Barbara Hocker

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 – 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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