Books On Books Collection – Květa Pacovská

2023/07/192023/08/30Books On BooksLeave a comment

À l’infini (2007)

À l’infini (2007)
Květa Pacovská
Softcover with protective Mylar attached, exposed spine, sewn with multicolored threads. 270 x 270 x 29 mm. 128 pages. Acquired from Rakuten, 25 November 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

The Buzz Lightyear character of Toy Story and his catchphrase “To infinity and beyond” arrived in 1995. While it seems unlikely that the catchphrase influenced Květa Pacovská, the audience for Á l’infini (2007) and that for Toy Story definitely overlap. In her invitation below, Pacovská explicitly addresses the youngest of her audience: Tu peux regarder chaque lettre, toucher chaque lettre, considérer chaque lettre de façon formelle ou lire chaque lettre à haute voix. Chaque lettre a son propre son, sa propre forme et sa propre couleur. Note leurs différences quand tu les prononces, quand tu écoutes le son de ta voix. [You can look at each letter, touch each letter, consider each letter formally, or read each letter aloud. Each letter has its own sound, shape and color. Note their differences when you pronounce them, when you listen to the sound of your voice.] Above all — literally at the top of the page — she urges the reader: Dis la lettre <<A>> à haute voix jusqu’à ce qu’elle heurte les murs qui l’entourent. [Say the letter “A” out loud until it knocks down the walls surrounding it.], which is what the cut-out A plays outs.

For Pacovská, letters are “the architecture of pleasure”, and À l’infini invites us to play with them in “her city of paper”. Her invitation notes alternative approaches to the book, but the suggestion to walk through it as a paper sculpture is the best and appeal to the child in everyone.

With its collage of cut-outs, pop-ups, spot varnishes, reflective silver ink, letters and, later in the book, numbers, À l’infini is a joyful visual city. Pacovská received the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1992 for her illustration.

Books On Books Collection – Kevin M. Steele

2023/07/182025/06/25Books On BooksLeave a comment

The Movable Book of Letterforms (2009)

The Movable Book of Letterforms (2009)
Kevin M. Steele
Pop-up book. 210 x 210 mm. 22 pages. Edition of 3. Acquired from the artist, November 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.

Letterforms have a tangibility that exceeds their two-dimensional representation on paper and even on screen. How better to educate the viewer to their tactility and three-dimensionality than with movable book techniques such as the volvelle, pop-ups, flaps and tab pulls?

The Movable Book of Letterforms (2009) is a work of art that does just that: it enacts a basic introduction to the origins and unique characteristics of letterforms. A limited edition of three, all of its movable parts have been cut and assembled by hand. The printing is digital on Mohawk Superfine 80lb, and the box and book are covered in Laval velour bookcloth debossed with polymer plate. The only element the artifact is missing is metal.

For a monumental display of Steele’s book and paper engineering, a visit in the UK to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich is urged. It can also be found in the following collections:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg
University of Iowa, Iowa City
Indiana University, Bloomington
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo
Michigan State University, East Lansing

Books On Books Collection – Ashley Rose Thayer

2023/07/092025/11/12Books On BooksLeave a comment

Runic Alphabet (2023)

Runic Alphabet (2023)
Ashley Rose Thayer
Bag (H290 x W195 x D30 mm) enclosing horn-book (H177 x W167 mm) and colophon plaque (H63 x W88 mm). Unique edition. Acquired from the artist, 26 June 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.

Through her affiliation with the Northwoods Book Arts Guild, Ashley Thayer organized a challenge to reinterpret the horn-book. Several spectacular and inventive works emerged, and at this writing, an exhibition is being organized. The Bodleian “Alphabets Alive!” exhibition (19 July 2023 – 13 January 2024) was lucky enough to acquire one of Thayer’s own efforts: Runic Alphabet. With this work, Thayer re-imagines the learning tool for the so-called Dark Ages. Runes eventually succumbed to the Roman alphabet as military and religious conquest extinguished pagan traditions. So, this horn-book is, in Thayer’s words, “an act of rebellion, an attempt to keep the old ways alive”.

A hand-stitched deerskin bag with a wool embroidery inset of 9th century Anglo-Saxon pattern encloses the oak horn-book with a carved handle and faced with embossed copper and painted vellum with leather jewels. Also enclosed is a small oak plaque bearing the colophon.

The reverse side of the colophon bears the word “colophon” transliterated into embossed runes

Following the Northwoods Book Arts Guild project, Thayer progressed to another age with this next work.

Mechanical Horn-book (2025)

Mechanical Horn-book (2025)
Ashley Rose Thayer
Horn-book. On stand: H192 x W160 mm. Off stand: H192 x W115 mm. Unique. Acquired from the artist, 17 October 2025.
Photos: Courtesy of the artist. Books On Books Collection.

Mechanical Horn-book is an homage to the Anglo-Saxons of Old England. The paddle is made of pine wood, the gears of vellum-covered bookboard, the spinning “arm” of authentic cow horn, and the wrist loop of embroidery thread by a medieval finger loop braiding technique. On dark grey-blue Khadi paper, Thayer has painted a border of the moon, a berried floral garland, and a wyvern, the heraldic emblem associated with Wessex, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom from which Alfred the Great emerged in the 9th century. On the reverse, a cross of cut red leather with five inserts of calligraphed vellum alluding to Christ’s five wounds reflects the horn-book tradition of combining religion with learning the alphabet. It also makes this horn-book reflective of Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon and Christian background.

The pointer, called an aestel in Old English, is made from poplar wood, an antique button, and antique bone. Its inclusion isn’t simply functional. Appearing alongside the Wessex wyvern, it points to that famous aestel on display at the Ashmolean in Oxford: the Alfred Jewel.

The Alfred Jewel, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Photo taken from the front by Geni CC BY-SA 4.0. Photo taken from the side by Richard M Buck CC BY SA 3.0.

Books On Books Collection – Connie Stricks

2023/07/092023/07/10Books On BooksLeave a comment

A Cuneiform Hornbook (2023)

A Cuneiform Hornbook (2023)
Connie Stricks
Box: H340 x W233 x D57 mm. Horn-book: H333 x W85 x D40 mm. Leather pouch: H77 x W60 x D25 mm. Tokens: Variable 20 x 25 mm. Colophon folio: H101 x W71 mm. Unique edition. Acquired from the artist, 26 June 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with the artist’s permission.

Connie Stricks has re-imagined the horn-book with found objects, leather craft, clay inscription and sculpture. Prompted by a workshop challenge, the artist found an echo of the earliest writing system — cuneiform — in the scars and cuts of a discarded saw horse.

On the smooth side of the block of saw horse wood, she has carved out a shallow rectangle large enough to hold a small clay tablet she has inscribed with cuneiform marks. Like the traditional horn-book with its pared sheet of cow horn tacked down over the ABCs to protect the letters from wear and tear, the Cuneiform Hornbook has a sheet of clear plastic over the tablet. Stricks may also be having a bit of fun, hinting at the usual under-glass view we have of ancient artifacts.

The small bag of tokens nods toward the predominant assumption that cuneiform marks were developed to meet the accounting and administrative needs of Mesopotamian civilizations building on the underpinnings of agrarian and trade societies. The irregularly shaped tokens have marks on both sides. As trade grew, so grew the need for trust, and tokens indicating an exchange would be sealed in a clay purse (bullae) bearing a cuneiform-inscribed description of the contents.

An amusing “found-object” feature of A Cuneiform Hornbook lies in its packaging and storage. The snug, almost vacuum-like fit will be familiar to some. Confirmation for them and revelation for everyone else appear on the outside of the base.

Like a MacBook Air, the multiple parts nestle among styrofoam blocks, and the leather pouch of tokens and small folio bearing the colophon are enclosed in the usual clear self-sealing cellophane envelopes. And now that MIT scientists have developed an AI transliterator and translator for Akkadian, the Cuneiform Hornbook’s reader need not worry about technological obsolescence.

Books On Books Collection – Margo Klass

2023/07/092026/04/23Books On BooksLeave a comment

Takeover (2023)

Takeover (2023)
Margo Klass
Cut-out vintage poster letters and numbers mounted on horn-book shaped tray. ChatGPT symbol covered by glass magnifying dome. H290 x W170 x D35 mm. Unique edition. Acquired from the artist, 26 June 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.

In her response to the Northwoods Books Arts Guild challenge organized by Ashley Thayer, Margo Klass created this horn-book shaped tray on which cutout vintage letters and numbers are breaking out of order, spilling over the sides of the tray, sliding around the glass dome magnifying ChaptGPT, and settling in a heap at the handle-end of the horn-book. Klass has resurrected this centuries-old tool of learning to register a warning:

“Artificial intelligence – or AI – has appropriated our alphabet to artificially produce poems, literary texts, and journalism. Already exhibiting a high level of test-taking ability, the stated goal of AI research is to achieve the general intelligence of humans. This contemporary hornbook structure warns us that behind the written word may no longer be a human mind. Mounted on the hornbook are letters and numbers cut from vintage posters illustrating proper penmanship using Speedball pen nibs. These illustrations, familiar to me from an early interest in calligraphy, came to me from Sue McHenry by way of Ron Inouye. Beneath the glass gazing ball is the symbol of ChatGPT, one of several AI programs currently under development.” — From the colophon on the reverse of horn-book.

OpenAI‘s ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) uses natural language processing to generate conversational dialogue and other forms of written content. Its roots go back as far as Friar Bacon’s 13th-century brazen head and more recently to Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA, the 1960s AI psychotherapist at MIT that attempted to pass the Turing test (Alan Turing’s “imitation game” for testing a machine’s ability to show human-like behavior). Other works of book art that spell out cautions concerning AI include Karen Roehr’s Horn Book for Contemporary Times (2012) and Connie Stricks’ A Cuneiform Hornbook (2023).

The Hornbook Project (2021)

The Hornbook Project (2021)
Northwoods Book Arts Guild
Booklet saddle stitched with staples. 153 x 153 mm. 30 pages (including inside covers). Acquired from Margo Klass, 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Double Moon (2009)

Double Moon (2009)
Margo Klass
Perfect bound cased in full-color cover with deep flaps, doublures. H215 x W197 mm. 84 pages. Acquired from Margo Klass, 7 November 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Northwoods Set Book Project (2021)

Northwoods Set Book Project (2021)
Northwoods Book Arts Guild and Margo Klass
Booklet saddle stitched with staples. 153 x 153 mm. 30 pages including inside covers. Acquired from Margo Klass, 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Books On Books Collection – Bård Ionson

2023/07/092023/07/09Books On Books2 Comments

Battledore (2019)

Battledore (2019)
Bård Ionson
Digital photo of oscilloscope art on walnut, with leather straps & tacks. H229 x W127 mm. Animation of oscilloscope art with Artivive. Resolution: 3840 × 2160 px. File format: mp4. Duration: 1’0″ sec. File Size: 74.1 MB. Acquired from the artist, 1 March 2019.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.

The artifact displayed here is a vehicle for a digital artwork in which oscilloscope drawings are animated in augmented reality and which exists as an NFT (Non-Fungible Token). To view the digital artwork, open the camera on a smartphone, point it at the QR code below, and download the Artivive app. Open the Artivive app and position the phone’s camera over the artifact or even its image above.

Each of the alphabet characters transforms into a logo (or image of a product associated with the company behind the logo). The letters represent Apple, Boeing, Comcast, Disney, Exxon, Ford, Google, HBSC, ING, JP Morgan Chase, Koch, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Nestle, Orbital, Phiser, QinetiQ, Raytheon, SkullCandy, TiVO, Unilever, Volume Integration, Winchester, Xerox, Yandex and Zinga.

Now that A is for Apple Inc. rather than the fruit, Ionson wonders, “What are our children learning as they navigate digital devices vs. when children used wooden tablets with narrow ideas presented with pictograms.” He goes on about the entities behind Battledore‘s letters, “Many of these are companies that manufacture weapons of war or are players in an information war. Many countries and organizations are using the information space of social media and news in a disinformation war. It is a digital battle now.”

To drive this home with several layers of irony, Battledore is offered as the learning tool needed to

Train your children for the battles of the 21st Century. Where brands, countries and organized crime compete for your allegiance. Using art, history, finance, education, news, war, social media and religion they fight to keep a hold on your mind. Learn to fight back by subverting the tools they wield.

At one layer of irony, the physical artifact shown above lies dormant just as it did until the teacher “activated” it with classroom recitation of the letters. But now, in augmented reality, the letters seem to come to life revealing hidden entities associated with them. Now, the reader/viewer has to engage in a digital transaction, point a digital handheld device at the letters, and peer to see and learn, letter by letter, what the letters “really” stand for — all while a looping track of electronic battle-game sounds plays on. Viewed on a laptop or desktop, these video clips at Elementum, Patreon and ARTificial show the transformations without the need of a smartphone. Caveat: whether phone or laptop, lower the speakers’ volume before activating!

While the word “battledore” serves the artist’s metaphoric purpose, it introduces another layer of irony (unintentional according to the artist) in that the physical artifact is a horn-book, not a battledore, which was the later paper version of the horn-book. An additional unintentional irony is that, as illustrated by Andrew White Tuer, the “dean” of horn-book history, the old artifact itself was often wielded as a weapon.

From Andrew White Tuer’s History of the Horn-Book (1897)

Some transformations are easy to follow and connect with a corporate entity. Others — such as the Q becoming a missile launcher because Q is for QinetiQ — require a bit of digging (online, of course). The original teaching device was not without its “corporate” — or rather religious, economic and patriotic — associations, but they were more obvious in the text, emblem and images on both front and back of the artifact.

Facsimile horn-books. Real cow horn is used for the cover of the horn-book at the lower left.
Gene Wilson

The NFT element of this work is yet another level of irony. It begins with a paradox and a pair of causes. The paradox is ownership in the digital age. Most digital objects — downloadable music or book files — are not owned securely. Whether subject to the supplier’s whims or errors (like Amazon’s now infamous overnight removal of Orwell’s 1984 from its customers’ Kindles) or to obsolescence (by operating system upgrades or by outright abandonment of file formats such as Adobe Flash), we do not so much own digital assets as lease them with fingers crossed for luck while the vendors’ fingers are crossed behind their backs.

The irony raised by Battledore‘s NFT status is the underpinning technology’s claim of redefining and securing unique ownership in a digital work of art. A long explanatory article in The Verge provides an amusing and clear explanation of non-fungible tokens and blockchain technology. Although a digital artwork can be copied many times by many viewers even if it’s included with an NFT,

… NFTs are designed to give you something that can’t be copied: ownership of the work (though the artist can still retain the copyright and reproduction rights, just like with physical artwork). To put it in terms of physical art collecting: anyone can buy a Monet print. But only one person can own the original.

A metaphysical or aesthetic precursor to all this can be found in Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. He writes,

The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity. And

that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.

So in Benjamin’s terms, the Monet original has authenticity, it has aura. NFTs and blockchain technology aim/claim to replace the “presence of the original”, its “unique presence”, its “aura” with “ownership of the work” as the “prerequisite to authenticity”. By associating a piece of wood, leather, metal tacks and inscribed plastic with the digital asset, Ionson physically and ironically underscores the paradox of digital ownership.

The NFT feature of Battledore also carries with it a pair of causes. The first cause has an analogue in the late 20th-century theories about book art: that this new form of art arose as a means of bypassing art galleries and gatekeeping authorities of art. Likewise, NFTs and blockchain technology have their roots in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in which data resides in whole or distributed state across a network of distributed servers. The purpose of P2P is to protect data from the threat and vulnerabilities of centralized control. Battledore leverages its digital format and that anti-authoritarian tradition of NFTs to subvert the corporate enemy on the digital battlefield.

The second cause, related to the first, is economic and financial and linked to copyright. In the physical world, authors’ and artists’ ability to be remunerated from the sale and re-sale of copies or original works is attenuated. They might receive royalties from copies sold by the intermediary publisher or a percentage from an original sold by the gallery or to a collector, but there is no economic framework for remuneration from subsequent transactions. NFTs and blockchain technology provide the digital artist an option for ongoing remuneration. Whenever the NFT is exchanged, a new block in the chain arises, and the whole chain is aware of it. So the digital artist can set financial terms not only for the initial financial transaction but also for subsequent ones.

When the Books On Books Collection is donated to the Bodleian Libraries, the chain of digital ownership will extend by one more block. The wallet in which the Battledore NFT and financial terms, if any, reside will transfer to the Bodleian with a digitally secure chain of custody and provenance. Of course, with the accompanying transfer of the physical artifact associated with the NFT, the artist and collector will be giving an ironic wink of the eye to the amusement and relief of the Keeper of Rare Books at the Bodleian.

Books On Books Collection – Bruno Riboulot and Marjon Mudde

2023/06/042023/07/21Books On Books1 Comment

ABC d’Air (2005)

ABCD’Air (2005)
Bruno Riboulot and Marjon Mudde
Greyboard covers on four-flap paper case, handsewn booklet. Case: H212 x W153 mm; Booklet H210 x W145 mm. 26 folios. Edition of 60, of which this is #30. Acquired from Abecedarian Gallery, 10 March 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

The shape of a letter depends on the “air” — the space — within and around it. Bruno Riboulot’s concept, executed here by Marjon Mudde, demonstrates how those spaces can be formed by cuts, tears, folds, “reveals” and contrasting colors. Truly an abecedary of space. (Thanks to Colin Cohen of Missing Portraits for the reminder of the title’s pun on abécédaire.)

A revealing B revealing C

The book consists of thirteen leaves sewn together with linen thread. Each leaf is divided in half, and each half is dedicated to a letter of the alphabet.

Standing, the open book takes on the air of an abstract sculpture.

W revealing X revealing Y revealing Z.

The “reveals” evoke the harlequinade (“flap-book”, “turn-up”, “metamorphosis” or “lift-the-flap”) structure invented in 17th century, in which the book’s narrative unfolds as each flap is lifted. To appreciate how differently this structure can be used with the alphabet, compare it with Scott McCarney’s Alphabook 10 (2015) and Thomas Ockerse’s The A-Z Book (1969/2014).

About the artists:

French calligrapher Bruno Riboulot works with traditional watercolors, pen and ink but also experiments widely with paper (as above), stone, stop motion animation, light and calligraphy performed to music. Visual artist Marjon Mudde currently works as an engraver, printmaker, ceramicist, book artist and editor of handmade artists’ books.

Books On Books Collection – Merrill Shatzman

2023/05/292024/11/08Books On BooksLeave a comment

Calligrafitti #3 (2011)

Calligrafitti #3 (2011)
Merrill Shatzman
Leporello. Closed: 235 x235 mm. Open: W282 cm. 10 panels.Unique. Acquired from the artist, 6 October 2017.
Photos: Courtesy of the artist.

An extraordinarily fragile and rich work of print and sculpture, Calligrafitti #3 displays the inspiration that alphabets can provide for artists’ books. There are, of course, more inspirations or influence at work here.

One artist mentioned by Merrill Shatzman as an influence on her art is Friedensreich Hundertwasser. The book’s three dimensionality, its colors throughout and the background striations echo the Hundertwasser House as well as the pattern of striations in several of the Hundertwasser paintings that can be found here. Certainly like Hundertwasser, Schatzman fuses the static and dynamic. In Calligrafitti #3, there’s something vegetative, almost animistic, and still architectural as carved letters can be.

Hundertwasser House, Greece

The fluidity and structure in Calligrafitti #3 recall another influence: Zaha Hadid.

Total Fluidity: Studio Zaha Hadid, Projects 2000 – 2010 University of Applied Arts Vienna
Studio Zaha Hadid Institute of Architecture and Patrik Schumacher (editors). Vienna: Springer, 2011

Two other visual influences that shine through — although disparate in time and dimensionality — are Rachid Koraïchi and Stuart Davis. The influences are more visual and formal than substantive, and the works below are emblematic selections.

Rachid Koraichi, Les sept dormants. Paris: Actes Sud, 2004.

Stuart Davis, Swing Landscape. 1938. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University. 863.75 x 173.125 inches (224.8 × 443.9 × 8.9 cm).

Ephemera

Books On Books Collection – Helen Hajnoczky

2023/05/252023/07/01Books On BooksLeave a comment

alpha seltzer (2023)

alpha seltzer (2023)
Helen Hajnoczky
Canada balsa wood, hinged and clasped box, double-sided accordion structure attached to multicolored ribbons for vertical display. Box: H240 x W155 x D80 mm. Leporello panel: H178 x W126 mm. Open: 1041 cm. 56 panels. Acquired from the artist, 10 April 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Letters and punctuation marks fall and rise and tumble in alpha seltzer like so many tablets of Alka-Seltzer. With her use of color, technique and orientation of the images, Hajnoczky holds to and takes the concept far beyond a one-trick visual metaphor. Anyone who has observed those dissolving heart-burn relief tablets closely will recognize how the colorless effervescing bubbles spin off each tablet in upwards and downwards directions. So, on the box cover’s title plate and on the first panel, colored drips surrounded by spatters rise from the title and fall from the artist’s name.

But what is it that the characters are dissolving in, and what are they dissolving into? Of course it’s just paper, but the Kodak Moment matte photo paper has a glossy shine suggesting a solution of water. As the accordion emerges from the box, a spattered and dripping red column made of overlapping characters (brackets, question mark, exclamation mark and ampersand) appears on the first panel; then with a shift to the left, the red column widens into one made of all the lowercase letters of the alphabet; then shifting back to the center, the column widens and comes closer; and then shifting to the right, it becomes a column of all the uppercase vowels overlapping. What is going on?

Now, the originally vertical column of brackets, question mark, exclamation point and ampersand goes horizontal and black, dripping pink and gray into the next panel of horizontal uppercase vowels in black, dripping gray, pink and black into a horizontal jumble of lowercase letters.

Then the characters bend into a deep red curve spattered and dripping in gray, eventually morphing into a ball of red vowels. Beneath that, the palette goes entirely black and gray, and the characters begin to angle down the panel into a heap of letters sliding downwards from right to left across the panel and squeezed at the bottom …

… until they have to cascade down from left to right, which is when a riot of color breaks out. At the end of the accordion, you realize there’s another loop; which side is up, which is down?

On the other side of the accordion, the riot of colors continues, but each panel presents a single-color uppercase letter that seems to be dissolving like an Alka-Seltzer tablet into multicolor lowercase versions of itself.

With layout, color, technique and metaphor, Hajnockzky has coaxed an element of abstraction from the alphabet that differs from the semiotic abstraction by which letters have come to be what they are. But in the end, it’s not a confusion from which relief is wanted. Rather it’s one in which to fall, be immersed and enjoy. And to have a laugh at the expense of the Dr. Miles Medicine Company of Elkhart, Indiana and its subsequent owner Bayer AG for missing a marketing trick for Alka-Seltzer tablets.

Magyarázni (2016)

Magyarázni (2016)
Helen Hajnoczky
Perfect bound paperback. H210 x W140 mm. 104 pages. Acquired from the author, 14 December 2021. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

With all its diacritics and dipthongs, if there is an alphabet song in Hungarian, it must be operatic in length. It is fortunate, though, that it is as long as it is; otherwise we would have fewer poems in this volume by Helen Hajnoczky.

Hajnoczky is second-generation Hungarian-Canadian. These poems use the two languages to reflect on her dual roots of culture and the roots of memory. And for both, what better vehicle than an alphabet book. Even though there are 44 letters in Hungarian compared to 26 in English, Hajnoczky is a greedy poet, and taking her title literally — Magyarázni means “make it Hungarian” — she includes poems for the letters Q, W, X and Y even though Hungarian has no need of the phonemes behind them except for borrowed words.

Hajnoczky does not shy away from growing up in the English-language poetic tradition. In the poem below, she appropriates Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”, turning and twisting its metaphor into one for her experience of growing up with two languages, making the letter Y and Robert Frost Hungarian.

Some of the poems might remind readers of Seamus Heaney. For the letter í (for Írástudatlanság/”ignorance, illiteracy”), Hajnoczky delves into the metaphor of the pen in a way that surely would have brought a smile to Heaney as a nod to his “Digging”; or he might have heard an echo of “Clearances” in Lyuk/”hole”) for the dipthong Ly when she hears a relative commenting on her needle-wielding: “you are/ Never going to sew anything/ as good as your grandmother”.

Hajnoczky calls the images facing the text “visual poems”. To create them, she has drawn from a difficult-to-find spiral bound book put together by Péter Czink and Lorraine Weideman. As with Alphaseltzer, the results are visually striking. Coach House Books has nicely complemented the images and type with vegetable-based ink and Zephyr Antique Laid paper.

Books On Books Collection – Lisa Merkin

2023/02/242026/02/25Books On BooksLeave a comment

Bodies Making Language (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet, the shapes of characters — whether Latin or Chinese or Arabic or any language — and their relationship to the sound or meaning they represent is arbitrary, a prehistorical and historical function of social convention, a collective making by individuals. That arbitrariness provides the opening for artists to use the alphabet to question our meaning-seeking behavior and our assumptions about reality, and modern artists’ anthropomorphizing the alphabet pokes fun at that behavior and those assumptions. Perhaps a fourth Merkin box — one for bodies making “asemic alphabets”?

Books On Books

Curated by Robert Bolick

Sculptural object

Books On Books Collection – Květa Pacovská

À l’infini (2007)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Kevin M. Steele

The Movable Book of Letterforms (2009)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Ashley Rose Thayer

Runic Alphabet (2023)

Mechanical Horn-book (2025)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Connie Stricks

A Cuneiform Hornbook (2023)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Margo Klass

Takeover (2023)

The Hornbook Project (2021)

Double Moon (2009)

Northwoods Set Book Project (2021)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Bård Ionson

Battledore (2019)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Bruno Riboulot and Marjon Mudde

ABC d’Air (2005)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Merrill Shatzman

Calligrafitti #3 (2011)

Further Reading

Ephemera

Books On Books Collection – Helen Hajnoczky

alpha seltzer (2023)

Magyarázni (2016)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Lisa Merkin

Bodies Making Language (2021)

Further Reading