Binding

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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Books On Books Collection – Jane Cradock-Watson

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Ebb and Flow (2023)

Ebb and Flow (2023)
Jane Cradock-Watson
Concertina book with cloth hard bound covers. H155 x W27 mm (closed), W680 mm (open). 64 panels. Edition of 20. Acquired from the artist, 21 January 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.

An exploration, both visually and physically, the ‘edge’ of the sea where it meets the land, with its continuous ebb and flow of the breaking waves, rhythmically rolling back and forth onto the sand. (Artist’s description)

With the binding and her photography in Ebb and Flow, Jane Cradock-Watson has sculpted and painted the sea’s edge. Four digital photographs printed on Zerkal paper have been spliced together between two cloth-covered boards. The flexibility and extent of the concertinaed paper create an undulating structure that turns seascape stills into mesmerising cinema.

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Books On Books Collection – Jana Sim

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Both but Between (2021)

Both but Between (2021)
Jana Sim
Cloth-covered boards, exposed binding. H149 x W114 5.8 mm. 17 handmade paper leaves; 16 OHP film leaves. Edition of 27, of which this is #14. Acquired from Vamp&Tramp, 15 July 2022.
Photos: Jana Sim (above) and Books On Books Collection (below). Displayed with artist’s permission.

Both but between is a bilingual abecedary. If punning in a foreign language indicates successful mastery of a non-native tongue, punning in that language and doing so materially with an artist’s book must indicate an altogether higher level and higher kind of mastery. Jana Sim demonstrates such mastery with an extraordinary use of letterpress printing and laser printing to underscore the “both but between” metaphor of her bicultural experience in this bilingual abecedary.

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Books On Books Collection – Ruth Fine

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Summer Day | Winter Night (1994)

Summer Day | Winter Night (1994)
Ruth Fine
Papered slipcase with title printed on spine, enclosing a double-sided leporello. Slipcase, H190 x W110 x D20 mm; Leporello (extended), H185 x W1888 mm. [16] panels per side. Edition of 150, of which this is #56. Acquired from Weinrich Books, 12 June 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.

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Books On Books Collection – Judy Fairclough Sgantas

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ABC of Bugs and Plants in a Northern Garden (2012)

ABC of Bugs and Plants in a Northern Garden (2012)
Judy Fairclough Sgantas and Claire Van Vliet
Clamshell box, softcover, open spine, paper-tab-sewn binding. Box: H188 x W192 x D65 mm. Book: H167 x W171 x D35 mm. 27 f&gs, 1 folded pastedown at end. Edition of 120, of which this is #45. Acquired from Vamp & Tramp, 15 September 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artists’ permission.

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