Spiralbet (1998)

Spiralbet (1998)
Amy Lapidow
Tunnel book. Cloth bound and lined archival box. Closed:H165 x W185 x D5 mm. Open: D220 Acquired from the artist, 9 September 2022.
Photo: James Prinz

This work was first spotted in the online catalogue for Abecedarium: An Exhibition of Alphabet Books (1998) from the Guild of Bookworkers. Being a small thumbnail on the second screen or page and accessed only by clicking on the artist’s name, its discovery was serendipitous. Its still being available was pure luck.

Photo: Books On Books Collection.

Photo: Amy Lapidow.

The structure and binding are the work of Amy Lapidow, who has taught bookbinding at the North Bennett Street School in Boston, MA. The airbrush coloring was executed by student Nancy Ames.

Photo: Books On Books Collection.

Other tunnel books with which compare and enjoy Lapidow’s are Borje Svensson & James Diaz’s Letters and Animals (1982), Karen Hanmer’s The Spectrum A-Z (2003) and Helen Malone & Jack Oudyn’s The Future of an Illusion (2017).

Along with Lapidow’s and Hanmer’s explorations of color and the alphabet, Jean Holabird’s Vladimir Nabokov: AlphaBet in Color (2005), Carol DuBosch’s Rainbow Alphabet Snowflake (2013) and Rebecca Bingham’s Defining the Rainbow (2018) offer a range of variations to compare and contrast. Andrew Morrison’s Chroma Numerica (2019) offers a similar exploration of colors but with numbers.

Given the effectiveness of Svensson and Diaz’s Letters alphabet book-in-a-box effort, it is surprising that they did not follow up the alphabetical theme from Animals, especially since animals have made up the most popular category of alphabet books for centuries. Another 24 or 25 books in boxes beckon. Alphabetical cubes of birds, cats, dogs and the zemmi! And what about the ampersand? And what different paper artistry might Diaz have performed if requested to fill out the series with further innovation? Consider Claire Van Vliet’s alphabetical Tumbling Blocks for Pris and Bruce (1996), Helen Hiebert’s Alpha Beta (2010) and Karen Hanmer’s The Spectrum A to Z.

Before its acquisition by Harpers in 1985, William Collins & Sons settled on the less risky venture of four books in boxes: Animals, Letters, Numbers and Colors. First with Elgin Davis Studios, James Diaz was the paper engineer behind all four and later joined David A. Carter (see his tribute to Bruno Munari here) to produce The Elements of Pop Up: A Pop Up Book for Aspiring Paper Engineers (1999), still used as a primary textbook.

Of course, B. S. Johnson and Marc Saporta pioneered boxes containing loose pages or leaves to be read in any order, but to find contemporary books in boxes where the box is not just a storage mechanism but functionally integrated, we have to look to Ed Hutchins, Sue Johnson and Hedi Kyle among others.

More celebrations of the alphabet and book as “total expansion of the letter” to come.

Books On Books

Curated by Robert Bolick

James Diaz

Books On Books Collection – Amy Lapidow

Spiralbet (1998)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Borje Svensson & James Diaz

Letters (1982)

Animals (1982)

Spiralbet (1998)

Further Reading

Like this:

Letters (1982)

Animals (1982)

Like this: