Hard Backs with a Soft Center

Last year when the lovely Tsia Carson was looking for ideas for her forthcoming Supernaturale book on craft gone cool, David had this idea of turning old forlorn books into boxes. (What can you say, he only reads a novel a year). Well it didn’t quite work, but a library in Portland Maine is trying the same thing, turning unloved tomes into a lending library of art. Called Long Overdue, it includes the Candy Dish (the closest to David’s idea) where you check out a book that’s had a bowl drilled into it, filled with sweets. You can eat them, eat them all even, but then you must return the book with your favorite treats tucked into its pages. Oh and the book insists that the only people who can snack on its contents are those who’ve checked it out. So don’t go eating in the aisles of the Portland Public Library. Rather more literally one artist, Susan Winn turned Walt Whitman’s epic (and awesome) poem Leaves of Grass literally into that, a tiny volume whose pages have been turned into individual little blades of paper as grass.  And if you’re in the US you can take out the books on interlibrary loan.

The project’s a bit like Lawrence Bradby and Anna Townley’s eloquent collaboration “Shelf Life” in the Norwich Millennium Library in Norfolk. Designed like a treasure hunt, they had special bookmarks to guide you to their selected works.  The couple altered some 65 books—including having butterflies fly from certain volumes when you opened them. Then you got to keep the butterflies…  (via the New York Times)

Jennifer Kabat
Posted on Tuesday, 25th of April 2006 Permalink Comment (0)