The Square and Semicircle Book

A Book is like a Garden in the Pocket (1997), like the box, was made by adapting the same Japanese card structure.  I wanted to reflect geometrical parterre gardens, also a product of  ideas and ingenuity, so it was appropriate to use the square and semicircle pattern as a starting point.

Back then I was very keen to use the materials of illuminated manuscripts, and in this case I used calfskin vellum for the 'pages' and made the drawings with a dip pen and gouache.

My starting point was again the same square and circle pattern.  

I cut two squares and three semi circles out of book board.  

The vellum pages were cut slightly smaller and the spine piece in my case was about 1 cm thick. 

Because of the thickness of the book board when the three semicircles are folded on top of one another, you need to leave a gap between the square and semicircle pieces before assembling the structure, so it sits well when the semicircular pieces are folded in.

I first glued the vellum spine along its edges to the outer side of both squares.

The joins and edges were all covered in Japanese paper and the vellum pages containing the drawings

were glued onto the book in the appropriate places. 

I do a lot of work with circles and use a compass cutter which can cut circles up to 15 cm. in diameter but I also sometimes just use my favourite tool, my Fiskars scissors.

Square or Circular Book Box

The book box above was adapted from a Japanese card structure that I first saw in an old book I have called Creative Cards by Yoshiko Kitagawa, Kodansha International 1987.  The book and box above were also made a long time ago in 1997.

I used the card structure for my 2012 Christmas card and I will show how I adapted it into a book box.  The pattern for the card is based on a square with semicircular flaps.

The flaps are folded over consecutively and when you fold the last one you need to tuck it in under the first one and it looks like this.

The finished book box will also look like that. 

 I added the width of the book's spine to the pattern to create a box structure.

1.  The inner square should be the measurement of the book plus 4 mm.

2.  The width of the book's spine is added to create an outer square.

3.  A semi-circle is then added to each side and its diameter is the same length as the side of the inner square.

4.  The little squares on each corner are used as tabs.  You cut through the outer square on one side of the tab, and fold it on the other side and glue it to the wall of the adjacent side to form the sides of the box.  

5.  The semicircular flaps will then fold in as they did with the card and it will  have the same appearance except that it has depth rather than being flat.

(Thanks Di for inspiring me to write this post.)

True Grit

I've finally wound up the last of my projects for 2012 and have completed my final book for BookArtObject titled True Grit just before Christmas.  I posted the books out to members of Group 11 on the 2nd January.

The book is made up of digital prints of five linocuts with collage mounted in 3D into Canson card and shows a small fishing boat battling huge seas, a text page and a colophon.

I decided to ignore the most obvious connections to the title True Grit.  I thought the most fitting example of unfaltering courage and true grit are the asylum seekers who flee their homeland for Australia by undertaking risky journeys with people smugglers in a desperate attempt to find peace and freedom from persecution.