Binding

Books On Books Collection – Zhang Xiaodong*

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Diamond Sutra in 32 zhuan (seal) fonts (2017)
Zhang Xiaodong
Scroll in dragon scale binding. 152 x 382 x 160 mm. Edition of 300, of which this #197. Acquired from Sin Sin Fine Arts (Hong Kong), 31 October 2019. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

In 1900, in China’s Dunhuang province, the Diamond Sutra (868 CE), the world’s earliest complete and dated printed book, was discovered in a cave along with 40,000 scrolls. One of those other scrolls — Or.8210/S.6349 — was possibly just as important for the book arts as the Diamond Sutra was for the history of printing. Like the Diamond Sutra, Or.8210/S.6349 resides in the British Library and is “the only known example of whirlwind binding in the Stein collection of the British Library” (Chinnery). The structure is also known as dragon scale binding, although distinctions between the two have been debated (Song). It came into use in the late Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) then fell away in the face of the easier to handle butterfly and wrapped-back bindings. Besides Or.8210/S.6349, there are few surviving examples of original whirlwind or dragon scale bindings.

Chinnery, 2007.

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Books On Books Collection – Barbara Hocker

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Watercourse I (2022)

Watercourse I (2022)
Barbara Hocker
Scroll in variant dragon scale binding. L152 cm (variable) x W12 cm. 64 panels. Unique. Acquired from the artist, 10 February 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Works evocative of water often invoke a sense of meditative stillness, but Barbara Hocker’s Watercourse I prompts a sense of meditative activity. You can’t stop moving it about. Or if you’re not moving it, you find yourself moving around it to contemplate it. It is the layering of watercolor, sumi ink, photographic prints with archival inks on washi paper, and the ancient Chinese method of bookbinding called dragon scale (sometimes called “whirlwind” or “fish scale” binding) that achieves this. Traditionally, the binding method involves a long scroll of paper to which successively shorter folios are attached at one end, often secured with a bamboo rod. Hocker has modified this structure by attaching folios of the same size with hinges to the underlying long scroll at intervals allowing one folio to overlap the next and so on. In each case, the effect of the overlapping folios creates the appearance of dragon scales.

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Books On Books Collection – Suzanne Moore (III)

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Dreamings (2023)

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

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

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

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

Inquiry (2019), unknown location.*

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

Trust (2019), now at the Boston Athenaeum.

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

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

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

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Books On Books Collection – Daniel Essig, Graeme Priddle, and Melissa Engler

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Ammonite (2015)

Ammonite (2015)
Daniel Essig, Graeme Priddle, and Melissa Engler
Ethiopian and Coptic bound book, sewn with waxed black linen thread, walnut-dyed handmade flax and Ingres Antique black papers, with carved front and back covers of maple, each with a bisected ammonite fossil embedded beneath a mica sheet, fixed with 1/8 brass brads. H127 x W90 x D63 mm. [384] pages. Unique. Acquired from the artists, 30 May 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Even a cursory glance through the Books On Books Collection confirms the variety of choices book artists face when creating an artist’s book. In Ammonite (2015), the book block and its binding are the site and material of Daniel Essig, Graeme Priddle, and Melissa Engler’s sculptural art. In their collaboration, Essig drilled and prepped the wooden covers, Priddle carved the ammonite surface, Engler painted the covers, and then Essig added the mica window with ammonite fossil, prepped the book block, and bound the book.

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Books On Books Collection – Julie Chen & Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder

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“Book of Hours was designed and created by Julie Chen & Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder. This long-distance collaboration, between California and Texas, took place during the 2020-21 pandemic. The format of Book of Hours is known as a blow book, a historical structure originally designed as a magic trick which allows the presenter to show completely different visual sequences of pages within the same book. … The first and last sequences on each side of the book were designed by the two artists collaboratively, and the other eight sequences were designed individually by each artist. …” — Colophon.

Book of Hours (2021)

Book of Hours (2021)
Julie Chen & Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder
Box: H283 x W220 x D51 mm. Book: H279 x W216 x D48 mm. Artists’ book Structure #/88 Julie Chen 8 October 2024.
Photos: Courtesy of artists, and Books On Books Collection.

As with all blow books, hold the Book of Hours‘ spine in your left hand, place your right thumb at the upper end of the fore edge, and flick through the pages. A set of sequenced images appear from beginning to end. But start again, shifting the pressure of your thumb to a lower position on the fore edge, and a different set of sequenced images shows up in the riffling. Turn the book over on its horizontal axis, and yet another series of sequenced images become available. To distinguish one side of the Book of Hours from the other, Chen and Schroeder have designated one side as “ante meridiem” on its title page and the other side as “post meridiem”.

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Books On Books Collection – Cathryn Miller (II)

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recomp (2013-23)

recomp (2013-23)
Cathryn Miller
Hinged and clasped diptych, housing an altered book, explanatory booklet, and loose colophon. Unique. Acquired from Vamp & Tramp Booksellers, 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Recomp (2013-2023) is a collaboration with a colony of bald-faced hornets. Having reviewed Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott’s decomp (2013), their artists’ book devised by exposing several copies of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species to the elements, Cathryn Miller followed suit and hung her reviewer’s copy of decomp in a tree. Over time, the wind, rain, and snow sent the book to the forest floor where it fell apart. Hornets had done their part in its decomposition, nibbling away at its edges and weakening the structure. Their conversion of the book into cellulose for their nest was also the start of their artistic partnership with Miller. Eventually the nest, too, became prey to the elements or marauders and fell and broke apart on the ground. Miller and photographer husband David recorded all this and gathered up the book fragments and broken nest.

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Books On Books Collection – Helen Yentus

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On Such a Full Sea (2013)

On Such a Full Sea Chang-rae Lee credit: Riverhead Books

On Such a Full Sea (2013)
Chang-rae Lee
Jacket and slipcase design
Helen Yentus
Book in slipcase. H23o x W150 mm; slipcase only, W110 mm. 368 pages. Edition of 500, of which this is #178. Acquired 1 October 2018.
Photo: Riverhead Books and AIGA.

Riverhead art director Helen Yentus and members of the MakerBot team designed this slipcase for Lee’s novel. An edition of 500, made with the MakerBot® Replicator® 2 Desktop 3D Printer with MakerBot PLA filament, a bioplastic made of corn and fabricated by MakerBot in Brooklyn, New York, appeared in 2013 just before the trade edition in 2014.

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Books On Books – Marlene MacCallum (II)

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Marlene MacCallum’s latest artist’s books remind me of Claude Monet’s two series of paintings of the Rouen Cathedral’s façade and a field of haystacks. The series were influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e prints (“pictures of the floating world”). Rather than changing vantage points on Mt. Fuji, Monet used one perspective on one façade and sought to capture the instants of light and atmosphere on its surface at several different hours of the day. He rendered his vision of them with thick layers of paint, brushstrokes, and colors. MacCallum, too, has chosen a fixed-viewpoint: in her case, of Lake Ontario. She, too, follows different hours and, also, different seasons as Monet did with his haystacks. She, however, renders her vision with an intricate verbal-visual dance of metaphor, book structure, registration, photographic filters, print technique and paper.

sleep walk (2023)

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Books On Books Collection – Katsumi Komagata (II)

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The Paris-based publishers Les Trois Ourses announced that Katsumi Komagata died on 29 March 2024. Although the Bologna Children’s Book Fair responded quickly with a memorial on 8 April, it is strange that no significant obituary has yet appeared for such a major figure in the book arts, children’s books and artists’ books. Fortunately there is extensive biographical information on the site of his publishing firm One Stroke.

Piece of Mind (2022), one of his last limited edition works, becomes all the more treasured.

Piece of Mind (2022)
Katsumi Komagata
Casebound, card around perfect bound block of lighter card stock. H300 x W196 mm. [30] pages. Edition of 100, of which this #67. Acquired from One Stroke, 7 August 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

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Books On Books Collection – Helen Siegl

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Herball , The Dialogues of Creatures Moralised (1979)

Herball from The Dialogues of Creatures Moralised Applicable and edifying to every merry and jocund matter, and right profitable to the governance of men. [Ascribed to Nicolaus Pergamenus and Mayno de’ Mayneri. First printed in Latin by Gerard Leeu in Gouda in 1480 & in English in 1535.] (1979)
Helen Siegl
Hardcover in mustard colored cloth with a paper label to the spine; with 11 woodcut illustrations hand-colored by Helen Siegl. HxW mm. [24] pages. Edition of 150, of which this is #56. Acquired from Black Swan Books, 20 July 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

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