 7) fruit and vegetables, and 8) bouquets of flowers. Their order in performance would depend on the performer’s patter like that of Simplicius or Hopalong from the picaresque novel by Grimmelshausen, which Stauss excerpts in chapters two and four of the explanatory volume. Most likely, the performer would flip through the book showing only blank pages; then after blowing on the book, the performer might display spread after spread of bouquets of flowers; or with another magical breath, a variety of sea creatures.

A historical illustration depicting two male soldiers wearing ornate armor and vibrant clothing, each holding a spear. They stand on rocky terrain with greenery in the background.

Two men in historical costumes, each holding a firearm, standing amidst greenery. The man on the left wears a green outfit with a feathered hat and a belt, while the man on the right is dressed in blue and red, with a more relaxed posture.

Collections that specialize in art history and book history will be drawn by both the explanatory and facsimile volumes in this definitive work. Hopefully, book artists will find their way to it for inspiration toward many more magical metamorphoses.

Credits for Photographs in Magic Metamorphosis:

The page numbers given below refer to the pagination in Stauss’s Magic Metamorphosis:

[8]: Turgo map of Paris (1739): akg-images (AKG3090703).

[14]: From Huber, Volker & Antes, Horst. 2003 (p. 8). Fresh Breath on the Blow Book. Humble (Texas).

29: akg-images (AKG 573051)

60: University Library Basel (UBH HA II 2 Folio).

[100]: Houghton Library, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts (MS Typ 530, p. 276)

116: Baden State Library, Karlsruhe (KK 408).

138, 158–159: New York Public Library (Spencer Collection MS. 180).

[216]: Zurich University of the Arts (9900-102).

Photographs from the original album Disegni Antichi Bizzarri: University Library, Basel (Switzerland)

Books On Books Collection – Diego Brambilla

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11 Stations (2025)

A closed white folder with a curved clasp on a dark background.

Cover of a book titled '11 Stations' featuring a stylized image resembling a planet with rings, on a black background.

Open book with a textured gray background, displaying numerals in a vertical arrangement on the left side and the title '11 stations' on the right.

11 Stations (2025)
Diego Brambilla
Portfolio wrapper enclosing a paper-covered book, pamphlet-stitched with black thread. Portfolio: H308 x W225 mm.Book: H238 x W197 mm. 55 pages. Edition of 55, of which this is #53. Acquired from the artist, 16 June 2026.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Diego Brambilla‘s 11 Stations pays homage to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities with a beautiful construction that visually and materially reflects the novel’s intricate structure. Where Calvino has Marco Polo describe 55 cities to Kublai Khan across a complex cascading cycle of 11 themes, Brambilla’s artist’s book has 55 pages and 11 images from handmade gelatin-silver prints each recurring 5 times. The descending staircase pattern of numbers starting from 1 and ending at 11 on the back cover shows Brambilla’s cascading cycle of images. It is in fact a structural Table of Contents for 11 Stations.

A vertical arrangement of numbers, starting from 1 at the top and increasing sequentially. Each line extends the sequence with one additional number, creating a diagonal effect against a textured dark background.

Brambilla’s 11 images are of abstract, enigmatic forms that blur the line between photography and sculpture. He has constructed the objects to be photographed, then rendered as silver-gelatin prints, and reproduced for this book.

Brambilla’s eleven images, which align with Calvino’s eleven themes.

Excluding its paper cover, the book would need 110 pages to accommodate its 55 images and 55 blanks. In fact, with 2 pages of text at the center of the book, it needs 112 pages, or 28 folios (sheets) folded in half and pamphlet stitched.

An open book showing the spine and pages, with text partially visible on the left side.

Brambilla neatly takes advantage of the arithmetic here to introduce 7 variations of paper, each used 4 times corresponding to the required 28 folios. The 7 different papers are

Boesner Kraftpapier 90 gsm
Boesner Zeichenpapier 70 gsm
Seawhite of Brighton 70 gsm
Hahnemühle Hemp Sketch 80 gsm
Reflex glama basic Microdraft 80 gsm
Antalis Image Coloraction 80 gsm
Reflex Layout 75 gsm

Below is the 6th image across its 5 iterations. Because the 6th falls midway among the 11 images, its position in the cascade puts its third iteration at the center folio in the book. The centered pages of text can be seen bleeding through that third iteration below. The 6th image’s position in the pamphlet stitched structure also causes its 1st and 5th iterations to share the same sheet of paper; likewise, the 2nd and 4th iterations share a folio. At first, this seems the only point on which Brambilla’s structure does not have a precise correspondent in Calvino’s structure.

But consider this: The city of Baucis is the 28th city/chapter, the midpoint, among Calvino’s 55 cities. It is the midpoint among the 5 cities in Calvino’s 6th theme: “Cities & Eyes”. As Marco Polo describes it,

After a seven days’ march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city and yet he has arrived. The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city….There are three hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they hate the earth; that they respect it so much they avoid all contact; that they love it as it was before they existed ….

If Brambilla’s choice to place this image of a three-legged stool at the center of his 11 images was coincidental, chance is a genius — with which Calvino would have likely agreed.

Reading 11 Stations exercises the visual and haptic mind. The use of translucent pages is a frequent technique to have the reader/viewer see more than the image that lies on the surface or behind the image.

An open book displaying abstract geometric shapes and shadows on textured pages.

Close-up of a frosted sheet of transparent material overlaying a textured surface, with geometric shapes partially visible beneath.

An open book displaying abstract illustrations on its pages, featuring a light yellow background on the left and a darker, shadowy composition of shapes and forms on the right.

Abstract composition featuring geometric shapes, including spheres and cones, casting shadows on layered paper.

But what to make of the 4 instances in which the folio is not trimmed at the top edge? And what to make of the sketches printed inside the folded sheet? Here is another technique that makes the reader go beneath the physical surface. Is the book artist using features of bookmaking to prod the reader/viewer to think then of what lies beneath the creative surface?

A close-up of an open book displaying a sketch of an hourglass shape on a page with a visible cut-out.

A close-up of a sketchbook page featuring a pencil sketch of a geometric shape, with the inner edge revealing another page.

Brambilla’s attention to detail is meticulous — even in the selection of Calvino Grande by Zetafont for the title and text pages — and that is what serves him so well in paying homage to Invisible Cities. Like Calvino’s book, 11 Stations is one to read and re-read.

Bookmarking Book Art – AMBruno “Finale”

2026/09/20Books On Books1 Comment

A promotional booklet cover featuring the text 'AMBruno 2025 FINALE' and an abstract image of draped fabric with a geometric shape, along with the phrase 'The proposals:'.

AMBruno’s last project Finale proved to be a fertile prompt for 19 artists and their 18 works. I thank Sophie Loss and John MacDowall for the fun and honor of reviewing the entries.

When I consider an artist’s book for acquisition or inclusion in an exhibit, I want it to make me read with my eyes, hands, and mind. Following the text is not enough. It should demand that I see the shapes of letters, words, images, pages, and the entire work itself. Turning a page is not enough. It should demand that I handle, unfold, rotate, manipulate – feel it. Mentally deciphering the work’s signs is not enough. I want it to make me think – about how the shape, material, and making work together – about how artists’ books before this one may be present – about how other literary, visual, sculptural, architectural, performative, or even digital art may be present.

So, you can appreciate what a challenge it was to select works on the basis of a few sentences or paragraphs describing what the artists planned to submit.

Now add that the proposals’ ranged from simple pamphlet fold to intricate concertina pop-up and to piano-hinged sculpture, from relief prints to photographic prints, from a Renaissance nude to a carnivalesque Full Monte, from entirely text to entirely blank, and from celebration to lamentation and back.

A close-up of an open book with artistic covers, featuring a painting of a chubby child holding an owl. The background includes another book with a different artwork.

A man dressed as a king wearing a golden crown, a red cape, and a gold skirt, posing in front of a sign that reads 'Sun God' and 'Philip Lee'.

Now add their settings from fireworks displays, theatrical productions, the Book of Common Prayer’s Order for the Burial of the Dead, book burnings, a mythic road trip, and a televised lunar crash.

And then add the range of literary and other media influences – from the Greek myths, Bronzino, John Donne, James Joyce, Heinrich Heine, Georges Perec, J.B. Priestley, to the evening television news.

As I mentioned, it was an honor to be tortured with the challenge of imagining what the artists intended. On seeing the final results with Sophie and John via Zoom, my imagination was much relieved and delighted.

As I watched the artists present their works and the audience inspect the Finale selections, look hard and long, touch them, and think slowly, I was convinced of their delight as well.

As a group, the entries represented almost every variety of artist’s book I have encountered. One form missing though was the un-openable book. I feared that someone might propose a tombstone carved in the shape of a book which would weigh like a lump on the proceedings. There was, however, a book that took on the shape of a tombstone but seemed to take flight when opened. And although among the entries there were mourners for the final AMBruno project, there were celebratory memorializers as well. In fact, as Sophie and John reviewed the arrivals alphabetically for me by Zoom, I laughed that chance ended our session with Roy Willingham’s Touch Paper, a wonderfully structured diamond-shaped concertina whose folios each burst open to name a traditional English firework and combine to make a larger diamond.

An artistic sculpture of a book titled '...And yet' by Karen Blake, featuring a textured spine and layered pages, placed on a dark, textured base.

Colorful pop-up book page featuring geometric designs, with text labels 'GLITTER BOMB' and 'MINE OF FIERY SERPENTS'.

How fitting that the finale of AMBruno’s Finale turns out to be a firework display that should prompt not only oohs and aahs but also a round of applause for Sophie Loss and friends for the 16 AMBruno projects over the past 14 years.

A group of people applauding in a library setting, with several tables displaying books and materials. The audience shows diverse reactions, and a few individuals are standing while others are seated.

The nineteen Finale artists were: Karen Blake, Laure Catugier, Claudia de la Torre, Judy Goldhill, Susan Johanknecht & Katharine Meynell, Rafael Klein, Pauline Lamont-Fisher, Philip Lee, Sophie Loss, John McDowall, Alastair Noble, Linda Parr, Ximena Pérez Grobet, Peter Rapp, Mireille Ribière, Cally Trench, Maria White, and Roy Willingham. Visit the AMBruno site and shop for additional views of the works.

Photography: Books On Books Collection, Sophie Loss, Judy Goldhill, Philip Lee, DDK, Julie Jones, Julia Davy-Brown, and Steve Davy-Brown.

Books On Books Collection – Ken Botnick (II)

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Six Memos Project (2020)

I see that one way or another I keep circling around the idea of an interdependence between the unwritten world and the book I should write. This is why writing presents itself to me as an operation of such weight that I remain crushed by it. I put my eye to the spyglass and train it on the reader. Between her eyes and the page a white butterfly flutters. Whatever she may have been reading, now it is certainly the butterfly that has captured her attention. The unwritten world has its climax in that butterfly. The result at which I must aim is something specific, intimate, light. — Italo Calvino. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (Vintage Classics) (p. 172).

As homage and work of art, Ken Botnick’s Six Memos Project is that “something specific, intimate, light” to which Calvino’s narrator refers. It hovers between us and Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1985), his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures prepared for Harvard. All but the sixth lecture was written when Calvino died in the fall of 1985.

A design or promotional graphic featuring the title 'Calvino Project' with the words 'Visibility', 'Multiplicità', 'Leggerezza', 'Exactitude', 'Quickness', and 'Six Memos' arranged creatively. The background has a soft gradient, and the year '2024' is indicated.

An open book page with various words printed in different languages, including 'Quickness', 'Visibility', and their translations.

Six Memos Project (2020)
Ken Botnick
Board slipcase with inked embossed title. Open spine hardcover. H290 x W188 mm. [116] pages. Edition of 20, of which this is #12. Acquired from the artist, 14 July 2026.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

The Six Memos Project makes us want to read or re-read those lectures and make us long for that missing sixth. With its papers, ink, incisions, typographic layout, page structure, binding, and textures, this artist’s book captures our attention and wonder long enough to realize that it is acting as a lens on the lectures and, paradoxically, on itself and the act of reading. This self-reflexive artist’s book is the ideal medium for paying homage to Calvino’s writing about his writing.

Open book with pages displaying blurred text, featuring a blend of philosophical and literary reflections, against a dark background.

Lightness was the first of the six literary themes that Calvino commended to the next millennium. Botnick arranges its title in Italian and English on translucent paper so that it pivots on its initial letter, ascending and descending the margin. As the page turns to the left, the opening statement that Botnick has selected from the lecture emerges crisply in English on the left and Italian on the right, alternating like wings down the center of the page.

Matching Calvino’s description of his writing method, Botnick centrifugally subtracts segments from the image in the upper left corner of the same page. The expressive abstract image seems to float behind the statement’s tinted panel, and the enlarging subtracted segments surface through and over the panel as they move downwards from left to right.

In the next spread, the enlarging segments continue to follow the gist of Calvino’s theme until they seem to float off the page.

An artistic print featuring the text 'weightless' and a description in Italian, with sketch-like lines creating a minimal, abstract background.

The following sequence switches techniques from inking to stenciling for the response to Calvino’s method and theme of lightness. Leaf by leaf it metaphorically enacts the removal of weight from the incised letters of the word “lightness”.

An open book page featuring the phrase 'empty space is just as concrete as solid bodies' in a light-colored box on the left, and the word 'LIGHTNESS' printed in large, faint letters on the right page.

An open book showcasing a page with the word 'LIGHTNESS' cut out in an artistic font against a blank background.

Open book displaying pages with abstract cut-out letters on a light background.

An open book with a purple cover, displaying a page featuring cut-out shapes and letters on the left side, against a plain white background.

A close-up of a glossy, dark purple page being turned, revealing a sheet of white paper with text partially visible.

It is telling that the heavily ink-saturated opaque paper that gives the final absences their weight is used only in this section of the book. Its second and last use in the section is just as metaphorical and functional as its first. In response to the excerpt “the search for lightness as reaction to the weight of living”, it contrasts with bare remnants of the subtracted segments on the left and punctuates with its weight the end of “Lightness”.

Open book spread featuring a light-colored page with the text 'the search for lightness as a reaction to the weight of living' and its Italian translation, on the left, against a darker page on the right.

In each of the next four sections, the artist exercises different functional metaphors corresponding to the themes and excerpts of the lectures that Calvino completed: Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, and Multiplicity. As with the symbiosis of lightness and weight, Calvino proceeds by contrasts: quickness vs delay, exactitude vs insubstantiality, visibility of the imagination through words vs their failure under the weight of the “image civilization”, and multiplicity of language, viewpoints, and things vs a single language, an insular perspective, and a null undifferentiated whole.

Where Calvino adopts Manutius’ motto festina lente [“make haste slowly”], Botnick gives us

Open book spread featuring the words 'festina lente' in a prominent, stylized font against a minimalist background.

Where Calvino worries about straight lines of exactitude vs oblique curves by which to approach the unsayable, Botnick gives us

An open book displaying two pages; the left page features text with a gradient yellow to pink background, while the right page has a grid of fine horizontal lines with a few highlighted elements.

Where, in contemplating visibility, Calvino posits “the imagination is a place where it rains”, Botnick give us an image printed on a sheet held within the fold of another sheet on which Calvino’s text appears in blocks that seem to float on the watery image underneath.

An open book page featuring three transparent sticky notes with text in Italian and English. The notes describe imagination as a place where it rains inside.

Image of three overlapping sticky notes with text in Italian and English, discussing imagination as a place where it rains inside.

Below are internal shots of the French fold sheet that envelopes the single sheet bearing the watery image that appears through the sides of the French fold. The angle is from the spread bottom edge of the French fold with the first shot showing single sheet image bowed to the right, the second showing the single sheet curving between the sides of the French fold, and the third showing the single sheet image bowed to the left.

Where Calvino notes the argument of some “that the more a work tends toward the multiplication of possibilities, the further it drifts from the unicum that is the writer’s self, from sincerity, from the discovery of personal truth”, Botnick gives us the text of Calvino’s contrary reply below on the left, but note that it is the same text with which Botnick prefaced his artist’s book on the right:

That preface is the first of an enveloping move that Botnick completes at the end of Multiplicity and the end of the artist’s book. Calvino has the last word of the section in text that hovers over a large solid spot-varnished half circle. When this sheet and the next two are turned, …

Page of text featuring reflections on art and the concept of self, discussing perspectives beyond individuality.

we are left with this last abstract image capturing the combinatorics of our experiences, the rain descending in the imagination, and the multitude of the voices of things that cannot speak … including this object the book.

A gray dotted pattern on a translucent page, set against a blank white page and dark background.

The unwritten sixth memo would have addressed the theme of Consistency. What did Calvino mean by that word? Would he have spoken of the regularity of results such as the consistent taste of the morning espresso at his local bistro? Or the mechanical consistency that worried Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935)? (Calvino might have had a conflict of interest given the lucrative reproduction of his fiction.) Or did he mean the essence of which a person, place, or thing consists? In Invisible Cities, the word refers to the celestial and infernal characters of the two versions of the city Beersheba, the one in the sky and the one on earth. Barring a manuscript find yet to be made, we won’t know. In the meantime, Botnick’s affinity with Calvino welcomes the speculation that his artist’s books offer the kind of consistency Calvino would have appreciated.

Books On Books Collection – Horst Antes

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Flickbuch, Geschichten um das Flickbuch, and Fresh Breath on the Blow Book (2000, 2001, and 2003)

Flickbuch, Geschichten um das Flickbuch, and Fresh Breath on the Blow Book [trans] (2000, 2001, and 2003)
Horst Antes and Volker Huber [Translators: Ariel Frailich, Richard Hatch, and Sharon and Arno Ziesnitz]
Slipcase containing two volumes in German. Single volume in English. Slipcase: H276 x W212 mm. Books: H269 x W209 mm. [164] and 32 pages. Translation volume: H268 x W209 mm. 40 pages. Slipcased edition of 1000, unnumbered copy. Acquired from Ricky Jay Estate, 17 August 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

I had been looking for Ricky Jay’s The Magic Magic Book (1994) and hoped that the 2024 estate auction would yield a result. It did but an unexpected one. Like Jay, the namesake founder of Volker Huber Edition und Galerie in Offenbach was a collector of magic artifacts. He was also an honorary member of Germany’s Magic Circle, so his acquaintance with the celebrated magician and actor was no surprise. What was a surprise was that he had combined his art interests with those in magic to create a “blow book” with Horst Antes, one of the several well-known German artists he published.

The blow book is best known in its familiar incarnation as the “magic coloring book”. The performer flicks through the book of blank figures to be colored in, calls on an observer to blow on the closed book, and then reopens it to show all of the pictures colored in. Hard-to-see tabs or alternating page widths enable the performer to produce the effect. Jay’s work remains the definitive history of the blow book. It consists of two volumes, one of which is a working blow book with contemporary art by Vija Celmins, Jane Hammond, Glenn Ligon, Philip Taaffe, and William Wegman, the other being the history of the apparatus.

A handwritten letter addressed to Mr. Ricky Jay, dated May 6, 2003, from Volker Huber, expressing gratitude for a post card and discussing upcoming visits. Below the letter are two items: a small card related to 'The Ricky Jay Collection' and another card labeled with details about a sale.

Huber leads the list of acknowledgments in Jay’s book. From that and this piece of ephemera, there is no doubt of their close acquaintance. If, however, you have read the New Yorker profile on Ricky Jay, Huber’s reference to Jay’s “ambiguous post card” will raise an eyebrow. Both Jay’s and Huber’s productions are slipcased, both are in two volumes, both have a working blow book, and both have an accompanying history. Given the New Yorker anecdote about Jay’s harsh reaction to a magician who mentioned he had incorporated Jay’s famous “The Four Queens” routine in his act, might Jay’s “ambiguous post card” have implied that Huber had reperformed Jay’s book trick?

Huber’s Geschichten um das Flickbuch [“History of the Blow Book”*] naturally cites Jay’s book. But it has many of the same illustrations. Unsurprisingly it equally highlight the same source for the first detailed description of the blow book. The main difference is that Huber argues for the existence of a missing blow book that would have accompanied the source, whereas Jay considers it unlikely. As for the working volumes, both have dos-à-dos structures. Admittedly there are differences. Jay uses tabs to facilitate the performer’s switch from sequence to sequence; Huber uses a sloping trim of width. Jay’s has twelve sequences, six to each side of the dos-à-dos; Huber and Antes have only four, two to each side. Might Jay have been a little jealous that those differences are what give Huber and Antes the room to elevate the blow book from a worked example to an artist’s book?

Holding the spine of Flickbuch with the left hand and placing the right thumb against the lower corner of the fore edge, the reader/performer riffles through the book. Twenty pages flip along, displaying the text of three selections from the mid-17th-century picaresque novel by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen entitled “Simplicissimi Gaukeltasch und erhaltene treffliche Losung” [“Simplicissimus’ Magic Book and its Excellent Profits”]. At the bottom of the text block on each page, a large display letter appears: first H, then O, gradually spelling out HORSTANTES-FLICKBUCH. It is a clever way of appropriating the Simplicissimus tale for Antes.

The next flick-through sequence is accessed by closing the book, shifting the right thumb to the upper corner of the fore edge, and again riffling through the book. “Magically” the text has disappeared, replaced by blank pages that change colors, gradually darkening from a light pink to coral to orange then lightening to yellow. This is another appropriation of the Simplicissimus tale. In the just-vanished text, Simplicissimus, the con artist, has arrayed six glasses of wine before the crowd of dupes gathered by his blow book patter. By adding one drop of magic elixir to the first glass, he changes the wine’s color and quality. The second glass receives two drops, the third three drops, and so on until Simplicissimus and his sidekick Hopalong are relieving their audience of their money in exchange for tins of the elixir that they believe will turn casks of plonk into the finest vintage.

Open book pages with text in German titled 'Simplicissimi Gaukeltasch und erhaltene treffliche Lösung' by Hans Jakob and Christoph von Grimmelshausen. The left page is blank, while the right page contains a paragraph of text.

Open book on a wooden table, displaying text in German on the right page with a blank section on the left page.

The opening pages of the three Simplicissimus excerpts. Note the display characters H, -, and U, three of the twenty that spell out HORSTANTES-FLICKBUCH.

An open book displaying a blank left page and a right page with a faint pink background.

An open book lying on a wooden surface, showcasing a blank white page on the left and a solid orange page on the right.

The first, ninth, eleventh, and last spreads of colored blank pages.

On the other side of the dos-à-dos structure, the first flick-through’s sequence of twenty images has Antes’ face morphing into Marilyn Monroe’s. It’s a curious transformation. Perhaps it’s in keeping with the carnivalesque barker Simplicissimus, and after all, the color of the paper does change from cream to white as the artist turns into the bearded lady and the latter turns into Marilyn. The sequence’s twenty-page length facilitates the gradation of the change.

The first portrait image, the mid-point image, and the final image.

The second flick-through presents an ink drawing of one of Horst Antes’ clear acrylic sculptures called Die Figur (1995-97). A version of the sculpture rests in the rooftop foyer of Vienna’s Hofburg. Inscribed in a large plane of acrylic intersecting another plane of acrylic acting as its footing, Antes’ signature figure the Kopffüßler [“Head-Footer”] appears. In Flickbuch, the figure is drawn in red, and the plexiglas in grey ink. Across this flick-through’s twenty spreads, the drawing is animated, turning from the left, gradually showing an edge-on view, and ending up facing right. It captures Ante’s blend of the figurative and abstract for which he is known.

For some reason, Antes’ graphics often appear in German galleries alongside Andy Warhol’s images of Monroe, but here, perhaps it is a dig at Clement Greenberg. In the accompanying volume Geschichten um das Flickbuch, Huber explains how Antes’ work has been a counter-response to Greenberg’s avant gardist art theory that figurative, illusionistic painting belongs to a bygone era that has been superseded by high Abstract art that accepts and self-reflexively explores the nature of its two-dimensionality. In Huber’s view, Antes’ emphasis on two dimensions in his sculptures and paintings nevertheless restores the figurative and three-dimensionality to art, superseding Greenberg’s dicta.

Greenberg also placed photography as second fiddle to the self-reflexive and opaque surface of pure abstract painting.

The art in photography is literary art before it is anything else: its triumphs and monuments are historical, anecdotal, reportorial, observational before they are purely pictorial. Because of the transparency of the medium, the difference between the extra-artistic, real-life meaning of things and their artistic meaning is even narrower in photography than it is in prose. And as in prose, “form” in photography is reluctant to become “content,” and works best when it just barely succeeds in converting its subject into art—that is, when it calls the least attention to itself and lets the almost “practical” meaning of the subject come through. — Greenberg, 1964.

The photography in Flickbuch certainly calls attention to itself. Maybe using the flick book form to play with photos and allude to a literary text actually supports Greenberg’s formalism. Then again, the photography sequence seems to throw shade on another Greenberg polemic: his 1939 salvo for the avant-garde and against kitsch.

Kitsch, using for raw material the debased and academicized simulacra of genuine culture, welcomes and cultivates this insensibility. It is the source of its profits. Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas. Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations. Kitsch changes according to style, but remains always the same. Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times. Kitsch pretends to demand nothing of its customers except their money—not even their time. — Greenberg, 1939.

There is something a bit tongue-in-cheek about this artist’s book and its creators. The idea of a blow book likely came from Huber to Antes. Together they must have enjoyed that spread placing the artist at one end of the spectrum and the image of Marilyn Monroe, goddess of high Pop and kitsch, at the other. Antes in particular must have enjoyed bringing the three-dimensional Kopffüßler into the two-dimensional confines of pages and, seizing on the blow book’s mechanics, creating a representational illusion of its original three-dimensional self, which of course emphasized an inherent two-dimensionality.

* The German term flichbuch translates as “flick book”. For most book historians and artists, that term and its alternates “flip book” and “flicker book” refer to the structure that creates an animation effect by gradually changing an image from one page to the next.

Bookmarking Book Art – The Wittockiana, Museum of Book Arts and Bookbinding in Brussels

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The most beautiful and perfect book in the world is a book with only blank pages, in the same way that the most complete language is that which lies beyond all that the words of a man can say. Every book of the new art is searching after that book of absolute whiteness, in the same way that every poem searches for silence. — Ulises Carrión: “The New Art of Making Books” Kontexts no. 6-7, 1975.

a minima

(20 March 2026 – 27 September 2026)

At the entrance to The Wittockiana. Back and front cover of the a minima catalogue.

If, as I did, you missed Moritz Küng‘s exhibition Blank. Raw. Illegible… Artists’ Books as Statements, 1960-2022 at the Leopold-Hoesch-Museum in Düren, Germany, in 2023, Didier Decoux‘s a minima presents an equally well-thought-out gathering of artists’ books that stretches out over 150 years (1876 – 2026). With 4 spacious rooms, 25 vitrines, 2 videos, and over 180 works, a minima requires several hours at a minimum to peruse and enjoy. Information on getting there is available here.

The comments and links below are in no way a substitute for visiting this exhibition, and keep in mind that Wittockiana also has permanent displays of presses, rare fonts, and books that should not be missed.

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Books On Books Collection – Clarissa Sligh (III)

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Reading Dick and Jane with Me (1989)

Cover of the book 'Reading Dick and Jane With Me' by Clarissa Sligh, featuring a simple illustration of a child and text elements related to the Dick and Jane series.

Reading Dick and Jane with Me (1989)
Clarissa Sligh
Saddle-stitched booklet, staples. H212 x W177 mm. [24] pages. Acquired from Marta Zlotnick, 6 October 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

This is a painful artist’s book. In the repetitive style of the 1950s “Dick and Jane” beginning readers’ book, the child in the artist carries on a one-way conversation with children from those books. Dick, Jane, and Sally are white and upper middle class. They live in a suburban setting with their dog Spot and cat Puff, and the text of their lives is interpersed with “Fun”, “Fun”, “Fun”. They run and play, and tell the reader to “Look Look See us play”. Dick demands, “See me jump” and asks, “Who can jump Who can do what I do”. Sally insists on how pretty and white Puff is.

Alongside her redrawn versions of Dick, Jane, Sally, and their pets, the artist sketches in a cartoon self portrait and pastes in old photos of herself, siblings, and friends. For the first few pages, these images respond mutely to the “Dick and Jane” repetitions.

An artistic page featuring a simple line drawing of a person on the left and a collage of black and white photographs of children on the right, with text repeating 'Run Dick Run Jane Run Spot Run Sally Run Puff' in the background.

A line drawing of a person on the left page and a collage of repeated text 'Go Dick Go Jane Go Spot Go Sally Go Puff' alongside a historical black and white photograph of children on the right page.

Facing the page below where a white picket fence separates the artist from Dick, she and her friends respond in a scrawled script (in contrast to Dick’s typeset exhortations to “Go up up up”). They invite Dick and the reader to “come to our school” where they “go up too”.

An illustrated page from a book featuring a child by a fence looking up at an aircraft, with repetitive text reading 'Up up up' and 'Go up'. The opposite page depicts a school building with images of children's faces in the windows and handwritten text inviting readers to 'come to our school'.

In the next spread, surrounded by imperatives to “See it go” and “See it go up”, Sally frowns and appears troubled by the encroachment of scrawls over the gutter and into her typeset page. On the facing recto page, the artist and friends stutter as they read the typeset lines: “We read See. it. go. see. it. go. up.” Maybe Sally is troubled by the words between the lines:

An artistic page featuring repeated text 'See it go' in various sizes and placements, alongside a hand-drawn figure of a child and a faded black and white photograph of a group of children.

Between the lines: “We don’t talk like that but we try to read it anyhow”.

At this point, when the artist and her friends read “Run Dick Run”, the book takes a darker turn for us the readers — if we are reading with the child artist. Dick and Sally run across the double-page spread. Even though they are more roughly sketched than before and even though Dick wears a Ku Klux Klan hood, we know it is them. As the scrawled imperative RUN RUN RUN grows across the spread to its largest size, Dick’s mask slips aside. If you the reader are white, and if you understand that the scrawled (not typeset) command is in the artist’s voice, and if you are reading with the child who stands self-portrayed in the lower left hand corner and with the children in the photographs, maybe now you see what they see between the lines in Dick and Jane’s world.

A stylized illustration featuring children running, combined with black-and-white photographs of children in a playful layout. The word 'RUN' is prominently displayed multiple times, creating a dynamic visual narrative.

From here on, the child artist addresses Dick and Jane (white society) more directly. She signals her “encroachment” by taking over the verso page with all of her scrawl and places Dick, Jane, and Sally within the drawn pages of their book in the foreground of the recto page. For the first time, her self-portrait is shaded as she stands in the background of the shaded Dick and Jane book.

An illustrated page with children in vintage clothing, featuring handwritten text about playing in good clothes for Sunday school. The background contains repeated phrases 'Look' and 'See us play'.

As she explains how she and her friends differ from Dick and Jane (not likely to be listening, embedded as they are in their book), the child artist’s voice is soft but insistent in its “Dick and Jane” style repetition. For the first time, her self-portrait appears larger than the white child, and she is on the same side of the picket fence.

An illustrated open book page featuring a boy jumping on a bench with text surrounding him, including phrases about reading and parental expectations, alongside a sketch of three children in front of a fence.

In the next spread, the impact of these “Dick and Jane” stories on her and her friends is spelled out and drawn to heartbreaking effect. Sally and “Pretty white Puff” stand in sharply drawn and typeset contrast to the erasure, the slipping away, of the self-portrait and the photograph. Even the book you hold in your hands and its hand scrawled text are smearing away in the lower left corner.

An open book with illustrated text repeating 'Puff is pretty white' alongside a girl and a cat, with abstract sketches and handwritten text discussing themes of reality and perception.

The artist’s voice is soft but, like the “Dick and Jane” style, insistent. In text and image, the message is heartfelt.

A page featuring a drawn outline of a child with a photograph of five children inside the outline, alongside handwritten text that repeats the phrase about knowing how to play fun games.

A hand-drawn illustration featuring a whimsical landscape with mountains, a stylized tree, a sun, and clouds. The background includes handwritten text about dreams, emphasizing the universal nature of dreaming. The image is in black and white on a light background.

Reading Dick and Jane with Me also had an exhibition life, which Sligh describes on her website:

These cyanotype prints, 40 x 30 inches, 1990-2013, originated from artwork made for my artist’s book Reading Dick and Jane With Me while in residency at Visual Studies Workshop in 1989. The size of the original collage and the book page was about 8 ½ x 7 inches. During that residency at VSW, before the days of Photoshop, I learned to shoot the artwork onto film, strip and spot the films and make metal plates for the offset press printing of the book.

With the encouragement of Joan Lyons, the VSW Press director, I also used the large process camera to shoot and develop large negatives from the artwork. After returning home, I built a large light table, contact printed the negatives and processed them in my bathtub. The prints are sent to various exhibition sites. Viewers draw and mark on the prints in response to my image and text narratives. This process is done repeatedly until the prints are fully covered with marks and sketches left by the public.

The process continues. — Sligh website, accessed 17 July 2026.

As of this writing — in the time of Jim Crow 2.0, brutalization of children of color, and vicious beliefs in replacement theory and empathy as sin — Reading Dick and Jane With Me continues to insist — Read Dick. Read Jane. Read Sally. Read.

Books On Books Collection – Felipe Ehrenberg

2026/06/212026/09/23Books On BooksLeave a comment

Codex Aeroscriptus Ehrenbergensis (1990)

Cover of a book titled 'Codex AEROSCRIPTUS EHRENBERGENSIS' with a minimalist design and faded text.

Codex Aeroscriptus Ehrenbergensis: A Visual Score of Iconotropisms (1990)
Felipe Ehrenberg
Casebound stiff cover, fly leaves around bifolios (fore-edge folded folios). H420 x W295 mm. 20 pages (10 bifolios, 9 with prints, 1 for title page and copyright page).Edition of 500. Acquired from Monograph Werks, 17 January 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

In his introduction, Felipe Ehrenberg variously recommends that we read Codex Aeroscriptus Ehrenbergensis “like a detective novel” for its “various clues that you may unravel the wondrous and dramatic events surrounding the life of this artist, another witness to the end of a century” or “as a musical score, perhaps to be composed by someone wishing to recreate the background music of our daily histories” or a “formulation of hieroglyphs”. The book’s subtitle succinctly rolls up these metaphors: “a visual score of iconotropisms”.

Stephen Perkins calls it “a mini-retrospective of his explorations in this medium” — stencils.

This work came out of a residency Ehrenberg completed at Atlanta’s Nexus Press. The images for the works came from what he called his Visual Information Bank which was a box with all sorts of ephemera that he would dip into for images for his stencils. In contrast to the frenetic energy of the stencils, the inside of the publication has a bucolic and calm feeling that is mirrored in the original stencil work Ehrenberg created across the front pages of each book. (Perkins, 2024)

The accordion, concertina, or leporello structure adopted by so many 20th and 21st century book artists has its Aztec analogue called a screenfold format. Ellen Baird and Cristián Roa-de-la-Carrera included Codex Aeroscriptus Ehrenbergensis in the Newberry Library’s 2006-07 exhibition “The Aztecs and the Making of Colonial Mexico”.

… Aztec heritage has become a vital component of Mexican and Mexican-American identity, influencing the work of many contemporary writers, artists, and scholars. The inherent flexibility of traditional indigenous creativity facilitates combination with contemporary artistic practices. Traditional screenfold books are layered with contemporary collage and print techniques, and indigenous images are juxtaposed with colonial scenes and pop icons. Contemporary Mexican and Mexican-American artists use traditional Aztec images and techniques to explore both contemporary life and Mexican cultural heritage. The screenfold format is an emblem of ancient Mesoamerican culture, and has become charged with historical and political meaning. Contemporary artists combine this format with humorous and provocative imagery to explore the cultural and political dynamics of preconquest identity, the colonization of Mexico and current relations between Mexico, Europe, and the United States. (Baird and Roa-de-la-Carrera, 2006)

Ehrenberg’s title is dipped in sarcasm. Most of the barely surviving screenfold Mesoamerican works reside in Anglo-European institutions under names like Codex Borbonicus at the Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée Nationale in Paris, Codex Borgianus at the Vatican, and Codex Mictlan at the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford. Ehrenberg’s modern version reflects their pictorial style and even the layout of their repetitive serialized images. But in doing so, his images speak to the continuing impact of colonialism.

An ancient illustration depicting a ceremony, featuring a figure with a staff, a person in ceremonial attire, and a skeletal figure performing a ritual at a temple-like structure, along with various abstract symbols on the lower border.

Codex Mictlan, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Laud Misc. 678.

An open book featuring vibrant illustrations, including colorful roosters, stylized skeletons, and various artistic elements in bold colors and graphics.

A vibrant two-page spread featuring colorful illustrations, including stylized skulls, a figure in a hat, and graphic elements like text and a helicopter. The design incorporates a mix of patterns and colors, emphasizing themes of emotion and popular culture.

Still, Ehrenberg’s book art went beyond any reductive anti-colonial message. His “Visual Information Bank”, as he called it, held a wealth of contemporary cultural iconography. Its main sections included:

The Crashed Car Department
Sports’ Frozen Moments Department
Men in Suits & Ties Department
Police File Photo Department
Jet Set Department
Women: Dream & Desire Department
Masked Wrestlers Department
Motel Room Drawings Department
The Rubber Stamp Division

And he drew on this — especially from the televisual world — to create his glyphic stencils and rubber stamps.

The leporello edition of Codex Aeroscriptus Ehrenbergensis is rare, but fortunately the wrap-back bound edition shown in this entry is a little less so. The wrap-back format is a traditional Chinese/Japanese book format. Takako Saito, who joined Ehrenberg at Beau Geste Press in 1973, may have been an influence in this regard, but as she left in 1975, an influence from others at Nexus in Atlanta, GA, where Ehrenberg completed this work, seems more likely.

A close-up view of an artistic piece featuring several abstract shapes in bright blue and purple against a dark background with splashes of white.

Open book page featuring text in Spanish, with a pink abstract illustration. The page discusses themes related to art, techniques, and the artist's intentions.

The double-sided leporello edition of Codex Aeroscriptus Ehrenbergensis is not a folded continuous sheet. Viewable on Stephen Perkins’ site, it appears to have been formed from the codex edition’s double-page spreads glued together at the fore edge. Ehrenberg’s residency at Atlanta’s Nexus Press would have overlapped with Clifton Meador’s presence, and Meador’s works frequently use the wrap-back format.

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 – Jaro Springer

2026/03/152026/09/23Books On Books2 Comments

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

Curated by Robert Bolick

Drawing

Books On Books Collection – Thomas Stauss

Magic Metamorphosis (2025)

Further Reading and Viewing

Credits for Photographs in Magic Metamorphosis:

Books On Books Collection – Diego Brambilla

11 Stations (2025)

Further Reading & Viewing

Bookmarking Book Art – AMBruno “Finale”

Books On Books Collection – Ken Botnick (II)

Six Memos Project (2020)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Horst Antes

Flickbuch, Geschichten um das Flickbuch, and Fresh Breath on the Blow Book (2000, 2001, and 2003)

Further Reading

Bookmarking Book Art – The Wittockiana, Museum of Book Arts and Bookbinding in Brussels

a minima

(20 March 2026 – 27 September 2026)

Books On Books Collection – Clarissa Sligh (III)

Reading Dick and Jane with Me (1989)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Felipe Ehrenberg

Codex Aeroscriptus Ehrenbergensis (1990)

Further Reading

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

In Visible Cities (2012)

Books On Books Collection – Jaro Springer

Gotische Alphabete (1897)