These are all my posts about the Turkish Map Fold, in the order I wrote them. See this link for a summary of instructions on how to make the fold plus several variations and ways to use the fold in a book.
As I set up my table at the Pyramid Atlantic book fair last weekend, several people told me they had tried out the Turkish Map Fold instructions here on my blog. One woman showed me the book she’d made with the fold, using a letterpress & screen-printed map of artist book makers in the DC Metro Area. It’s for sale on the Pyramid Atlantic website.
This book, Threshold by Casey Gardner, is another of my growing examples of books using the Turkish Map Fold. It looks like she’s printed on both sides of the fold, and incorporated text on the sheet that holds the map fold. The book is letterpress printed, and revolves around a story inspired by Ovid’s tale of Daphne and Apollo in The Metamorphosis.
On her website, Casey also has a book inspired by a game she played with a friend that is like the prompt challenge I did earlier this year. Casey says:
…one day my friend Nance O’Banion and I decided to begin a game where we’d write a bunch of words down, then each time we saw each other, we’d choose one randomly. The next time we met, we’d give each other a completed project based on that word.
You can see the book she did in response to the word “ignite” here — click on the arrow keys above the first photo to see many more detailed images.
I liked the model I’ve been playing with recently and have decided to make an edition of that book. It’s a miniature — slightly under 3″x3″ — called “Summer in Vermont,” with some of my haiku and illustrations and a Turkish map fold at the end. I’m printing the drawings on my Epson ink jet, but will be letterpress printing the haiku from metal type (Bembo). It’ll come in a slip case — that’s my working model on the left, showing the book coming out of the slip case.
The next big decision is how many to make. Since I’m hand-setting the type it’ll be more difficult to increase the number in the edition once the type is broken down. Twenty-five seems to be a good number, but I’ll print enough for 30 in case something goes wrong!
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll report how the edition making is proceeding.
I’ve been wanting to incorporate the turkish map fold into one more book structure — how would I bind it into a book with a text block? The first book class I took, with Kumi Korf, made a book with a shadowbox at the end. I used what I learned in that class to make my book Haiku. So I went back to that book to see if it gave me any ideas for. I particularly liked that the last “page” of the book was related to the contents of the shadowbox. Unfortunately the spine construction wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. I made a few models and decided to use a spine that would accommodate the text block on the left side and the mapfold on the right. Here’s the model, so you can see the spine. On the left is a piece of folded cardstock that holds the mapfold — a picture of the bridge on the outside opens up to a photo of the inside of the bridge — see the second picture below.
I recently found another variation for making a book with the turkish map fold. This one is from Michelle Wilson. She’s made the fold (instructions here) and folded it in half, to form a spine, and then she’s sewn it into a folded piece of paper. This method lets you exploit the hidden folds. Wilson says ‘The text winds between the main pages and a set of “secret pages” between the folds, creating a narrative about what is seen and unseen, remembered and forgotten.’ One of the “secret pages” is shown in the second photo below.
Over the winter and spring, I’ve continued to play with a variation on the Turkish Map Fold. Many of my haiku are about my walks around town and my neighborhood, so for this one I designed a book that unfolds to reveal an imaginary map of my early morning ramblings, walking my (also imaginary) dog. Ten original haiku trace the path, narrating the journey. I’ve called it “I Started Early, Took the Dog…” See the pictures below. I’ve made an edition of 35 — available in my shop here. See all my posts on the Turkish Map Fold here.
