A Long Piece of String (2010 [1963])
William Wondriska
Casebound, illustrated paper over boards, illustrated pasteboards. H185 x W290 mm. [44] pages. Acquired from Thrift Books, 25 May 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
From the first wordless illustration onwards in Kitty Crowther’s Va faire un tour, you don’t have to know French to know that the book’s title means imperatively “take a walk” — or maybe even “take a hike” — in English. There is no mistaking the tone of Maman’s character nor the reaction of her little one stomping along, circling the globe, even under bodies of water, oblivious to characteristic scenery and inhabitants.
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The Red Thread (1988)
Tord Nygren
Hardback, casebound, sewn. H305 x W 215 mm. [30] including pastedowns. Acquired from Better World Books, April 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
The Swedish expression “den röda tråden” translates best as “the common thread”, the thing that links together otherwise disparate things and experiences. The literal translation, however, works best for Tord Nygren’s Den Röda Tråden (1987), leaving us to follow the red thread that the clown offers to the children on the front cover. The thread wraps around to the pastedown and across the fly leaf chased by the runaway carousel horse …
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Restless (2020)
Jacobus Oudyn
Loose sheets from plastic comb bound notebook in a clamshell box covered in Japanese paper. Box: H240 x W170 x D40 mm. 60 pages. Unique. Acquired from the artist, 2 January 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of Jacobus Oudyn.
Restless consists of a continuous drawing with graphite and collage across sixty loose sheets of 120gsm cartridge paper removed from a plastic comb bound notebook. Like Oudyn’s earlier work Out of Breath (2019), meant to represent the medical conditions of mesothelioma and black lung, Restless aims to evoke chronic restless leg syndrome.
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Transformations I: 1973-74 (1977)
Ellen Lanyon
Leporello with board covers. 174 x 115 mm. [24] pages. Acquired from Specific Object, February 2024.
© The Ellen Lanyon Estate, courtesy GRAY, Chicago/New York.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of artist’s estate.
Transformations is a book as drawing. Across 24 panels of this accordion-fold book, Ellen Lanyon develops a surreal graphical fantasia from a single image.
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