I’ve been experimenting with and attempting to master the cutting plotter I got a few months ago. Using it, I’ve made a new miniature book called P&P — it’s Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in a very abridged form, with 9 pop-ups. See the spread below, and all the spreads here.
To complement my other season-themed miniature books, I’ve just completed one for fall. I had sketched out a design earlier this summer, but then the leaves on the maple tree outside my studio started turning a pinkish-orange, inspiring me to completely rethink my original plans. The “secret” at the end of this one is a shadow box. Here’s one spread and you can see all 9 spreads here.
I have a table at the Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Fair in Silver Springs, MD this coming weekend (Sat Nov 17, 1-6pm and Sun Nov 18, 1-5pm). Please do stop by if you’re in the area. Information about location and the rest of the event schedule is here.
For my latest miniature book, I wanted to have a shadowbox at the end. To match the size of the “secrets” at the end of my other miniature season-themed books, it needed to be 3/16″ deep, 2-3/4″ square and I would have to be able to successfully make 20 or so of them.
I tried cutting the frame out of foam core first, but getting a good cut wasn’t really possible, the cut edges were ragged even with a new xacto blade. I tried a mat cutter, but the dimensions were too small. On top of that the edges are white and ugly, so I would have to cover them with paper. So I tried covering the foam core with a paper that matched my cover paper. But when I looked inside the window, I could see the paper, however obliquely, and I didn’t like that either.
I showed my husband what I was doing, and he suggested I try balsa wood, since it comes in 3/16″ square lengths. I bought a length at the hobby store and gave it a try. My idea was to cut pieces, glue them together with super glue to make the frame, and then cover with paper, but leave the inside edges uncovered. The wood is soft and I couldn’t get a clean cut with my xacto knife, so the super glue didn’t adhere. My husband to the rescue again — he suggested I use his band saw, which let me set up a jig to make perfect cuts of the correct length. I’ve made about 10 already (super-glued, covered in paper, with the photo and window frame attached as shown in the photo above), and they’ve all come out quite nicely. Mission accomplished!
I’m working on another season-themed miniature book to go with Summer in Vermont and Winter’s Song. This one is for autumn and includes a haiku that lists the names of several apple varieties. I showed a model of the book to my friend Cathy and she immediately pulled out a book called Apples I Have Eaten (seen above).
Of the thousands of known apple varieties, only about twenty can be found in grocery stores. Apples I Have Eaten is a tribute to a bushel of the harder-to-find heirloom apple cultivars—including the Goldrush, Burgundy, Prairie Spy, Hidden Rose…. Each apple was locally sourced, lovingly photographed, and then happily eaten by artist and author.
I’m hand-setting the type for this new book, as I did with Summer in Vermont. When I set that earlier book, I noticed I hadn’t used all the letters of the alphabet, and only one or two ligatures. The apple variety haiku in the new autumn book is a chance to use words with ligatures or seldom used letters, like x or z. So Cathy & I went through Gerken’s book and then this list of apple varieties and came up with Foxwhelp and Biffin. So my haiku is
Tolman Sweet, Rubinette,
Biffin, Foxwhelp.
Apple a day.
Still curious, I went through the haiku I’m planning to use for my autumn book, and I’m using all the ligatures — fi, fl, ffi, ffl and ff. Yeah!
When I was in Northern California earlier this month for the BABA Book Jam, I heard a talk by poet and typographer Robert Bringhurst at the Commonwealth Club. I also got to see a copy of his book What Is Reading For? (courtesy of Alyson Kuhn), a lovely letterpress chapbook documenting a talk Bringhurst gave on the links between reading’s future and past. I’ve ordered a copy for myself and there’s a post by Steven Heller on the book here.