Book Collecting – Page 5 – Green Chair Press Blog

Tunnel Books

Several years ago my friend Debbie gave me a copy of Tara Bryan’s tunnel book, World Without End (that’s it to the right). A tunnel or peephole book is a set of pages bound into accordions on two sides and viewed through a central opening. Scenery or shapes are cut out of the pages and then assembled in layers. Inspired by theatrical stage sets, this book form dates from the mid-eighteenth century and continues to be popular. I immediately deconstructed Tara’s book to figure out how she made it (very ingeniously with a single sheet of paper) and then wrote up instructions for a class I was teaching at SFCB.
For the Fall 2008 Ampersand, Debbie wrote a profile of Tara, and I thought I’d include those instructions in the issue as well. Then John Sullivan, who is the new president of PCBA (the member organization that publishes Ampersand), cut and scored sheets with a blank tunnel book on it, so members could easily make their own. You can buy a copy of the Fall Ampersand here.
Ed Hutchins’ article Exploring Tunnel Books includes a history of tunnel books and a photo gallery of example books. There are good discussions of what makes the structure a book, rather than a novelty piece, how various artists have adapted the form, and how one might incorporate text.
Book artist and teacher Carol Barton has been instrumental in popularizing tunnel books with book artists. You can see some of her early work, along with several other artists’ examples.
Maria Pisano’s The Four Elements Series are elegant miniature tunnel books (scroll down on the page to see them). There are good pictures of each book, allowing you to see inside as well as how she made the covers. There’s another tunnel book on that page too, called Tunnel Vision.
Peter & Donna Thomas have made a tunnel book inside a ukulele. They have more traditional tunnel books pictured here and here.

Who’s Got What?

I’ve sold many of my artist’s books by consignment because it’s been the most successful way to sell my more expensive books. When selling through a consiger, it’s often hard to keep track of who has bought copies of your books. Consigners don’t usually give you the names of private purchasers, which I understand, but I’d like to know which public libraries and museums have my books in their collections. I recently found out about WorldCat, a combined catalog of the Western world’s libraries and Artists Books Online (ABO), a project of the University of Virginia. I typed in my name as well as my press name into both catalogs, to see what would turn up. The best part was that my husband, who took the pictures for the book above (Saturday Afternoons, an out-of-print pop-up book I did about my husband’s cars and his car buddies), was quite impressed that he was listed as an author!

Obsessive Nature of Time

This week I started printing my 2008 calendar design. I’ve already printed my Christmas cards and some winter coasters. My obsessive pre-planning has the effect of making me feel as though I’ve skipped much of summer and fall and catapulted myself into winter!
Of course I’m not the only one who’s obsessive! Last year, Nikki Thompson of Deconstructed Artichoke Press made a bookwork for the PCBA Calendar Show called “A Contemplation of the Obsessive Nature of Time.” It’s 12 flipbooks, one for each month, based on prose writings by Julio Cortazar: “Preamble to the Instructions on How to Wind a Watch” and “Instructions on How to Wind a Watch.” She decided that the repetitive nature of a flipbook structure was the best for communicating obsessiveness and said, “originally I was thinking about using minutes or seconds in a year as the constraint for the number of flipbooks and the number of pages per flipbook, but practically speaking it was too obsessive, so I chose the twelve flipbooks, ranging from 28 to 31 pages.” I immediately bought a copy, not only because of the subject but it’s a wonderful way to think about the year rather than as structured set of days and weeks and months.
The images above are from the December flipbook. And below, my copy of her books spread out on my shelf. At the end of this month, Nikki is teaching a class in calendar making, “Handmade Calendars: From Concept to Completion,” at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Be sure to check it out!