Origins of Ancient Greek Style Books
About 11 years ago I decided to train as a bookbinder at evening classes. I learnt how to make Ancient Greek Style books with wooden covers, much like the first books made by the ancient Greeks immediately following the Scroll format of reading and writing religious books and history books; almanacs and manuscripts.
They also featured vellum style paper and the ancient Greek headband. Endpapers were added by me later as I made this design my own using wheat paste glue; made from plain white baking flour and water heated on the hob, and colour was obtained from natural ephemeral products like beetroot juice, chamomile tea, blackberries, squid ink as I wanted to use what the ancient Greeks would have used had they produced decorative endpapers for these early books, and stay true to the ‘natural’ as much as possible as when these books were made things were so much more organic. Later, I substituted these natural pigments for acrylic paints. As I branched off increasingly into my own designs then multi-positional books came into being.
Multi Positional Display Books – Moving Books
I was a caregiver to two disabled siblings and looked after my mother as a child which had a profound impact on me. School was limited for me because of the care they required, and books and reading provided much-needed respite, solace, and knowledge.
The two combined in my head and stirred up a recipe in the design of multi-positional books; as I wanted to aid my disabled siblings to have more movement and the books were what I was denied at the time, so, a marriage was formed between movement and books resulting in these pieces that have up to 20 display positions each influenced also by the fact that I had to move my brother constantly during the day to avoid bed sores and to give him daily physiotherapy.
This recalls the artwork of Max Ernst [1891-1976] because when he was a child his sister Leoni was being born in the room next to his and as his mother screamed with labour pains his beloved pet bird was agitated and as his sister came into the World his bird died. As an adult artist Ernst could not separate birds and women in his paintings and the bird that frequented his work was a chimerical creature part bird part woman. I expect this is what I did with the denial of books in my childhood and trying to give movement to a severely disabled brother.
The hinging aspect of the book covers also represents how I felt, intricately linked to my brother in particular; he was 100% mentally and physically disabled and relied on me throughout the day and often at night, whereas, my disabled sister could walk at least, although not in a very steady way. It became almost impossible to know where my brother began and ended as an individual and I started as I had to be a part of his senses and try to guess what he may need at any given time as he could not speak to communicate either.
I also have produced many books that house the designs of my Box Sculpture Art as well as my plastic and textile botanical sculptures which I also execute. These works are also heavily influenced by my early experiences. These multi-positional display books often need practical rehearsal to remember all their possible positions. As if a sort of physiotherapy too that I once provided my brother.
I also produce many other styles of Artist’s Books like concertina books where the books bare heavy covers, and this helps expel all the air from the lungs of the pleats of the concertina folded pockets inside the covers and when open the pleated concertina pockets expand as they fill with air through minute air ventilators in the concertina’s structure. Often, I fill the inside of the concertina with aromatherapy oils so that when the book closes it creates the olfactory sense of the work; as I like to incorporate as many of our 5 senses in all my art pieces as I can.
Diptych & Triptych Books
My Multiple Positional Display Books feature 2 or 3 books hinged together, in a sort of “triple dos-à-dos” or “back-to-back” binding, Often, they incorporate one book supporting the weight of the other (like I did with my disabled brother) and are variable in their positions and manoeuvrability because I wanted to offer my disabled siblings the ability to move physically, and I express this by executing these multi manoeuvrable books.
Additionally, I wanted to help them cognitively and imagined them learning through play with these books as they made discoveries by experimenting with all the different possible display positions. Many of these manoeuvrable books were sadly made posthumously as my disabled brother passed away from his condition and the books became a tribute to his memory. I would one day like to exhibit them as a sign of respect for his life as I desperately longed for his physical and mental improvement, and to show that he would have used the books in a way that would have been accessible to him.
These books are interactive sculptures – I’m proud to showcase some of my Multiple positional Display Books, as well as other books I’ve made including the design journey of making these pieces of art.
I also produce folded book structural sculptures of which many will be part of the box sculpture interiors, and many are already in the Plastic/Textile/Book Folded Floral sculptures and I have started using the Fibonacci Sequence; a mathematical sequence first found by Leonardo Pisano Bigollo [1170-1250] where numbers are a sequence of whole numbers 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34……. This infinite method is where each term is the sum of the two preceding ones, starting from 0-1. It has also been termed ‘nature’s secret code’. We can spot this code in spiral patterns of sunflowers, daisies, cauliflowers seashells etc. I would like to use this counting method in book folding as experimentation to see what I come up with using this form of mathematics.
I fold the pages of a recycled book in this sequence, but each time I fold the following sum of pages, I make the fold overlap the previous sum of folded pages, so it looks cascaded and has a gradient appearance, for example, the previous two numbers of book-folds added together, let’s say 5+3= 8, so I fold 8 pages and let’s say it is a triangular fold, then 3+8= 11, so 11 folds will be triangular folds that are larger than the previous fold by about 2mm (this will vary). I continue this infinitely until I have no more pages left remaining in the book that I am folding or I decide to stop before the book pages run out.
I am a great believer that science and art are separate but simultaneously conjoined and completely overlapped, not only in mathematics but also in the experimental aspect of how materials are mixed. An example is, I sometimes do a painting or decorative endpapers for books using acrylic paints and wheat paste glue, when they dry fully, I give them a coat of neat PVA glue and then sprinkle white sand onto them to create a frosted effect when this dries and when I view the painting the white sand captures a shimmer and illumination; especially when the light bathes it and it looks almost 3D because the grain of each white sand is multi-faceted and this has a sort of Holographic effect similar to how cut-glass reflects the light and it lifts the image up from its 2D surface.