Books On Books Collection – Erwin Huebner

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Erwin Huebner is a professor at the University of Manitoba engaged in research and teaching cell and developmental biology. He is also a book artist and miniaturist. Following his work, the Books On Books Collection has started small and hopes to grow into his larger works. At both ends of the spectrum, Huebner’s themes resonate with the integration of art and science, a recurrent focus of the collection (see Further Reading below).

Alphabeta Concertina Majuscule (2015)

Alphabeta Concertina (2015)
Erwin Huebner (with permission of Ron King)
Miniature double-sided leporello. H 1.5 x W 1.0 x D 0.75 in. Edition of 4. Acquired from Erwin Huebner, 20 January 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

The geometry and invention of Ron King’s work must have appealed to a kindred spirit in Erwin Huebner. The classificatory nature of the alphabet must also have spoken to Huebner’s inner Linnaeus. As 2023 is the 270th anniversary of Linnaeus’ Species Plantarum, which introduced his classification system, it is an auspicious moment for Huebner’s miniature versions of King’s alphabet concertinas to join the Books On Books Collection and be included works in the Bodleian exhibition “Alphabets Alive!” (19 July 2023 to 24 January 2024, Weston Library, Oxford).

alphabet concertina miniscule (2022)

alphabet concertina miniscule (2022)
Erwin Huebner (with permission of Ron King)
Miniature double-sided leporello. H 1.5 x W 1.0 x D 0.75 in. Acquired from Erwin Huebner, 20 January 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Both the majuscule and miniscule concertinas are double-sided with half the alphabet on one side and half on the other just as King designed from the first with The White Alphabet and the majuscule concertina in 1984 and subsequently 2007 with the miniscule.

Micrographia Revisited (2017)

Micrographia Revisited: A Triptych (2017)
Erwin Huebner
Box with 3 Coptic-bound volumes, each H 2.625 x W 1.875 x variable depth. Edition of 3. Acquired from Erwin Huebner, 20 January 2023.
Photos: Courtesy of the artist.

Despite Francesco Stelluti’s Melissographia (1625), Robert Hooke’s Micrographia: Or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon (1665) was long thought to be the first publication with illustrations drawn from observation with a microscope. Given Huebner’s scientific and artistic careers, it would seem impossible for him to resist paying homage to this work. Indeed, in his larger artist’s books, he has incorporated entire microscopes, but here, he exploits the technological advances of photography and electron microscopy and joins them with the craft of bookbinding to produce just as wondrous a work. Using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Huebner has created images of the same or similar objects to those Robert Hooke observed in the 1600’s. One of the volumes in the triptych presents these photographic results, and the other two present a reprint of Micrographia.

The coptic binding to black walnut covers, the wooden case covered in marbled paper and the subtitle create a suitable medieval/Renaissance air for this homage.

Living in a village near Oxford and having access to the Bodleian Libraries, I took Micrographia Revisited on a pilgrimage to compare it with a copy of the original not far from Hooke’s alma mater Wadham College.

Among the many outstanding features of Huebner’s homage is his use and placement of fold-outs to capture the larger plates in Hooke’s original, all of which were placed in an appendix and some of which were also printed as fold-outs. In the juxtapositions below, note how Huebner has placed Hooke’s illustration of his equipment at the end of the Preface.

Sitting atop the double-page spread showing the end of the Preface and page 1 of Hooke’s original is Micrographia Revisited, open to Huebner’s fold-out of Hooke’s illustration of his equipment. Hooke’s same fold-out illustration from the appendix is juxtaposed below with Huebner’s.

Hooke’s first two objects under the microscope Hooke are the point of a needle (described on pages 1-3) and the edge of a razor (described on pages 4-5). Huebner transforms Hooke’s single-page plate illustrating what he describes into a double-page spread between pages 2 and 3 of Micrographia Revisited.

Juxtaposing Huebner’s double-page presentation of Hooke’s drawings of a needle point and edge a razor with Hooke’s single-page presentation.

Hooke’s large fold-out of his flea may display the most impressive drawing in the book. The description appears on page 210, and the fold-out is in the appendix. Huebner’s double-fold fold-out of the illustration falls between pages 210 and 211.

The flea from Micrographia juxtaposed with that from Micrographia Revisited.

But most impressive of all is Huebner’s SEM image of a flea and its testament to Hooke’s powers of observation and skills as a draughtsman.

In the spirit of “standing on the shouders of giants”.

Alphabets Alive! – Proscholium

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The Proscholium display case in the main entrance to the Old Bodleian Library and Divinity School is frequently used as an extension to point the many visitors to this complex of buildings dating back to 1602. For “Alphabets Alive!”, Ron King, Kevin M. Steele and the Movable Book Society’s artists perform the honors.

The poster displayed in the Proscholium case is Ron King’s Alphabet II (1999), captured above Cathy Courtney’s Cooking the Books (2002), a history of King’s Circle Press. Like a signpost, it points to Alphabeta Concertina in the past and the ABC Paperweights in the future, both of which appear in the display case “The ABCs of Form & Structure“.

As the alphabet developed, technology and material also played their role in more considered shaping of letters by scribes, then wood carvers and engravers, then smiths for hot metal type, and ultimately typographers, designers and artists. Kevin M. Steele’s The Movable Book of Letterforms (2009) uses pop-ups, pull tabs, flaps and a volvelle to introduce the viewer the origins and unique characteristics of letterforms.

Published to commemorate the Movable Books Society’s 25th anniversary, A to Z Marvels in Paper Engineering (2018) is aptly subtitled. Above are A by Simon Arizpe and Z by Yevgeniya Yeretskaya. The video below by Christopher Helkey gives 26 brief cameos to the contributing artists in which they demonstrate their marvels.

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Alphabets Alive! – ABCs in Miniature

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If ever the dictum “Less is more” applied, it applies here — with miniaturized tongue in cheek, of course. [Links in the captions will take you to more images and details.]

Nancy Trottier, The Alphabet Effect (2013). Compare this example of the meander fold with Claire Van Vliet’s below and Lisa McGarry’s in The ABCs of Form & Structure.

Peter & Donna Thomas, Alphabet People (1989). Even in miniature, B is for Body.

Picture ABC (place and date of creation unknown). And C is for Color.

Rebecca Bingham, Defining the Rainbow (2018). And still more Color.

These two miniatures — Albrecht Dürer’s Directions for the Construction of the Text or Quadrate Letters (1993) and Fra Luca de Pacioli’s The Divine Alphabet (1993) — were produced by Tabula Rasa Press for a three-volume set, including Ben Shahn’s The Alphabet of Creation (1954). Although the miniature edition of Shahn remains elusive, the original edition can be seen here.

Mark Van Stone, The Evolution of the Medieval Decorated Letter (1985) In the spirit of medieval illuminators, Van Stone has imitated the hand of twenty-three of what he calls the “semi-precious jewels” of “‘minor’ illumination that usually receives little attention in the Art-History books”.

Carol DuBosch, Embossed Alphabet Gallery (2019).* This gallery structure combines elements of the flag-book and leporello to create a freestanding sculptural book to be read “in the round” — although in the Bodleian exhibition it was fixed in a wall case that allowed 180º view.

Claire Van Vliet, Tumbling Blocks for Pris and Bruce (1996).* A meander-fold book hinged to keep the cube unfolding, refolding and unfolding as it falls from hand to hand.

Carol Cunningham, Alphabet Alfresco (1985). One of several gems created by the founder of the Miniature Book Society (1983).

William Cheney, ABC for Tiny Schools ( 1975). Along with “A was an archer”, the “A was an apple pie” was among the earliest themes for secular alphabet books.

Alphabet Salmagundi (1988) and Golden Alphabet (1986) demonstrate the breadth of Rebecca Bingham’s interest in various periods and techniques of calligraphy.

Another Tabula Rasa Press production, Arthur Maquarie, The Uffizi ABC: a facsimile reproduction in miniature (1992)

Pat Sweet’s wit led her to fill the ancient Egyptians’ previously unperceived need for an alphabet book with Hieroglyphs (2009).

David Clifford and Heavenly Monkey teamed up to produce this intricately bound miniature, Letterpress Printing ABC (2004).

June Sidwell, Lady Letters (1986). Another production by Rebecca Bingham, which also led to a miniature nod to another alphabetist — Erté.

Nicolas McDowall, A Bodoni Charade (1995). Don’t let delight in the verbal/visual punnery distract you from wondering at the skill with type and letterpress needed to pull this off.

Erwin Huebner and Ron King, Alphabeta Concertina Majuscule (2015) and alphabeta concertina miniscule (2022). Miniaturist and microbiologist, Huebner obtained Ron King’s permission to reproduce King’s two signature pop-up alphabets with extraordinary results.

Juniper Von Phitzer, An Alphabet Coloring Book by Theodore Menten (1997). Lloyd L. Neilson compiled the name of his Juniper Von Phitzer Press from the names of his three cats. Theodore Menten had produced a coloring book called The Illuminated Alphabet in 1971 for Dover Publications. Obviously Juniper Von Phitzer could not fail to pounce.

Online Exhibition Bonus!

Many of the ABC books in the collection use the accordion, concertina or leporello structure, but none but Maria G. Pisano’s XYZ (2002) combine fine beaten abaca in two colors and the watermark technique to achieve their effect.

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Alphabets Alive! – & is for Ampersand

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Sometimes called the 27th letter of the alphabet, the & – or the ampersand (meaning ‘and’ by itself) – has long provided artists, typographers and designers with the opportunity to flourish and strut their stuff. Such a curious sign also attracts a fair share of punnery and fun – from Bruce Rogers’ “Ampers&paper” to Jennifer Farrell’s The Well-Traveled Ampersand in which she shapes ampersands with dozens of typographic ornaments to create characters matching the styles of her favourite typographers and their cities.

Paul A. Bennett et al., Diggings from Many Ampersandhogs (1936). The Typophiles was a US-based society of bibliophiles, talented typographers and designers, and incorrigible punsters. The binding of so many varied types of paper (including sandpaper) in such a small volume is a feat in itself.

Peter Criddle, Commend Me to the Ampersand (2018)

In this print from Jennifer Farrell’s The Well-Traveled Ampersand (2015-17), she has used typographic fleurons, dashes, ornaments and and several small train carriages to capture Edward Johnston’s ampersand from the typeface designed for the London Underground.

Russell Maret, Hungry Dutch (2016-20). Subscription to the creation of the Hungry Dutch typeface earned its sponsors a matrix, sort and pattern on completion. For the Books On Books Collection, the ampersand was the obvious choice.

Andrew Morrison, Ampersand& (2007). A collector of sets of woodcut type and sorts, Morrison could not deny the ampersands (wormholes and all) their own type book.

Bruce Rogers, Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain & Perfect Pronunciation (1936) Johnson e. 2961. For Diggings from Many Ampersandhogs (see above) ,Rogers created a reduced version of this set of pages. In both cases, he really did use sandpaper.

That Company Called If, Alphabooks – Ampersand – & (2015). Most altered books aim higher than the decorative, but no celebration of the ampersand in book art would be complete without this carving of a volume from the Readers’ Digest library.

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Alphabets Alive! – Color

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Letters have particular sounds, so why not colors and tastes? Artists have delighted in the phenomenon called synesthesia where information seems to stimulate unrelated senses. Vladimir Nabokov experienced letters as colors, and Sonia Delaunay insists that we remember what C tastes like. The artists in medieval manuscripts painted elaborate letters to highlight important text, illuminating them with gold and color to make them ‘pop’. Květa Pacovská insists that her brightly colored letters don’t just pop, but pop up, and Lisa McGarry returns them to childhood’s alphabet blocks as a reminder: BE AMAZED.

Jean Holabird & Vladimir Nabokov, AlphaBet in Color (2005)

Sonia Delaunay, Alphabet (1972)

Květa Pacovská, A l’infini (2007)

Lisa McGarry, Be Amazed (and other words to live by) (2013)

Online Exhibition Bonus!

Celestino Piatti’s Animal A.B.C.(1965)

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Alphabets Alive! – Activism and Anti-racism

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We reflect our world view through our letters*: hornbooks with their religious catechisms; moralizing Victorian alphabet books; and the racist ABC in Dixie. Knowing this, authors and artists use alphabets to disrupt the status quo and raise moral and social concerns: conspiracy paranoia, endangered animals, sexism and racism. [Links in the captions will take you to more images and details.]

Doing the work of learning the ABCs or the International Code of Signals is about memorizing. Doing the work with Mourning/Warning: An Abecedarian (2015) is about memorializing. It signals a warning to present dangers.

In light of Tia Blassingame’s Mourning/Warning, can Louise & George Bonte’s ABC In Dixie (1900?) be simply dismissed as an anachronism?

Wendy Ewald’s American Alphabets (2005) offers a hopeful view and reminder that there is more than one alphabet.

If all alphabets have a world view, can an alphabet be bent and arranged into a new world view? In 2018, the Nova Scotia Chapter of the Global Afrikan Congress facilitated a “book-in-a-day” event to help the children of Halifax create R is for Reparations (2019), which answers that question.

Celebrating role models is another tool in the alphabet-book box for changing world views. In ABCs That Look Like You And Me (2020), the artist Ja’nai Harris uses featureless but allusive portraits onto which the reader is invited to project his or her own features.

Now that A is for Apple Inc. rather than the fruit, Bård Ionson wonders, “What are our children learning as they navigate digital devices vs. when children used wooden tablets with narrow ideas presented with pictograms.” Battledore (2019) explores the implications by using an Augmented Reality app to plunge the viewer into the digital realm.

In Gone Wild: An Endangered Animal Alphabet (2016), David McLimans redraws the alphabet’s capital letters to look like animals not yet extinct but on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

In Rescuing Q (2023), Suzanne Moore uses her beautiful calligraphy to disassociate the letter Q from QAnon, misinformation and conspiracy-thinking, and restore it to open-minded, open-hearted questions.

Tupoka Ogette’s Ein rassismuskritisches Alphabet (2022) presents another attempt at changing world views — in whatever country they arise.

And sometimes it’s good just to reverse-appropriate “the” alphabet, which Arial Robinson does in The Modern Day Black Alphabet (2020) with joy and pride.

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*David Blamires, Alphabet Books: Catalogue of an exhibition held in the Deansgate Building of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester (Manchester: John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1987), p. 3. ” All alphabets construct a world view”. —

Books On Books Collection – Ornan Rotem

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A Typographic Abecedarium (2015)

A Typographic Abecedarium (2015)
Ornan Rotem
Perfect bound in a softcover case. H174 x W176 mm. 136 pages 1 poster (64 x 48 cm, folded to 16 x 16 cm). Acquired from Devils in the Detail Ltd, 14 March 2023.
Photos of the book: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.

Ornan Rotem calls his book a “photo-typographic essay … a meditation … [e]xploring the relationship between typography and the visual world around us ….” As shown in the double-page spread below, his meditation is shaped across a four dimensional views of the letterform: the four-dimensional, three-dimensional, two-dimensional and the one-dimensional. At the end of the essay, there are 26 miniature essays that will send the reader back to enjoy each letter’s four dimensional entries again.

Everywhere you look you can see an E smiling at you (just saying it induces a smile). In 1969, Georges Perec, whose own name has four Es, tried exorcising the E by writing an esoteric 300-page novel, La disparition, without ever using one. I wonder how he would have felt had he come across this E — which was shot in Paris — when he was writing the novel. ¶ If you want to endow letters with character, then I suppose E would be the lively sort, hence the printed form comes from a 1948 cover of LIFE magazine.

Much is packed into these miniature essays. Naturally for an artist’s book celebrating type, there are the necessary self-referential typographic puns in the one above: character and sort. In all, there is the evidence of the long, multi-place, multi-source contemplative gestation of the work. In the example above, the allusion to Perec’s novel leads to the 1969 photo in Paris (or was it vice versa?). The typographic puns lead to a search for an E from a LIFE cover (again, or was it vice versa?). This circular connectedness over time, text and image highlights the self-referentiality of the genre of the artist’s book.

While the dense allusiveness might suggest that this is a work limited to an adult audience, A Typographic Abecedarium does find favor with a younger audience — no doubt because it speaks to the phenomenon of seeing letters everywhere and in multiple dimensions.

Physical Poetry Alphabet (2018)

Physical Poetry Alphabet (2018)
Douglas & Françoise Kirkland and designed by Ornan Rotem
Casebound, illustrated paper over boards. Acquired from Sylph Editions, 18 March 2023. Photos: Screenshots displayed with permission of the publisher.

Physical Poetry Alphabet (2018) is a curious work. The Thames & Hudson-style production values combined with the knowledgeable essay in it by Ornan Rotem makes one think of Andrew Robinson’s The Story of Writing, an actual Thames & Hudson book. While the acrobatics of Erika Lemay echo the longstanding tradition of modeling the letters with the human body, followed by Erté, Vítězslav Nezval, Anthon Beeke and Rowland Scherman and so ingeniously summarized by Lisa Merkin, Lemay’s elaborate costumes and the scene design echo the traditions of Hollywood, Las Vegas and the fashion industry, which is not surprising given the involvement of Douglas Kirkland, portrait photographer to the stars. A Typographic Abecedarium strikes its singular target of “photo-typographic essay”. Having too many targets, Physical Poetry Alphabet perhaps misses its several bull’s eyes, but to follow along with its mixed metaphors, it undeniably delivers a shop full of eye candy.

Books On Books Collection – William Cheney

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ABC for Tiny Schools (1975)

ABC for Tiny Schools (1975)
William Cheney
Miniature codex. Bound by Bela Blau. HxW mm. pages. Acquired from Bromer’s, 5 February 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Alongside the alphabet mnemonic “A was an Archer who shot at a frog”, “A was an Apple” was a staple for the early primer publishers such as Dean, John Evans, J.L. Marks and J. & C. Mozley. Kate Greenaway revived it in the 1880s. Among the more interesting successors in the 20th and 21st centuries are Ben Sands (1966) with his bold lino-cuts, Tracy Campbell Pearson (1986) with her lengthy leporello, Allison Murray (2011) with her introduction of animals and Gennady Spirin (2020) with his watercolors echoing Arthur Rackham, the Pre-Raphaelites and the Renaissance. William Cheney’s type and Bela Blau’s binding of it in the ABC For Tiny Schools (1975) bring to it a handmade elegance in miniature.

Books On Books Collection – Nancy Anderson Trottier

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The Alphabet Effect (2013)

The Alphabet Effect (2013)
Nancy Anderson Trottier
Double-sided meander fold. 630 x 630 mm. 24 panels. Edition of 15. Acquired from Bromer Booksellers, 2 August 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

This miniature reproduces a larger unique artist’s book created by Nancy Anderson Trottier. Bound in marbled boards with ribbon ties, the small book’s text concerning art and philosophy meanders among stamped signs and symbols and calligraphed letters of the alphabet printed on both sides of a single sheet cut and following the meander fold structure. When the “pages” are unfolded and rearranged into the single sheet fully extended, the alphabet effect appears. To squeeze 26 letters into 24 panels, the letters e and f are paired on one panel, as are k and l on another.

Books On Books Collection – Carol Cunningham

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Alphabet Alfresco (1985)

Alphabet Alfresco (1985)
Carol Cunningham
Casebound miniature, decorated cloth, colored doublures. H40 x W52 mm. 68 pages. Acquired from Lorson’s Books & Prints, 5 December 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Carol Cunningham’s Sunflower Press produced many gems like this. Founder of the Miniature Book Society in 1983, Cunningham also produced numerous oil paintings and prints, some of which can be found here.