Pliplop (2020) iOiOStudio Trifold cover, side-by-side leoporellos. H120 x W105 (closed), W895 mm (open). 16 half-panels, 1 full center panel. Acquired from StudioiOiO, 6 November 2025. Photos: Books On Books Collection.d from StudioiOiO, 6 November 2025. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Based in Montélimar, France, and Seoul, South Korea, iOiO Studio produced this ingenious micro-edition leporello that invites its audience to behold and play. The folds and registration of images allow the viewer to find and create new shapes and color combinations. Its shapes and colors might remind viewers of Heinz Edelmann’s art for The Yellow Submarine. In its appeal to the child in the adult, it will remind book art enthusiasts of the works of Katsumi Komagata, Warja Lavater, Bruno Munari, and Peter and Donna Thomas. In its sophistication, it might remind them of the contributions to LL’Éditions leporello series. Many other connections can be found in Stephen Perkins site Accordion Publications, where Pliplop first came to my attention.
Two works that explore the curious but natural connection between children’s books and artists’ books are Johanna Drucker’s contribution to The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks and Sandra Beckett’s Crossover Picturebooks.
Drucker, Johanna. 2017. “Artists’ Books and Picture Books: Generative Dialogues” in The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks, edited by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, Taylor & Francis Group..
Enthusiasts and collectors of artists’ books should congratulate LL’Editions (Göteborg, Sweden) on its leporello series not only for the artists enlisted so far but for the constraint to inspire them. Critics of book art have opined that book artists turned to the accordion structure in the 20th century for more freedom with visual images and another tool with which to question the notion of the book as book. LL’Editions has challenged its invited artists with a constraint: a fixed-format leporello of ten panels, nine folds and always H140 x W100 mm (closed). The works are printed on Mohawk Superfine Eggshell paper. Housed in a custom box with the title hot foiled both on its front and spine, each volume in the series is limited to 250 numbered copies.
The real pleasure in each work and across the series is how each artist handles the shape to make it dance to a personal style or stamp. With each new addition — brick by brick — LL’Editions is building a monument to book art’s most common structure.
Leporello #12 (2025)
Leporello #12 (2025) Endre Tót Box: 148×191×23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed); W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #70. Acquired from LL’Editions, 28 August 2025. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.
Bespoke Eska Board 1260 G/M2, Insert: F-Flute Black 500 G/M2, Hot-foiled title on front and spine. Mohawk Superfine Eggshell Ultrawhite 175 gsm.
Endre Tót has worked with a wide range of media: telegrams, postcards, posters, actions, and artist’s books. This one self-reflexively celebrates his signature gladness statements “We are glad if we are happy”, “I am glad that I have stood here”, “I’m glad that I can write one sentence after another”, “We are glad if we can demonstrate” and so on.
I am glad to have Endre Tót’s work in the Books On Books Collection.
Leporello #11 (2024)
Leporello #11(2024) Alejandro Cesarco Box: H191 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed). W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #229. Acquired from LL’Editions, 14 November 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.
These are the titles and durations of the songs making up The Cure’s 1989 album. With each song on its own panel, Cesarco (b. 1975) seems to have created a photo album to remind himself of his youth. Given his artworks referencing/co-opting/implicating/appropriating John Baldessari, Marcel Broodthaers, Félix Gonzáles-Torres, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha, and other book artists, the less-than-fans of The Cure may wonder if Cesarco is deliberately wrong-footing their expectations for his tackling the book artist’s platform. If you are one of them, consider that your horizons have been widened and that The Ramones (An Autobiography) (2008) — his list in chronological order of every Ramones song that begins with the pronoun “I” — does not neatly divide by 10.
Leporello #10 (2024)
Leporello #10 (2024) Kay Rosen Box: H191 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed). W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #116. Acquired from LL’Editions, 14 November 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.
There’s a lengthy and excellent essay entitle “The Gravity of Language” about Rosen’s work in Osmos Magazine (Winter 2019) by Stephanie Cristello. In it, she writes:
You will notice, by now, that the works discussed here are united by their allusions to the motions of up and down. Does this seem arbitrary to you? Or strike you as the imposition of a rule-based physics upon an artistic practice whose oeuvre certainly contains variances, divergences, and oddities–cut out for the purpose of being explored through a particular force?Perhaps. (Cristello, 2019)
Somehow this more recent artist’s book seems to confirm and repudiate the critic’s approach. As if to say, “Yes, I’m stuck in the muck despite my variances, divergences and oddities”, or “No, ducky, there’s no gravitas or gravity here”. Or perhaps it’s Rosen’s visual way of using permutations on language (starting with a common expression) to poke fun at LL’Editions’ constraint: “So you want to confine me like a duck in the muck? Well, quack, the joke’s on you”.
Leporello #9 (2024)
Leporello #9 (2024) Pieter Laurens Mol Box: H191 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed). W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #111. Acquired from LL’Editions, 14 November 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.
How many artists before and after Marcel Duchamp’s Prière de Toucher (1947) have played this joke in an artist’s book? Where Duchamp’s displayed work played against the usual museum injunction, Pol’s embraces and wrong-foots it with blind embossing.
Leporello #8 (2022)
Leporello #8 (2022) Jonathan Monk Box: H191 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed). W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #175. Acquired from LL’Editions, 14 November 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.
It helps to know or remember that in 2002, Jonathan Monk published None of the buildings on Sunset Strip with Revolver. Here, he has used his iPhone in panoramic mode to appropriate again Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966). But when Monk’s leporello is turned over, notice that this side of the Strip has been truncated. Monk’s thoughts on appropriation and self-reflexivity can also be enjoyed in the three-handed interview Books on Books (2011) with Jérôme Saint-Loubert Bié and Yann Sérandour.
Leporello #7 (2022)
Leporello #7 (2022) Karl Holmqvist Box: H191 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed). W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #110. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.
Here’s one to add to Bruno Munari‘s collection of squares, circles, and triangles. While the yoga may also remind you of Ric Haynes‘s Aquatic Yoga with Dangerous Foods (1984), this leporello is a welcome opportunity to experience this Swedish artist’s ability to weld language and shapes together in perceptive and humorous (and sometimes acerbic) ways. Galerie Neu in Berlin has been astute enough to hold three solo exhibitions for Holmqvist since 2013; their display of his works here provides views of his several sculptures that chime with Leporello #7.
Leporello #6 (2022)
Leporello #6 (2022) Maurizio Nannucci Box: H185 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H143 x W90 mm (closed). W900 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #106. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.
It’s hard to believe that Leporello #6 may be one of only three accordion books produced by this prolific and inventive artist associated with Fluxus. The other two are Sessanta Verdi Naturali (Sixty Natural Greens)(1977) and Up Above the Wor(l)d/A Guide for Aliens (1981). In Leporello #6, he has made the accordion structure, panel layout, and language reinforce one another simultaneously to create an ouroboros artwork.
Leporello #5 (2022)
Leporello #5(2022) Shannon Ebner Box: H185 x W148 x D 23 mm. Leporello: H143 x W90 mm (closed). W900 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #132. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.
Since her participation in MoMA’s Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language in 2012, Shannon Ebner has been a book artist to watch for bringing the alphabet and the artist’s book together.
Her Strike (2014) concretely rewarded the alert. The textures of melting ice in Leporello #05 and concrete blocks in Strike seem to leap off the letters and paper. From the LL’Editions’ description of Leporello #05:
Ebner has selected specific materials based on their self-reflexive relationship to the subject of the writing itself. Each photographic typeface is in essence a material response to the various cultural conditions and societal pressures at hand. For Ebner’s leporello, the meteorological term RIME ICE is its single subject, though the phenomenon itself falls into two categories, soft or hard rime. In either case it is rime ice that forms when liquid droplets comprised of supercooled water freeze onto surfaces. RIME ICE is an outtake from Ebner’s recent exhibition FRET SCAPES (2022). FRET is acronym for the Forecast Reference Evapotranspiration Report, a report that is generated by climate scientists to measure the rate at which water that falls to the ground will evaporate to the sky.
Leporello #04 (2021)
Leporello #04 (2021) Ryan Gander Box: H191 × W148 x D23 mm. Leporello: H142 x W99 mm (closed), W990 mm (open). 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #32. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.
Ryan Gander has repurposed his installation Staccato Reflections (2017-20) to create Leporello #04. The tiny text originates from the artist’s notebook. In Staccato Reflections, it appears in a normal-sized font in business-directory format on a freestanding reflective screen. Gander describes the installation this way in an interview in Art in America:
Staccato Reflections is based on the idea of the self in culture, the obsession with the me and the selfie and the narcissist wand. The surface is mirrored, so as you read the words, you see yourself. The work has devices in it that are self-referential. It asks you to touch the screen, and then says “don’t touch the screen.” So it seems like it is responding to you, but it’s not.” (Fullerton, 107)
With its miniscule print requiring the enclosed rectangular plastic magnifying glass, and with its overprint in glow-in-the-dark ink of a waxing full moon, Leporello #04 marks quite a departure from the installation.
Leporello #03 (2021)
Leporello #03 (2021) Fiona Banner Box housing leporello. Box: H185 xW140 xD25 mm. Leporello: H140 x W100 mm. 10 panels. Numbered edition of 250, of which this #42. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.
With Leporello #03, Fiona Banner repurposes the previously repurposed conceptual artwork Bad Review. It has appeared as a C-typeprint with the words overlaid on a rearview mirror and as a sculpture. To reproduce the two words, Banner uses found letters photographed held up by hand and badly positioned. Is it serendipity or cheeky genius that, like readymades, the nine letters and space of Banner’s conceptual artwork fit the ten panels imposed by LL’Editions to give us another re-view?
Leporello #02 (2021)
Leporello #02(2021) Micah Lexier Box housing leporello. Box: H185 xW140 xD25 mm. Leporello: H140 x W100 mm. 10 panels. Edition of 250, of which this #171. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.
Publisher’s description: A number of years ago Micah Lexier purchased a small paperback publication about the game of dominoes. The very end of the book consisted of a series of pages that reproduced a complete set of twenty-eight domino tiles. The images were printed on right-hand pages, four to a page, while the left-hand pages were blank. The idea was that you were supposed to cut these images out of the book and glue them to empty matchboxes to create your own do-it-yourself set. That sequence of pages, combined with the quality of their reproductions, was the inspiration for Lexier’s leporello. To that, he added two favourite print techniques – perforations and die-cut holes – to create a set of ten domino tiles. Lexier chose the denomination of each tile and its order in the leporello so that none of the thirty-four die-cut holes line up with each other, allowing each hole to be misread as a printed white domino dot.
If you stand Leporello #02 on its edge on a table and then lean forward to view the panels at eye level, the domino images seem to have grown into oversized hangings on gallery walls. You can see some of the die-cut holes if you look closely at the lower right corner below.
It’s a peculiar sensation, but it echoes Lexier’s website, which highlights mostly installations and large-scale works. Even more so it echoes Robert Birch Gallery in Toronto, which emphasizes his large wall displays. On both sites, Lexier’s play with patterns, shapes, tiles, and contrasts of black and white stands out. Although it’s not clear from those current sites, he has many book-related works. In the ’90s, he produced book sculptures in which each spine in a stack of books would have part of a life-size photo of a human subject printed on it. Properly stacked, the books display the human figure.
As can be seen in Leporello #02 and other works on display in the CCCA Canadian Art Database Project, Lexier likes to work with found objects. As can be seen in the book sculptures above and in the Database Project, Lexier’s art also reflects on relationships and community. Leporello #02 neatly and abstractly brings these two themes together with the found dominoes game book and the game’s communal roots.
Leporello #01 (2021)
Leporello #01 (2021) Heimo Zobernig Box housing leporello. Box: H185 xW140 xD25 mm. Leporello: H140 x W100 mm. 10 panels. Edition of 250, unnumbered. Acquired from Unoriginal Sins, 14 November 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of LL’Editions.
If you extend Leporello #01 fully, you are likely at first glance to project onto it the common expression “this and that”, but thwarted, you then start looking for another phrase comprised of “His”, “IS”, “And”, but you run into “Ew” or “nEw”, which throws you into renewed pattern-seeking behavior. Should you count the “this’s” and “and’s” in each row? Maybe there’s something in the pattern of lowercasing and uppercasing? Is there anything to the fact that the word “new” never begins with an uppercase N, or that it occurs only twice? Maybe you should read the rows aloud? With that, you may remember that, in earliest writings, words were not spaced and mixed majuscule and miniscule didn’t come along until later. Now you see how the folds are the primary means of separating the words in this book. This becomes clearer if you read the book panel by panel, or page by page codex-style. But now there are other possible patterns: does the book begin with “thIs, This, thIS” and proceed to “tHis, nEw, thIS”, and so on?
Somehow the acronym “WYSIWYG” — what you see is what you get — pops to mind, but Leporello #01 seems also a case of “WYGIWYS” — what you get is what you see. Fully extended or panel by panel, Leporello #01 offers more to see than a glance will get you.
Leporello #01 continues Zobernig’s love affair with Helvetica, which is also on display in Farben Alphabet (2018) and CMYK (2013), also in the Books On Books Collection.
Fullerton, Elizabeth. 28 April 2017. “In the Studio: Ryan Gander“. Art in America. Accessed 7 November 2025.
Hubert, Renée Riese, and Judd David Hubert. 1999. The Cutting Edge of Reading : Artists’ Books. New York City: Granary Books. See chapter 6, “Variations on the Accordion”, pp. 97-122.
Knot theory seems to be having a moment this year. In February 2025, there was the First International On-line Knot Theory Congress. Not to forget the regularly recurring Swiss Knots Conference (held in Geneva in June) and the 11th Sino-Russian Conference on Knot Theory (held in Suzhou, China in June-July). Or the “Danceability of Twisted Virtual Knots” produced by Nancy Scherich and danced by Sol Addison and Lila Snodgrass at the Math-Arts Conference in Eindhoven in July. And then in September the Scientific American and online media picked up two discoveries in knot theory — one by Mark Brittenham and Susan Hermiller and another by Dror Bar-Natan and Roland van der Veen.
These are Bruno Munari’s words that I share. I play and I have fun with my papers and my colours, but it is a job and a job, even if enjoyable, is a serious thing. My notes on image diaries are serious. A collection of thoughts translated into images, that are daily, just like a diary, “annotated” on nearly three hundred pages. I use the stencil technique with a monochromatic press, an imaginary thread connects them and creates a long history that develops, touching on events that have hit me in a particular way. It is my imaginary world, but at the same time, very real.Paper, card, fabric, needle, thread, colours and gouges are the materials that allow me to work and to leave my fantasy and creativity free. I have one very small study, but it is sufficient. It is welcoming, full of books, with a great ceiling window, three tables, two chalcographic presses and one press. When I am sitting in my workplace, I manage to isolate myself in my world. I can stay seated for hours without the passing time weighing on me, making me happy with this choice of life. — Eleonora Cumer
libro catalogo con interventi manuale (2019)
libro catalogo con interventi manuale / “book catalogue with manual interventions” (2019) Eleonora Cumer Sewn booklet, various papers including photographic, gold leaf, thread, mesh, string, wax. H200 x W220 (variable) mm. [16] pages. Unique. Acquired from the artist,. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Many catalogues of individual artist’s books aim to be works of art themselves. Some attempt this with fine press production and limiting the edition, which sometimes succeeds. Some embody the very material and techniques that the artist used to create the items represented in their pages. Eleonora Cumer’s libro catalogo con interventi manuale / “book catalogue with manual interventions” (2019) is an extreme and stunning example of the latter. It is extreme because it is unique, not a limited edition. It lacks any identifying captions or list of works (the captions below appear only as a convenience for this entry in the Books On Books Collection). Libro catalogo con interventi manuale stands on its own as a stunning work of book art.
As the richly textured and gold-leafed cover turns, notice how Cumer presents the image of the catalogue’s first work: Parole non dette, frasi in sospeso / “Unspoken words, unfinished sentences” (2018). Split and pasted on two sides of the first folio, the glossy photograph of Parole non dette reunites with precise registration in the center of the folded folio.
When the right half of Parole non dette turns, the second work — controcorrente /”against the current” (2010) — comes into view.
Although pasted on one side of the folio, the photograph of controcorrente splits in two at the fold, the left side and right side precisely registered with one another on either side of the fold. This is subtle. First an image reunited and aligned by virtue of cut and fold, then second an image separated but aligned by virtue of cut and fold. We may be long used to how juxtaposition works artistically on the flat surface of collage or the multiple surfaces of assemblage. Cumer teaches this afresh with the flat and multiple surfaces of book structure as well as with the materials and techniques of bookmaking.
The next three works appear in a fold-out insert attached to the stub of a textured folio that also supports a brown paper folio following the insert. The colorful città / “city” (2018) reflects how Cumer’s palette and sculptural repertoire extends beyond the black and white leporello of controcorrente. The threads sewn in parallel over the photograph of città not only reflect another part of Cumer’s material repertoire, they also enact another part of her sculptural repertoire in the way they work with, in, and across the photographs and folios.
When the image of città / “city” folds out to the right, photographs of two more works appear: desiderio di … arte / “desire for … art” (2012) and illusione – delusione / “illusion – delusion” (2012). The image of desiderio highlights Cumer’s use of the flag book structure, although there is structurally much more to that work’s composition. The parallel threads that extended over the photo of cittá on the other side of the fold-out now pierce the photograph of illusione – delusione.
The next work to appear — il libro segreto /”the secret book” (2018) — carries on with the intervention and penetration by thread. The patterns formed by the thread reflect and extend those which can be seen in the photograph of il libro segreto. Leaping out of the photograph and penetrating the supporting brown paper folio, the thread introduces a new motif that will recur in just a few more pages.
The spread presenting the next work — fili intrecciati / “twisted threads” (2018) — reverts to the split aligned photo as used with controcorrente, but here the division comes at the center of the double-page spread. Off to the left side, the abstract figure in stitched thread echoes the technique used in fili intrecciati itself and starts another recurring motif in the catalogue.
No intervention occurs in the photograph of cancellazioni e riscruttare / “cancellations and rewritings” (2018). No cuts, no folds, no threads, but on the facing verso page, Cumer brings to life one of the cancelled/rewritten objects that can be seen in the photograph. Just as in fili intrecciati, the thread-bound bundle of strips of cut text has leapt from two dimensions to three dimensions, highlighting again how Cumer uses the flat and multiple surfaces of book structure as well as the materials and techniques of bookmaking to re-teach us how juxtaposition works artistically on the flat surface of collage and the multiple surfaces of assemblage.
Following but elaborating on the previous spreads’ motif of juxtaposing an extract of the work with a photograph of the work, Cumer places a red-threaded square of tartalan across from the cut and misaligned photograph of la poesia dell’universo / “the poetry of the universe” (2018). The cut photograph is split by a red stitch that divides in two itself.
Here is where the variation on the two dimensional becoming three dimensional introduced by il segreto libro recurs. Defying the gutter’s separation of the tartalan sample from the whole work and the severing of the photo on the recto page, threads from the sample cross the gutter, fall across one half of the photograph, and link up with the severing stitch. The thicker thread of the severing stitch passes under the other half of the photograph to exit from it on the right and fall across the image of red threads similarly exiting the work itself. The ways in which this double-page spread speaks to the self-reflexive nature of book art and the paradoxical relationship of art to what it re-presents are remarkable.
The final work in the catalogue — visioni urbani / “urban visions”(2015) — resides in the Books On Books Collection. More about it can be found here. Threads do not make an appearance in visioni urbani, but their triangular appearance here does reflect on urbanivisioni. If the space to the left of the red stitching can be counted as a page, this is a “three-page” spread echoing the three-way split of the photo of the work, which echoes the tripartite physical structure of the work itself.
In the colophons of several earlier works, Cumer has drawn attention to this practice in libro catalogo of recycling her works. She labels them as part of projects “born of work with old books”, “born from her artist’s books”, and “born of her work with old theater posters”. Three of them are explored below, and three others can be found in a previous entry on her work.
PRESENTE/OTASSA (2015)
PRESENTE/OTASSA / “Present / Tax” (2015) Eleonora Cumer Sewn booklet. H287 x W204 mm. [8] including cover. Edition of 50, of which this is #19. Acquired from the artist, . Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Whether read as otassa presente or presente otassa, the translation of this sewn booklet’s title comes out the same: a present tax. The phrase in the background — usa e getta — stamped over ghosted images of cutout book pages means “disposable” and is used as the title of a 2014 work. The ghosted book pages come from the Italian edition of Mario Puzo’s last novel Fools Die, a Hollywood/Wall Street potboiler. The front cover’s sealed plastic envelope containing cut-up sewing patterns, buttons, thread and an old photograph of a little girl wearing a knit shawl and sitting in a white wicker chair makes the intriguing juxtapositions only more so. What do these collaged and assembled elements have to do with one another?
Some clarity dawns with phrases on the interior pages: gli anni passano (“years go by”), i ricordi riaffiorano (“memories come back”), and nitide immagini del passato (“clear images of the past). “Disposable” alludes not only to the novel whose pages wallpaper the cover and interior pages but also to Cumer’s work of the preceding year — USA E GETTA (2014), a series of unique altered books. The series is the source of the images inside PRESENTE/OTASSA. Each shows a hollowed-out book with an object held in place between clear plates — a picture frame (empty except for the reflection of the foreground — the rest of the work it comes from), a stuffed toy, and a broken dress-up doll. Things of the past that in general are disposable (like sewing patterns no longer needed or broken dolls) nevertheless come back as clear images: a tax on the present.
radici/ in memoria dei miei genitori (2015)
radici/ in memoria dei miei genitori / “roots/ in memory of my parents” (2015) Eleonora Cumer Sewn booklet with stitching. H287 x W206 mm. [8] pages. Edition of 50, of which this is #11. Acquired from the artist, . Photos: Books On Books Collection.
The theme of memory continues in radici/ in memoria dei miei genitori / “roots/ in memory of my parents” (2015) but perhaps more poignantly than in presente/otassa. Drawing on the previous works moltitudine e solitudine/ “multitude and solitude” (2013) and no time no space (2015), the booklet also evokes Cumer’s passion for textile and fabric art. The small image of a sewing box in the lower left hand corner of the central spread may speak to a parental source of that passion, but the words on the other spreads — recise and solitudine e un grande dolore (“severed or sever or cut” and “loneliness and a great sorrow”) — turn that central spread into a collage of loss almost more so than a collection of memories. It is one of the more somber works by Cumer in the Books On Books Collection.
immagini (2015)
immagini / ‘“images” (2015) Eleonora Cumer Sewn booklet with stitching on the last page. H287 x W206 mm. [8] pages. Edition of 50, of which this is #20. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
The overlaid phrases immagini ritagliate, immagini scomposte, and immagini cucite can be translated as “cut out images”, “distorted images”, and “stitched images”, respectively. On the cover of the unreadable book displayed, the words FINZIONE / “fiction” and REALTÁ / “reality” are spelled in reverse. As in libro catalogo, there is self-reflexivity at play here. Cumer plays with the word ritagliate by printing ri in black and tagliate in white, creating two verbs — ritagliate (“cut out”) and tagliate (“cut”), which apply to the word itself, the technique in the poster displayed, and the fragment of it blown up on the double-page spread. By blurring the image on the recto page of the second double-page spread, she makes the spread play out the meaning of scomposte — “distorted”. And in the third spread, she playfully stitches over the word cucite — “stitched” — which comments not only on the word but also on the stitched unreadable book on the verso page.
*Giocare è una cosa seria! I bambini di oggi sono gli adulti di domani aiutiamoli a crescere liberi da stereotipi aiutiamoli a sviluppare tutti i sensi aiutiamoli a diventare più sensibili. Un bambino creativo è un bambino felice!
“Playing is a thing! Today’s children are tomorrow’s adults. Let’s help them grow up free from stereotypes. Let’s help them develop all their senses. Let’s help them become more sensitive. A creative child is a happy child!” Bruno Munari, on occasion of 1986
Bruno Munari, 1986, on occasion of a Children’s Workshop Laboratory, prompted by a series of seminars promoted in 1977 by Franco Russoli, Superintendent of the Pinacoteca di Brera.
B is for Box (2014) David A. Carter Pop-up book, printed paper over boards. H187 x W184 x D28 mm. [14] pages. Acquired from Type Punch Matrix, 17 September 2024. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
“The Happy Little Yellow Box” was first introduced in a pop-up book of opposites by that name in 2012. For the Books On Books Collection, the box’s return in this pop-up alphabet makes it the one to add to all the other abecedaries here. The box is also a happy reminder of the items under Further Reading (below).
Le sculture da viaggio di Munari (2019)
Carter’s Le sculture da viaggio di Munari brings the spirit of Munari’s “travel sculptures” into the collection. His homage carries the blessing of Corraini Edizioni, further justifying its inclusion.
Travel sculptures started off as small sculptures (some even pocket-sized) to carry with you, so you could take part of your own culture to an anonymous hotel room. Later they were turned into ‘travel sculptures’, five or six metres tall and made of steel. One of these was seen for a few months in Cesenatico, another one in Naples. Others are sleeping among huge trees in the Alto Adige region.’ This is how Italian designer Bruno Munari (1907-1998) described his ‘travel sculptures’, which in turn inspired American illustrator and designer David A. Carter for this pop-up book. –Corraini Edizioni website. Accessed 3 August 2021.
Munari’s travel sculptures also recall works in the collection like Cumer’s scultura da viaggio dipinta n.2(2017), Komagata’s「Ichigu」(2015) and, albeit less portable, Ioana Stoian’s Nous Sommes (2015).
Rubin, Ellen. 2019. Ellen Rubin – The Popuplady. For her definition of the “spider web” form of pop up (Within a circle, a spiral is cut either by hand or laser. A ribbon or pull is attached to the center area. When pulled up, a ‘spider web’ pop-up is created.), Rubin illustrates it with an example from Carter.
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.
ABCing: Seeing the Alphabet Differently Colleen (Ellis) Comerford (2010) Board book, illustrated paper-on-board cover. H160 x W160 mm. 66 pages. Acquired from Powell’s Bookstore, 29 June 2023. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.
This is the rare first edition as published by the late Jan Middendorp through his Druk Editions. It bears all the hallmarks of his eye for design — the black coated wired binding, the heavy embossed card cover, the use of color to underscore the text’s theme, the embedded booklet — all nevertheless centering and providing a platform for the art and design of Clotilde Olyff.
Winter (2019) Ianna Andréadis Softbound with a waxed thread loop. H210 x W150 mm. 48 pages. Acquired from Happy Babies, 30 July 2023. Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.
The language of the book is one we learn well before we learn to read. It has many rules and parts. One part is the single page, and one of its rules is to turn it. Another of its rules is that the page behind may affect the page before. Another part of book language is the double-page spread. One of its rules is that facing pages may affect one another and that the space between them might disappear. As with any native language, we absorb its rules and parts and use them without thinking about them. Ianna Andréadis’ Winter revels in the language of the book and invites us to page through a winter wood and confusing thicket to begin learning again what we absorbed so long ago.
Like our earliest children’s books, Winter‘s only word is its title. Inviting touch, its front cover reproduces the main image of the title page but with debossing, and the book paper that follows is heavy and translucent.
With a turn of the title page, the bird is behind us, and the branches and trunks obscured by the title page’s “winter fog” loom large in black with the woods beyond appearing through the fog continued with the translucent paper.
As we move further into the woods, we look down on a bush or small tree weighted with snow whose trunk and branches sink into the snow beneath. Having passed it, we find a stand of four saplings and the one furthest from us also sunk in snow.
But now look up. The tangle of black branches and the winter fog barely hide the broken limbs of the tree just behind.
Several more pages of thicket and fog come before we reach the center of the book. There the imposition imposes its mechanics. The two facing pages both bear black ink, and the viewer may wonder whether these are birchtree trunks or black trunks with footsteps and branches or clumps of tree fall in the snow-covered ground between them.
Whatever that view is, the shift in inking according to the imposition envelops us in a winter fog on the following double-page spread.
Andréadis and her imposition, however, will lead us out of the fog and thicket, and the “lightening sky” over the next several pages encourages us to look up and find another bird perched above.
After several more pages and perhaps too tired to keep looking up, our eyes turn back to the tree trunks and branches sunk in snow, until at the end, we can finally look back up, turn around and see the clear fork of a trunk behind which the wood has disappeared again in winter fog.
And if at the end, prompted by the feel of the back cover and perhaps childhood memories of first books to press the covers flat, we’ll find we have come full circle. The next-to-last page’s forking tree trunk now appears debossed on the back cover matched to its other half and the bird on the front cover. Let’s read it again!
Andréadis’ Winter is now scarce, but through the link behind the title, you might be able to locate an institution with it near you. To enjoy more of the artist’s work, several of her illustrations of others’ books are available in libraries and the used-book market. One such book is Le papillon et la lumière by Patrick Chamoiseau, which deserves publication in translation not only for its charming story but for greater access to Andréadis’ artwork.
For another means of re-experiencing the first encounter with the language of the book, try Bruno Munari’s I Prelibri, first published in 1980 and still available in a second edition from Corraini.
Further Reading
Andréadis, Ianna. 2019. Winter. Tokyo: One Stroke.
From children’s picture book to artist’s book and back, certain techniques and tropes with the alphabet recur. Finding an image in a letter or making an image from a letter may be the oldest, not surprising given the pictorial origins of almost all writing systems. Lisa Campbell Ernst freshened this approach with a structural twist that does not rely on pop-ups, flaps, pull-tabs, a volvelle, accordion tunnel or any of the other moving part standbys of children’s books. Rather the whole book moves — as its title suggests.
Two non-alphabetic predecessors to this book are Katsumi Komagata’s Walk & Look and Go Around (1992). Ernst’s inventiveness with foreground, background and negative space holds its own in the illustrious company of illustrators, designers and artists below under Further Reading.
Books On Books 