Yes, I know for someone a project like this could sound a sort of blasphemy!
How could you dare cut pages of those precious items? There’s no thing such as an old book, a book should not deserve destruction because of its age! What of those readers who could want to dive into its words?
Let me explain how we came to the making of sculptures with books.
It was a combination of coincidences.
My father-in-law worked for a medical company and one day came home with several bags full of old discarded books: his company decided they were to be destroyed, because those were the proceedings of very old conferences whose content was no more valid in the scientific community. Since they got rid of dozens of hardcover volumes, he thought it wise to bring them home for us to give them a new destination.
In the previous months I was browsing Pinterest looking at awesome ideas about art with books: I discovered you can create almost anything with books, from furnishing accessories to bags.
So, seeing those discarded book, with neat pages, clean writing, hardcovers with embossed letters, we decided to bring them to a new life. We wanted to turn those scientific tomes full of graphs and formulae into a portal to a fantasy world.
Fold after fold, we sculpted two fairy tale scenes. Those two landscapes we had in mind needed two things to be completed: photos or drawings of fantastic places to reach and fairy people to live there. We chose, then, a few images to fit inside the first world and fairy statues to set in both our creations.
The first book sculpture we wanted to make was a window through another world. Well, actually we made two!
The book is opened in the middle, and we cut the pages to make a windowsill, on which our fairy rests, dreaming maybe, and giving color to the black and white of the writing.
Two windows open on each side to a waterfall and a timeless abandoned cathedral immersed in a thick forest. I also made the tents out of the page remnants.
To keep the windowsill in position, we used other page remnants to cut a few squares, which we folded in half to link together the cut pages, two by two.
The middle of the book was carved into a column: not the best feature in what should be the interior of a room, but it was the best way we had to refinish what remained of the pages we cut to make the windowsill.
After that first try, we wanted to go a bit further.
If the first books sculpture’s main idea was my husband’s, I suggested how to make the second one. In this piece, we carved the tower of a castle, with a window on which a fairy sits, a foot dangling outside. This time, the project was more complex, so we carefully planned how to proceed. We also prepared a template, used to carefully cut each page like the other.
We carefully cut the page remants to make roof tiles to surround the window as a decoration, and also to act as string course below the windowsill. Each small roof tile was painted with watercolors to suggest the terracotta material, but leaving the words of the original pages.
Having around fake ivy from the costumes of our latest dance recital, we glued a piece on one side of the tower, to suggest a climbing plant coming from below.
The top of the tower was easier than the arched window, but not less demanding. We cut and folded a crenellation, each merlon the same size. Since that was a task that required a lot of patience, it became my job!
On top, we placed a second statue: a dragon coming out of its egg, the future guardian of the castle. If you look carefully from above, you’ll also notice the opening of a trap door, leading inside the tower.
Here, we also liked the idea of using written words to represent the journey a reader makes anytime he dives deep into a good book: we then wrote the beginning of the tratidional tales “C’era una volta in un castello lontano lontano” (“Once upon a time in a far away castle“), to create a contrast between the cold scientific book and the fairy world we made thanks to it.
Each book can be the door leading to the world we want: all depends on how we read it.
Did you like our book sculptures? It’s been ages since we made a new one, but who knows? Maybe a new one will see the light soon. Would you like to see another book sculpture? Tell us in the comments!
