Monthly Archives: March 2014

Part Two: Making Movable Book Mock Ups

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After Kris and I had bought the supplies, the next stage was to assemble a mock up of paper using either the markers and/or the paper as collage. We delegated a full day to the activity (October 17, 2013). Kris made the mock up and I assisted. Observing her work through visual issues and materials, I felt like a medical student watching a skilled surgeon, me being safely removed from the field of action! On occasion I handed her an implement, like a trainee nurse! It was fascinating to watch her process of hands on thinking through trial and error of the paper folding and cutting, the size and placement of the flaps and the process of creating suitable images for small children to colour in and draw around the theme of snow play. I was intrigued by her sophisticated sense of flaps as layering. Unlike the early flap books I have been studying, both printed and homemade, she used the flaps in a secondary way. She began with using the flaps as transformative devices meeting over the mid section of an object or animal or person. But in addition she added another layer of visual interaction and play by using the full extent of the strip so that when all the flaps were lifted a landscape or panorama emerged.

I realized she had created a new type of flap book, combining the individual flaps with the later panorama (which I believe did not become a small paper object until the end of the 18th century: http://www.dickbalzer.com/Panoramas_Dioramas.298.0.html.)  The samples I have seen, when all opened, become a strip that tells a narrative in an episodic fashion. She created a party scene created by double transformations. This panorama effect is highlighted by the image used on the flyer that my research assistant Laura created.

As a footnote, on November 15 we received the blessed news that we  received the grant!

A Project with Children Making Simple Flap Books: A Five Part Process (Part One)

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Part 1: IRB and Paper Shopping

On October 11, 2013 Kris and I submitted our proposal to the IRB for approval called “Using the Present to Unlock the Past: Children’s Aesthetic Decisions in the Making of Simple Movable Books.”  Writing the proposal required a tremendous amount of planning and use of a very detailed and controlled imaginative thinking. I spend my time with children from the past, and have little experience working with present day children—my undergrads laugh when I say I work with dead children —(I feel like an Edward Gorey character).

Kris and I met with another colleague, Kathleen, who knows the schoolmaster and after school coordinator of a local private elementary school.  We developed a revised plan for a winter themed movable book project for the school’s children.

Afterwards, Kris, who is an art educator and early childhood specialist, and I went shopping for supplies in a crafts store.  Kris led like an ice breaker steaming forward through the frozen Arctic seas, while I followed in her wake.  Since I am clumsy and poor at any handicraft or art the store was a new experience. It was full of items but seemed a bit limited in each type. It reminded me of a large toy store, lots of examples of the same, but actually little variety.  Since we are thinking of perhaps doing a collage-making activity, to allow for different talents of the students and for the brevity of the time for the activity, we started looking for the basic materials of papers to collage, paper on which to mount the pieces, markers and glue. Since I usually buy my paper supplies at the dollar store (like my pantyhose) I was fascinated by the array and presentation and horrified by the price per sheet. I realized watching Kris examine each paper by look and feel, that she was seeing a creative product in her mind’s eye. Meanwhile, ever the library researcher, I was looking at white and beige papers that might reproduce the colour of 17th or 19th century paper. All I can imagine is facsimiles. She was looking at leopard prints, bright pinks and shiny purple sheets—and accepting or rejecting by feel and weight. Finally we ended up looking at a larger, heavier white paper to form the canvas for the collage.

After a while I stopped being alarmed and became fascinated again by the visual-artist mind. As I watched, I remembered some more of my original ideas that played with size and scale of the pantomime-based harlequinade books. When I had been at MIT I had seen their wall sized touch screen and had imagined the tiny turn up book being projected on the giant interactive screen and the viewer becoming part of the performance when he or she turns the flaps.

In the end the bill came to only thirty-two dollars, since we got a discount—the same price as my weekly grocery bill.

The Beginning, Progress and End of Man scans: One Puzzle Solved

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This quandary was resolved when I met with Sandy Stelts in the rare books room a few days later. Upon talking with her I learned that my perception of the scans had been right and wrong at the same time. The British Library had indeed provided only two scans, but they had been cropped before being put up on the site. This has been rectified so now the site has the complete photographic reproduction. The images show the underside of the flaps with the bleed-through of the ink as well as the collector’s own handwritten note dating the purchase of the object as June 3,1650.

I knew something was missing! Since the shadow images show how the book is put together, one puzzle is addressed.

This combination of shadow images of the early stages of the transforming figures as well as a note from Mr. Thomason himself is like a communication from the past.

While pursuing this puzzle I looked up a bit of information from the British Library site about the Thomason Tracts. I have copied an excerpt below.

Notes from BL site:

“Pasted in among the British Library’s unrivalled collections for the study of British history are the Thomason Tracts, one of the most important sources relating to the turbulent period of the English Civil War in the mid-17th century. These are a vast collection of printed pamphlets, books, and newspapers, printed mainly in London between 1640 and 1661, originally brought together by George Thomason, an important London bookseller and the friend of John Milton (1608-1674)

Thomason was extremely well placed to build up a systematic collection of pamphlets and other works as they were published. Often these items, relating in the main to the most burning religious controversies and political conflicts of the day, have survived nowhere else.”

http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/news/thomasontracts/#scope