Books On Books Collection – Caren Florance

L OO P (2019)

A closed book with a black cover featuring minimal text and a gold spine, resting on a black surface.

A black art book with textured pages and minimalist white markings on the cover, partially opened to reveal a golden inner page.

L OO P (2019)
Caren Florance
Handset letterpress and mixed media on Stonehenge Black, Chinese papers and found maps. Hand-stitched Z-fold dos-à-dos booklet. H193 x W143 mm. [48] pages. Edition of 16, of which this is #13. Acquired from the artist, 1 December 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.

L OO P is one to compare with Jack Oudyn’s Opening Dark Windows (2020) and Tim Mosely’s Grasping the Nettle (2020). All three of these Australian book artists create works responding to climate change. L OO P is also one to contrast with Barbara Beisinghoff’s Tau blau / Dew Blue (2013). Both thrust forward their works’ tactility, but while Beisinghoff’s offers the fond hope of natural and artistic renewal as it plays off H.C. Andersen’s fairy tale Hørren /The Flax, Florance’s embeds shards of John Bennett’s bird poem Overwintering in a back-to-back loop of despair over climate change.

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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 – Ximena Pérez Grobet (II)

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Nagori (2023)

A sleek black folder with the embossed word 'NAGORI' on the front.

Nagori (2023)
Ximena Pérez Grobet and Kati Riquelme
Clothbound hardcover. H153 x W47 mm. Edition of 33, of which this is #14. Acquired from Ximena Pérez Grobet, 5 February 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Permission to display from Ximena Pérez Grobet.

The Japanese word nagori has several meanings. Beware translation applications, but embrace the online discoveries that lead to Ryōko Sekiguchi, the Japanese expatriate writer, and Victor Burgin, the British conceptual artist and writer, who cites her. With Sekiguchi, you will find that it means “nostalgia for the season leaving us”, the longing for the taste of an early season fruit evoked by its late season taste, or a room’s sense of waiting for the return of someone who has just left. With Burgin, before he cites Sekiguchi, you will first find nagori‘s etymology — nami-nokori, referring to the remnant, remains or traces of receding waves. Burgin’s etymological explanation is obviously the most applicable to this collaborative artists’ book, but after you have put the book aside, you may feel a lingering nostalgia for the experience of it akin to the sensuousness Sekiguchi evokes.

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Books On Books Collection – Helen M. Brunner

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Primer: Ritual Elements (Book One) (1982)

An artistic cover of a book titled 'Primer: Ritual Elements' by Helen M. Barger, featuring ancient script designs and abstract shapes.

Primer: Ritual Elements (Book One) (1982)
Helen M. Brunner
Softcover, pamphlet-stitched. H239 x W155 mm. 22 pages. Binding adapted from a design by Barbara Press, developed under the instruction of Hedi Kyle. Edition of 300. Acquired from JP Antiquarian Books, 14 February 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Primer is an unusually made booklet. Stitched with black cotton thread over three signatures, its two outer signatures are of white wove Curtis rag paper, the inner signature is of parchment or a translucent paper, and four 5-panel thumbnail accordions in translucent paper are glued to the beginning of the last outer signature. More unusual is that the booklet’s edges appear burnt into unevenness, yet there is no odor of ash. The edges of the sewing holes also appear burnt, one page has a scorch mark in its center, and even the edges of the collaged items appear to have been burnt before being photographed. The breadth of collaged items — from cave markings to cuneiform to Rosetta Stone to film strips or slides — is not unusual given the title; you would expect a primer on ritual elements to address a prehistoric to historic range of petroglyphs, pictographs, symbols, letters, photographs, etc. But most unusual — and perhaps the point of the work — is that the legible text undermines the aim suggested by the title. The script on the back cover makes the subversion plainest.

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Books On Books Collection – Susan Johanknecht

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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 – Laure Catugier

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A Never-Ending Stone (2025)

A wrapped book titled 'A Never-Ending Stone' by Laure Catognet, published in 2025, displayed on a black background.

A Never-Ending Stone (2025)
Laure Catugier
Open spine, dos-à-dos with grey bookbinding board. 210 x H260 x 210 mm. 104 pages. Edition of 250. Acquired from einBuch.haus, 3 December 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

A Never-Ending Stone is Laure Catugier’s first monographic catalog. Her skill with collage, alignment, shadows, materials, and the book format transform it into an artist’s book very much driven by her fascination with architecture and especially the architectural theories and practice of Oskar and Zofia Hansen. The Hansens eclectically embraced “human-scale” architecture, “environment art”, and what they called the “open form” structure, using space and time as its key elements. The Hansens also proposed that the architect should not be the all-knowing expert but should partner with clients as co-authors of their space, respecting how their interior and outside activities and relations with one another defined them and their space. Though somewhat a forerunner to User-Centered Design, Open Form radically aimed at structures that would evolve with interaction with the user and, as they unfolded, also align with nature.

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Books On Books Collection – Anne-Catherine Fallen

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The Lively Dance (1983)

A vertical view of a grey booklet titled 'THE LIVELY DANCE' secured with a thin bamboo stick.

The Lively Dance (1983)
Anne-Catherine Fallen
Handbound book, sewn; endflaps secured at fore edge with bamboo twig to create wedge-shaped book. Laid flat, H223 x W157 mm; wedge fore edge, W75 mm. [18] pages. Edition of 200. Acquired from Stand 132, Zurich. 18 January 2026.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with the artists permission.

The Lively Dance is an elaborate and simple artist’s book. It consists of an eleven-line poem arranged across ten of eighteen pages displaying a stand of bamboo. Four pleated sheets of translucent paper, also displaying the stand of bamboo, overlap and bind those ten pages at the fore edge. Here is the book’s opening double-page spread with the translucent overlay first in place and then pulled back to reveal the poem’s invitation: “Come join the solemn dance”.

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Books On Books Collection – Sarah Maker

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Within Every Room There is an Echo of the First (2018)

A stack of triangular pyramids made of textured cards, displaying different colors and patterns, set against a dark background.

A small, folded piece of paper or booklet with a textured surface, resting on a dark background.

Within Every Room There is an Echo of the First (2018)
Sarah Maker
Diagonally halved box, painted-paper over millboard, paste paper. H65 x W65 x D65 (closed) mm, W730 (extended diagonally) mm. [45] panels Unique. Acquired from Ink and Awl, Seattle, US, 10 December 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.

This small sculptural artist’s book that enacts its title is an engineered accordion with architectural pencil drawings on paste paper. Every aspect is remarkable. The millboard “cover” is a diagonally halved cube that forms the “corner” of the room from which its echoes will unfold. The accordion spine consists of folded tabs into which the pages are pasted. The pages have been shaped so that as the book is opened (the top page being pulled by its tab), they curve against each other like artichoke leaves and then spread as the angled spine pleats push them outwards.

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Books On Books Collection – Sunkyung Cho

2025/12/282026/04/15Books On BooksLeave a comment

This is not a stone (2017)

This is not a stone (2017)
Sunkyung Cho
Exposed spine binding with cross weave filament tape, board-covered. 170 x 170 mm. Acquired from SpazioB**K, 6 April 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Just as you think this will be another two-dimensional riff on René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images (aka Ceci n’est pas une pipe), the Chinese fold title page turns to reveal a cutout well with a stone at the bottom.

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Books On Books Collection – Anne Covell

2025/12/232026/04/15Books On BooksLeave a comment

Anne Covell bridges the domains of book art and the book arts. The Record offers a skillfully constructed artist’s book that documents one of the first Trump Regime’s acts of depredation against history and truth. Historical Binding embodies her respect for the history of one of the book arts’ loveliest of crafts: stitching.

The Record (2017)

The Record (2017)
Anne Covell
Letterpress printed accordion on Masa paper with sumi wash and hand brayering. Housed in a 4-flap French paper enclosure with button and string ties. Enclosure: H165 x W110 x D6 mm. Book: H164 x W108 x D3 mm (closed); H327 x W1080 mm (open). 6.5 x 4.25 x .25 inches (closed), 13 x 42.5 x .25 inches (open) [36] panels. Edition of 60, of which this is #1. Acquired from the artist, 10 September 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

On January 20th, 2017, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. That same day, the official White House website (whitehouse.gov) began the digital transition to archive and replace Obama’s policies with those of the new administration. Immediately, people began to notice that key issues such as health care, education, and immigration were nowhere to be found. Keyword searches for terms such as “climate change,” “LGBT,” and “civil rights” all returned 404 errors. Even more conspicuously, the Spanish-language version and the disabled-accessible version of the site were no longer available. Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library that has been archiving webpages since 1996, captured 167 snapshots of whitehouse.gov that day. This book records the last snapshots taken of Obama’s policies before they came down, the 404 errors that followed, as well as the Internet Archive timestamps for when the information was last available and when it disappeared. (Anne Covell).

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