ABCing (2010)

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.

Presented by the publisher as a primer for designers and students, ABCing is also an artist’s book in its own right. Page after page, Colleen (Ellis) Comerford wields each alphabet character, the pages themselves, the shapes from the space around and within a letter, and bold colors alongside the most abstract concepts, their dictionary definitions and etymology like canvas, brush and paint, or block and chisel. She breaks off the negative space in and around a letter and resizes, reorients and recombines the pieces into an image that is a visual metaphor for the named concept beginning with the letter. Each spread is an epiphany.

Sometimes the image represents an object that begins with the same letter as the concept. Consider for example the letter “m” (for metaphor). The artist repurposes the four shapes around the character on the left into a figure on the right that suggests “m is for moo” (or a Highland “koo”) in the analogous way that “a figure of speech in which one term is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote”.

Sometimes the image enacts the concept, as with the letter “n” — appropriately so for the concept of negative space. Illustrating the “figure-ground relationship”, the large hump under the letter becomes the smallest of the three shapes and recedes into the background while the small triangle by the letter’s ear becomes the largest and foreground element of the image.

On more occasions, ABCing avails itself of the alphabet-art tradition of anthropomorphism. “Z for zeitgeist” is an almost Futurist reminder of how often artists have used the human body to form the letters of the alphabet. There’s a skateboarder, a clown, an oversized Sherlockian eye and magnifying glass, and an angry face made up of the bits from around the letter “t” for tone.

ABCing‘s letter “z”;
“Alfabeto figurato” (1632)
Giovanni Battista Braccelli Etching, Naples.
Love Letters: An Anthropomorphic Alphabet (2008)
Rowland Scherman
Casebound, doublures, perfect bound. H178 x W180 mm. 34 pages. Acquired from Rowland Scherman, 3 March 2023.
Photos of the book: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of Rowland Scherman.

Most often the image is oblique. For instance, in “g” for ground, we have a boat sailing along the edge of the flat, enlarged triangle, taken from the space just before the ear of the “g”. As a large background in contrast with the small figure of the sailboat, it does illustrate the concept, but the figure and shape also allude to the flat-earth beliefs buried in “<Old English grund, ‘foundation, ground, surface of the earth’ < Proto-Germanic grundus“.

Others are less oblique: for example, “i” for imagination with the shapes from the negative space forming a snippet of cinema film; “p” for Polaris, with one piece being the star and rest the sea and sailboat; “r” for rhythm with pieces forming a bass drum pedal; “v” for variety with a multi-flavored ice-cream cone; and “x” for x-height with a caliper.

The alphabet and abstraction are, of course, deeply connected. In function, the letters are abstract signs representing sounds. In pictographic origins, they are abstract signs representing objects whose names begin with that sound (A for aleph, “ox”). In composition, just a small combination of strokes are abstraction enough to identify the letters themselves. Here are Bruno Munari and Lisa McGarry presenting that latter point in two very different ways.

ABC con fantasia (2008)
Bruno Munari
Boxed set of shapes. H x W Acquired from Corraini Edizioni, 4 August 2020.
Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of Corraini Edizioni. © Bruno Munari. All rights reserved to Maurizio Corraini s.r.l.

Twenty-six/Fragments (2012)
Lisa McGarry
Single sheet, collage, meander cut and fold. Closed: 70 x 70 x D15 mm. Open: 490 x 490 mm. Acquired from the artist, 20 March 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.

ABCing, however, takes abstraction in a different direction — away from sounds and objects and toward ideas and concepts. The direction may be different, but the results are often like magnets pulling on works whose alphabet categories relate indirectly, subtly and delightfully to ABCing.

Consider this example in which the concept and object again start with the same letter: “h” (for harmony), where the bits of negative space construct a house or hearth.

It draws out the multifaceted subject of letters and architecture illustrated by Geofroy Tory’s Champ Fleury (1529/1927/1998), Antonio Basoli’s Alfabeto Pittorico (1839/1998), Giovanni Battista de Pian’s Alphabetto Pittoresque (1842).

Left to right: Tory/Rogers, Champ Fleury; Basoli, Alfabeto Pittorico; Battista de Pian, Alphabetto Pittoresque. Photos by Books On Books Collection.

Consider again the “m” for metaphor and moo. Animals are the most frequent category of alphabet books in children’s literature, and so while there are dozens of them in the Books On Books Collection, it is the yaks in Suse MacDonald’s Alphabatics (1986) and David McLimans’ Gone Wild (2016) that ABCing conjures up.

Alphabatics (1986)
Suse MacDonald
Paper on board, casebound sewn. H236 x 285 mm, 56 pages. Acquired from Book Depository, 10 September 2021.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Gone Wild: An Endangered Animal Alphabet (2016)
David McLimans
Casebound, illustrated paper over boards, illustrated doublures, sewn book block. Illustrated, debossed glossy paper dustjacket. H255 x W285 mm. 36 unnumbered pages. Acquired from Gargoyle Books, 25 August 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Consider again the “n” for negative space and its use of perspective to form its visual metaphor. Doesn’t it pull up Lisa Campbell Ernst’s The Turn Around, Upside Down Alphabet Book (2004), and Menena Cottin’s La Doble Historia de un Vaso de Leche (2019)?

The Turn Around, Upside Down Alphabet Book (2004)
Lisa Campbell Ernst
Casebound, colored doublures, sewn. H241 x W241 mm, 32 unnumbered pages. Acquired from Thrift Books, 5 November 2021.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

La Doble Historia de un Vaso de Leche (2019)
Menena Cottin
Casebound landscape, paper over boards, with orange-yellow doublures, sewn. H160 x W310 mm. 24 unnumbered pages. Acquired from the artist, 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Consider, too, the board book format of ABCing. ABCing underscores the crossover between concept and craft when the imagination draws on the “artistic toolkit of the book”. It might send the reader off to alphabet board books like Harold’s ABC (1963, 2015) by Crockett Johnson in the collection, but here are board books not for the children’s section.

Chroma Numerica (2019)
Andrew Morrison
Perfect bound cased in quarter-hinged paper-on-board binding. H143 x W145 mm, 60 pages, printed on one side. Edition of 30, of which this is #17. Acquired from the artist, 2 September 2021.
Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.

Sanctus Sonorensis (2009)
Philip Zimmermann
Perfect bound, self-covering board book, illustrated cover, gilt on top, bottom and fore edges. Gold-foiled title on the cover and spine. Four-color offset lithography. H273 x W208 x D35 mm. 90 pages. Edition of 1000. Acquired from Spaceheater Editions, 4 February 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

ABCing‘s abecedarian structure and its board book format underscore its intent in a wry manner. Introductory it may be, but its visual metaphors and use of negative space are subtle. Likewise, Chroma Numerica‘s counting book structure and board book format contrast with its Greco-Latinate title, limited print run and celebration of wood type printing, and the beatitudinal structure and religious gilding of the childhood book format of Sanctus Sonorensis heighten the biting condemnation in its message.

ABCing is more than “seeing the alphabet differently”. Like most effective artist’s books, it prods the reader/viewer into thinking about letter and image differently, the material aspects of the book differently — and looking for other artists’ books that take us further into reading and seeing differently.

Gone Wild (2016)

Gone Wild: An Endangered Animal Alphabet (2016)
David McLimans
Casebound, illustrated paper over boards, illustrated doublures, sewn book block. Illustrated, debossed glossy paper dustjacket. H255 x W285 mm. 36 unnumbered pages. Acquired from Gargoyle Books, 25 August 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

In the history of children’s books, the alphabet looms large, and among alphabet books, animal alphabets make up the largest category. But why animals?

For learning and teaching letters, they are easily recognized and mnemonically effective. Illustrators can wrap them around letters, make them twist themselves into letters or hide them behind letters. Designers can hide them on tabs behind letters, make them pop out, parade them across leporellos (accordion books), let them lurk in tunnel books or put them on a paper disk to appear and disappear in a volvelle’s window. Writers can weave stories with animals and letters, put animals and letters together in puns and surprising scenarios or use alliteration and rhyme with them to reinforce letter recognition and reading. For authors more paleographically and philosophically inclined, the answer to “Why animals?” might be sought in the origins of the alphabet’s first letter as James Rumford does in There’s a Monster in the Alphabet (2002) and Don Robb and Anne Smith do in Ox, House, Stick (2007).

A Methode or Comfortable Beginning for All Vnlearned Whereby They May Be Taught to Read English : In a Very Short Time Vvith Pleasure: So Profitable As Straunge Put in Light by I.h. Chester Heralt (1750)
John Hart
Image from Folger Shakespeare Library

Whatever the cause, ever since John Hart’s A Methode, or Comfortable Beginning for All Unlearned (1570), which appears to be the first example of teaching the English alphabet with illustrations, we have had an explosion of imagination and wit choosing, finding or making up animals, birds, fish, insects and reptiles with which to decorate the letters, to make from letters (or make letters with), to be disguised with abstractions or to be hidden, revealed or popped out from behind letters. Now, in reverse over four centuries later, the alphabet has been mustered for teaching the endangered state of those creatures.

While E.N. Ellis, Bert Kitchen, the team of Alan Robinson and Suzanne Moore all allot only one letter and the dodo to make the point, Dick King-Smith and Quentin Blake together devote almost all of their Alphabeasts (1990) to examples of extinction, as do Jerry Pallotta and Ralph Masiello in The Extinction Alphabet Book (1993).

Left to right: from E.N. Ellis’s An Alphabet; Bert Kitchen’s Animal Alphabet; Alan Robinson and Suzanne Moore’s A Fowl Alphabet.

Quentin Blake’s page-by-page visual narrative married to Dick King-Smith’s opening verses in Alphabeasts.

With Gone Wild, David McLimans adds a complex and subtle device to the explosion. The book is not so much about learning the alphabet with animals as learning about animals with the alphabet — or rather with “alphabetic art”. Wielding computer, pencil, pen, brush and India ink on bristol board, 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. Even the design of the traditional alphabet book subtly serves as a teaching tool about these animals. Notice how McLimans and John Candell, the book’s designer, turn the traditional presentation of uppercase and lowercase letters into a kind of running head that underscores the common and scientific names of each animal. Even the list of facts on each species — their habitats, geographic ranges, threats to survival and statuses — receives meaningful thematic design touches from the use of two-color printing — blood red and extinction black.

After the brief red-on-black thumbnails and descriptions following Grevy’s Zebra, McLimans provides further reading (online and in print). You have to go beyond a quick dive into the address he provides for the IUCN to find the Red List (see address above). There you will learn how up to the minute this book was in 2016 — and, unfortunately, still is.

Books On Books

Curated by Robert Bolick

David McLimans

Books On Books Collection – Colleen (Ellis) Comerford

ABCing (2010)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – David McLimans

Gone Wild (2016)

Further Reading