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. Published by LIBRUM Publishers and Editors (Basel, Switzerland). 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 presented to him 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 pre-1670 up 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 (late 16th 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, 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)

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 – Anne Lydiat

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Cover of a book titled 'A Maiden's Voyage' by Anne Lydiat, featuring an anchor graphic and the publisher Rocktheboat Press, London.

A Maiden’s Voyage (2015)
Anne Lydiat
Paperback. H145 x W180 mm. 36 pages. Edition of 50, of which this #31. Acquired from the artist, 28 August 2026.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Anne Lydiat’s A Maiden’s Voyage (2015) pays homage to the Belgian conceptual artist Marcel Broodthaer’s “book-film’” A Voyage on the North Sea (1973).

Two art books displayed side by side. The left book is titled 'A Maiden's Voyage' by Anne Lydiat, published by Rocktheboat Press, London, featuring an anchor illustration. The right book is titled 'A Voyage on the North Sea' by Marcel Broodthaers, published by Petersburg Press, London, featuring a nautical illustration.

The reader/viewer of Broodthaers’ book faced three challenges, the first two of which are outlined in its preface. The first, whether to cut or not cut its uncut pages and reveal or leave hidden its page numbers. The second, to make sense of its juxtaposition and manipulation of images of a 19th century sailing ship painting and a photographed 20th century yacht. The third challenge was access to its associated film (which only came with the deluxe edition) and make sense of its relation to the book.

The reader/viewer of Lydiat’s homage does not face that first challenge. She is explicit in her preface —”there are no cutting remarks” — and the book is fully trimmed top, bottom, and fore edge. Her disavowal’s phrasing, however, slyly envelopes the reader/viewer in a different challenge. Does this homage really have no “cutting remarks”, no rebukes? Noting the rarity of depictions of women in maritime history, the second paragraph concludes otherwise: “this artist’s book is a space that marks this gendered absence”. A Maiden’s Voyage pays a passive/aggressive homage to a male artist and his work that unconsciously participates in that gendered absence.

Open book pages with text discussing Marcel Broodthaers and his work, including 'A Maiden's Voyage' and 'A Voyage on the North Sea'. The left page features a black and white photo of a boat at sea, while the right page shows a historical image of women and a child on a ship.

We still have the second challenge with A Maiden’s Voyage: to make sense of its juxtaposition and manipulation of images.

Lydiat is an accomplished artist working in photography, sculpture, and installations as well as books. She could have chosen to work her found painting and subject of gendered absence into another medium, another frame. But she chose the medium of the book and the frame of Broodthaers’ A Voyage and his projected Analyse d’une Peinture. While A Voyage juxtaposes present and past images, A Maiden’s Voyage contains no such juxtapositions. Paradoxically it makes itself the juxtaposition of present and past. Lydiat has juxtaposed her “space” with Broodthaers’ artist’s book and intent. Her space is the present; his space is the past.

The title of Broodthaers’ projected project implies that the subject of A Voyage concerns the analysis of a painting, an expensive one at that. In parallel and contrast, Lydiat takes a cheap found painting of the past and “analyzes” it, breaking it down into clipped details, stripping it of color, and framing the results as Broodthaers did in A Voyage. In doing so, she underscores that her present space is shaped by the past, implicitly arguing that “gendered absence” in the past shapes the present. It is not a situation that Lydiat lets lie. By contrasting the costs of the found paintings, she neatly slips in one of those disavowed “cutting remarks”.

An open book displaying two pages: on the left, a colorful painting of ships sailing in rough waters, and on the right, a black-and-white illustration featuring a group of people in a small boat, surrounded by sails.

From A Maiden’s Voyage.

An open book displaying two images: on the left, a color painting of a classic sailing ship on the water; on the right, a black and white photograph of a sailboat sailing on the ocean.

From A Voyage on the North Sea © Broodthaers Estate. Photo: Books On Books Collection.

A spread of a book page featuring five maritime paintings, including ships on water and a group of people in a small boat.

From A Maiden’s Voyage.

An open book page displaying four small images of sailing ships on water, alongside a larger, vibrant painting of similar boats navigating the ocean.

From A Voyage on the North Sea © Broodthaers Estate. Photo: Books On Books Collection.

An open book featuring two pages with paintings of maritime scenes; the left page shows a colorful image of sailing ships on calm waters, while the right page displays a black-and-white illustration of a small boat with several people navigating through rough seas.

From A Maiden’s Voyage.

As for the third challenge, the Fondation Marcel Broodthaers provided a solution for access. Likewise, Anne Lydiat provides a link to her film that accompanied the maiden launch of A Maiden Voyage at Chelsea Cafe Project (Chelsea College of Arts).

Like Broodthaers’ “book-film” (his term), Lydiat’s book-film presents image frames as numbered pages. At least since Dick Higgins’ introduction of the term “intermedia” in the mid ’60s, interest in the hybrid work that crosses media and occupies the space between painting, film, music, performance, installation, sculpture, the book, computers, and now the Web has grown — especially among book artists. In 2013, the topic held center stage at the MCBA Book Art Biennial in an exhibition entitled “Directed: The Intersection of Book, Film and Visual Narrative”. Works recently added to the Books On Books Collection occupy this intermedial space (see examples below). Anne Lydiat’s book-film A Maiden Voyage brings the added edge of appropriating form, technique, and content from an arch-appropriator and focusing them on a persistent social blindspot.

I first came across Anne Lydiat’s work at the Wittockiana in Brussels. There in the a minima exhibition was Lost for Words … (1999). Displayed as below, no one could tell that it is a blank book. Not even the subtlety of the blind embossed ISBN on the back could be seen, nor could the quotation from Maurice Blanchot on the inside flap (“About this book I had promised myself to say nothing …”). The context of the exhibition was a hint about the book’s theme — or an aspect of it — “absence, loss and nothingness” — as Lydiat’s website notes.

A closed book with a plain cover featuring the title 'lost for words...' in gray text.

Lost for Words… (1999) by Anne Lydiat also appeared in the exhibition Blank. Raw. Illegible…Artists Books as Statements, 1960-2022 (2023) organized by Moritz Küng.

Although not a part of the Books On Books Collection (at least not yet), it is mentioned here as an additional gloss on her intermedial style of conceptual art. Lost for Words … first appeared in an exhibition at the Freud Museum entitled “Permission to Speak”, after which it was deposited in Sigmund Freud’s library. So where is the intermediality? It lies in her performance of secretly depositing Lost for Words … in libraries that she has visited around the world. The only means of knowing where they are is the follow-up volume — … of the book — which lists the libraries.

Books On Books Collection – Sarah J. Colman

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4 p. and 33mm (2013)

A closed art book with cream-colored pages fanned out, resting on a wooden surface, featuring a white cover that displays title, author, and ISBN information.

4 p. and 33mm (2013)
Sarah Colman
Card folder with title, author, publisher. Perfect binding of 4.33 folios. H66 x W148 mm [10] pages. Acquired from the artist, 1 August 2026.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Colman’s 4 p. and 33 mm. was on display in the exhibition a minima at the Wittockiana in Brussels. If the work ‘s title directs us to consider first the four full folios and then the folio trimmed to half their size, then the item is displayed upside down in the image below. Observant visitors may have noticed it. Western books read from left to right.

Left: 4 p. and 33 mm. (2013). Sarah Colman. Geneva: Boabooks. Right: 4’33” (1993). John Cage. New York: Peters No. 6777a.

Being able to manipulate this work drives home the right orientation. First come the 4 pages that measure 66 mm and then the page that measures 33 mm. Of course, it ends hanging in air — just as Cage’s composition leaves the audience hanging as it ends after 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

In other words, Colman has turned Cage’s temporal art into spatial art. Given the performance origin of the next work, though, it’s not hard to imagine an invitation from Colman to watch her open 4 p. and 33 mm., place it atop a piano, and then close it at the conclusion of 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

Semiotics of the Studio (2015)

A folded booklet titled 'Symbols Of The Studio' by S.J. Cohan, displaying a list of words organized in a grid format.

Semiotics of the Studio (2015)
Sarah Colman
Leporello H300 x W85 mm (closed), up to W425 mm (open). Five panels. Edition of 10, of which this is #10. Acquired from the artist, 1 August 2026.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

First, here is Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975).

Like 4p. and 33mm, the Semiotics of the Studio translates a different medium into that of an artist’s book and very much insists on being experienced on its own terms.

Laid flat or standing, Semiotics of the Studio presents itself as an accordion book, but the order of reading its text is not as straightforward (or downward) as the first panel’s alphabetical order suggests. The alphabetical order in panel 1 becomes a red herring in panel 2. With “Cube”, “Drill”, “Easel”, and “Finger”, Panel 2 resumes an alphabetical order only to abandon it, and in panel 3, there are no alphabetical pairs or triples at all.

A close-up of two columns of text with various words and phrases, including terms related to art and objects, displayed in a vertical orientation.

Perhaps we should read from left to right across the three panels instead of down. Is the blank space at the top of the third panel showing us the product of “Absence” in the first panel and “Paint” in the second panel? But wait, maybe we should read backwards from “Paint” in the second panel to “Brush” in the first; after all, further down, we have “”Juxtaposition” in panel 1, then “Two” in panel 2, and “Put” in panel 3, suggesting that we put two in juxtaposition.

Just below that, if we put “Kitsch” and “Balloon” together with “Pop”, do we have a dig at Jeff Koons? And much further down, is the juxtaposition of “Urinal”, “Urinal”, and “Drop” taking the piss with Duchamp?

What about “Object”, “Hammer”, and “Bang”? If we are trying to figure out sentences from this, Subject, Verb, and Object seem to jump about. We need to put “Chin” (panel 3) on “Hand” (panel 2), and “Question” (panel 1) what is going on.

Another puzzle is that some words are repeated across from each other in panels 1 and 2. “Drill”, “Easel”, “Plinth”, “Rubber”, “Spirit Level”, and “Urinal”, as we have seen. Sometimes, panel 2 gives an example for the word in panel 1 (e.g., “Computer” for “Technology”). Sometimes, the words are descriptive or synonyms of one another (e.g., “Neon” and “Light” and “Void” and “Empty”, respectively).

Closer inspection reveals that the three columns of words do not precisely align horizontally. They cascade. “Absence” is slightly higher than “Paint”, “Paint” is slightly higher than “X”, and so on. Moreover, panel 1 has 26 words, panel 2 has 22, and panel 3 has 23. So perhaps we should be looking for sense in multiple directions, which is pretty much where semiotics as a discipline has landed.

Context, too, matters. Colman reaps the benefit of Martha Rosler’s kitchen setting for her subversive purposes. While Colman is in the studio, which suggests that her exploration of semiotics is one of creative process, she also slips in terms that challenge the clichés and politics of art, terms like “Beret”, “Kitsch”, and “Viagra”. It’s the artist’s book equivalent of donning the aprons and maintaining a deadpan delivery in the video.

By putting art words to work in a work of art — especially in the form of an artist’s book — Semiotics of the Studio “interrogates” itself and its subject.

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 – Michael Hampton

2026/05/082026/09/23Books On BooksLeave a comment

RAGE PEN (2025)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Books On Books Collection – Susan Johanknecht

2026/02/072026/09/23Books On BooksLeave a comment

Fugal (2025)

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

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

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

A fugue generally has a “subject” (or main theme), an “exposition” in which voices or instruments each play out the subject, then an “episode” (or connecting passages) that builds on the previous material, then further alternating “entries” in which the subject is heard in related keys until a final entry that returns to the opening key. The subject of Fugal is the generative process of vocal changes due to aging. The phrases of the poem have been drawn from an unidentified speech and language textbook.

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Books On Books Collection – Lucas Blalock

2025/10/272025/12/24Books On Books1 Comment

Making Memeries (2016)

Making Memeries (2016)
Lucas Blalock
Board book consisting of nine 3mm thick card leaves with 8 double-page large colour photos, all of which interact with a down-loadable app. H330 x W210 x D28 mm. [18] pages. Edition of 500. Acquired from David Bunnett Books, 31 July 2023.
Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.

How do we respond to an artwork of collage or assemblage that is missing a piece — assuming that we can tell ? And if all of the elements are ephemera, does it matter to our appreciation of it? Do we keep returning in annoyance to the gap — like a tongue to a missing tooth? Do we give up on it — like the purchaser of a secondhand jigsaw puzzle missing a piece or two? Or do we sigh and suppose appreciatively that the disappearance of an element of ephemera from a collage or assemblage of ephemera proves the artwork’s point?

Lucas Blalock is an artist of augmented realities. With the right device and app pointed at his artwork, we should be able to see images floating and moving over its surface or seemingly in the surface among its images or transforming them. According to the back cover, we can download this app from the iTunes App Store to interact with the book’s images. The app, however, was removed from the App Store in July 2023. Using the WayBack Machine, we can find the publisher’s announcement of the Making Memeries installation with Blalock in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall:

The London-based curatorial project Self Publish, Be Happy presents a programme of events that explore the blurring boundaries surrounding on/offline existence and distribution of photographs. The event, titled Making Memeries, will take place at Tate Modern during this year’s Offprint London art book fair from 20-22 May.

Artist Lucas Blalock has created an installation for the middle of the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall that functions as a staging area for workshops and performances. The installation consists of a set of eight movable panels that display a new suite of photographs by Blalock. The elements of the installation, conceived of specifically for this project, can be further activated via this app, Making Memeries.

The audience will be able to immerse themselves in, and interact with the work through the app, which uses your camera to produce a digitally augmented reality. Blalock’s work has long been interested in the cohabitation of the worldly and the virtual behind the photographic surface, and this project has allowed the artist to picture this cohabitation on both sides of that plane. Blalock has collaborated with REIFY, the augmented reality (AR) creative studio, to build an experience that blurs traditional boundaries and challenges one’s expectations of viewership.

Photos from old website of Self Publish, Be Happy. Accessed 26 October 2025.

Among the performances facilitated by the installation was Anouk Kruithof’s Connection, which also contributed to the aim of blurring the boundaries of the physical and digital.

Photos from Connection, installation by Anouk Kruithof. Accessed 26 October 2025.

But without the app or memory of the installation, we have a gap like that missing tooth. We can bridge the gap somewhat with online links and the book’s collaged imagery of mixed media and photographs to recognize that Making Memeries is also about how we perceive surfaces and what lies beneath — and what might come between. Consider the earplugs alongside the telephone below. Then there’s the pair of spectacles in the shape of fingers that would cover the wearer’s eyes. Now look back to the cover, and we find the view from behind those finger-spectacles.

Photo of the work: Books On Books Collection.

Or consider the images of the model of the epidermis with which the book opens and closes. ortunately, we have a YouTube link and Olga Yatskevich’s review to let us know that the “augmented reality radically changes the experience, making the image active rather than static – the app brings rounded depth to the model, shows blood running through the vessels, and allows us to explore the space around the object, its sides and the top”.

First and last double-page spreads. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

There’s something childlike, playful but serious conveyed in all this. Physically Making Memeries presents itself as an oversized children’s board book (or perhaps a board book for undersized adults). The use of the board book to make this cross-over can also be found in other artists’ books — Colleen (Ellis) Comerford’s ABCing and Phil Zimmermann’s Sonorensis, for example.

Fore edge of Making Memeries.

What the board book only partially conveys with the Connection link in hand, so to speak, is the intent expressed on the back cover and in the Tate’s announcement:

Making Memeries is set in a time when everyone has become a lifestyle photographer. It is still your life but the image production is decidedly public; and in that case temporary, verging on fleeting, because these public channels have so many content providers and, along with our attention spans, are in a perpetual state of refresh. [back cover]

Before the advent of the Internet the act of taking a photo was often intended to make memories; to store and preserve our past in still, printed images. In today’s digital age the act of taking photos can be enough for the photograph-taker. The act is exhausted by the process. This can be seen in the way a mobile phone camera offers immediate satisfaction — producing a file that may never be looked at again. Today a photo has a different claim to time, being much more in the “now” than in the “this has been” of its 19th and 20th century pre-internet forbearers. We, in turn, live in a culture of the perpetual present, in a meme-driven world where photos can effortlessly be shared, but where they most often disappear into digital oblivion. [Tate Modern announcement]

It feels ironic that Making Memeries‘s “missing tooth” is digital. The same year of Blalock’s installation at the Tate, Pokémon Go arrived, and people began wandering into traffic to capture Pokémon figures that their cameras projected onto the streets around them. Nine years later, the company owning the app has sold for $3.5 billion, and the world’s richest country is governed by meme. Is art miming life, or life miming art?

Bookmarking Book Art – Review of “COUP DE DÉS (COLLECTION)”

2024/03/192025/09/25Books On BooksLeave a comment

Why should an obscure poem like Stéphane Mallarmé’s groundbreaking Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira le Hasard: Poème (1897) have become the cornerstone of an art-industrial complex of literary, critical and artistic responses ranging from essays, books, edited collections, countless editions, and appropriations in the form of fine press livres d’artiste, book art and sculptures, films and theater, ballets and fado, musical compositions, digital programs and installations, and even pavement art?

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Books On Books Collection – The Three Delevines

2023/09/062025/07/10Books On BooksLeave a comment

A Human Alphabet (1897)

A Human Alphabet (1897)
The Three Delevines
Loose folios, William G. Shepherd’s article in The Strand Magazine, Vol. XIV, December, pages 660-64.H230 x W160 mm. Acquired from Cosmo Books, 26 August 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Only remembered after the Alphabets Alive! exhibition opened at the Bodleian in July 2023, The Three Delevines and W.G. Shepherd (their impresario on the occasion in 1897) have nevertheless demanded an appearance online among the other embodied alphabets (or lettered bodies) included in the “B for Bodies” display.

Shepherd is not merely the author of the Strand article but asserts his authorship of the alphabet performed by The Three Delevines. Although generous in his praise of the Australian brothers Sam, Harry and Percy for holding each of their poses for at least seven seconds and, in some uppercases, for twelve, Shepherd does not identify the Strand’s photographer by name or acknowledge his skill beyond “snapping”. At least, he refers to him as “our artist”.

So much of his effort went into discovering the music hall troupe and its performance called the “Satanic gambols”, and congratulating himself on his sculptural instruction, and then describing superfluously what his “artist” and the Delevines rendered, Shepherd neglected to do the research at the British Museum (before the Library was hived off) to realize that his claim to “Novelty” had been superseded several times over. Even right back to the diabolical calligraphy of the — oh the shame of it — French graphic artist Jean Midolle (b. 1794). Blame the oversight on the combination of Christmas and the Jubilee.

Books On Books

Curated by Robert Bolick

Performance art

Books On Books Collection – Thomas Stauss

Magic Metamorphosis (2025)

Further Reading and Viewing

Credits for Photographs in Magic Metamorphosis:

Bookmarking Book Art – AMBruno “Finale”

Books On Books Collection – Anne Lydiat

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Sarah J. Colman

4 p. and 33mm (2013)

Semiotics of the Studio (2015)

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 – Michael Hampton

RAGE PEN (2025)

Books On Books Collection – Susan Johanknecht

Fugal (2025)

Books On Books Collection – Lucas Blalock

Making Memeries (2016)

Further Reading

Bookmarking Book Art – Review of “COUP DE DÉS (COLLECTION)”

Books On Books Collection – The Three Delevines

A Human Alphabet (1897)

Further Reading