Category Archives: Collections

Permanent Pop-App Exhibition at the Fondazione Tancredi di Barolo

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“Libri interattivi/creativi in Italia e all’estero”
MUSLI PERMANENT EXHIBITION 2008
Jacqueline Reid-Walsh

I have the good fortune to be based at the Fondazione Tancredi di Barolo in Turin for the duration of my sabbatical. I am working with Professor Vagliani and his group researching interactive books and related media, old and new, directed to children and youth. I only became aware of the Pop-App project in 2019 but it dates back to 2008 when the founding display of interactive books and related media was launched in a permanent exhibition space. Yesterday I had a guided tour of “Libri interattivi/creativi in Italia e all’estero” with Professor Vagliani.

The exhibit is housed in a large, vaulted subterranean space devoted to printing techniques within a historic noble residence. The stone walls and cool environment lend an aura of mystery to the experience.

One of the exhibit cases.

The display cases and hanging displays effectively suggest a path for a visitor. The many examples range from classic movable books to sound enhanced books, to games and toys from the 18h to 20th century. The spectacular display fuses old paper media and new digital media. The innovative, interactive approach provokes and stimulates a viewer to think and rethink assumptions about movable books.

Of the cornucopia of examples, I focus on three groups which invite a multisensory approach. One set combines touch, vision and movement and consists of lift-the-flap books and an unusual, vertically-slatted transformation book by Dean and Son. The transformation works when it is stroked. When an interactor gently moves the slats one way (with the grain) a scene is revealed: when you stroke the book the other way (against the grain) another scene appears. Unusually there is no pull-tab and you have to engage directly with the mechanism.

Innovative moveable books.

Another portion of the display is devoted to theatrical presentations.  These range from miniature stage sets, to carousel books, to Englebrecht inspired perspective views. One book republished in America by McLaughlin Brothers continues the idea of direct engagement with the object.  This popular series of books exploits the idea of a viewer entering a theatre to watch a performance. Usually an interactor opens the covers/curtain to reveal a stage, but this version opens directly on the performance. You encounter sets of vertical flaps of different sizes. By turning them aside you to see a performance matching a fairy tale or derive your own performance of a fairy tale (in this case Aladdin).

Miniature stage set

To conclude this cursory review I mention several iconic movable books by Lothar Meggendorfer that have been digitally remediated. Touch screen panels allow a viewer not only to enact an iconic scene but enhance the original through the addition of sound. Here by adding the sound of the doorbell the character is pulling, the digital version “enhances” or “improves” the paper media version.

Interactive touch screens for Meggendorfer books

My tour started a journey of discovery. The cross connections between books and research in Italian and English are fascinating. In some cases we have unknowingly paralleled and overlapped one another. Distance and language divides have contributed to this but the foundation’s inaugural conference “Pop-App 2020 (2021)” has enabled linkages to start that we are pursuing further.

Please see the website for the permanent exhibit: https://www.pop-app.org/pop-app-musli/

Is Paper Key to Interactivity?

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Jacqui Reid-Walsh

After languishing for a year and a half away from Special Collections at Penn State, I have been privileged to once again been able to schedule times through the fall semester to work with “my” cart of movable books again. Seeing them, touching them, and sitting with them has allowed me to connect with my passion for researching early movable books and to ask new questions. When I am sitting with the books, I feel like Rip Van Winkle who is slowly awaking from a deep stupor.

One turn-up book has transfixed me for a while: The Beginning, Progress and End of Man circa 1650. During the time away from libraries, I had only been looking at photographs of the turn-up. While important memory aids, they only give minimal information.  Previously, I had worked mainly with the paper facsimile.  Importantly, unlike a digital image, this allows an interactor to learn about the kinds of transformations in the turn-up through being able to engage with the object. However, the interactor seems to be the sole engine of the effects since the modern paper is stiff and inert.

What is important about encountering the original turn-up again is that I am able to work with both the original and the facsimile. To my joy I have been able to place the original and the facsimile beside each other so that I can touch the paper and examine the flaps of both. The different experiences I have had with the facsimile and the original has led me to explore the history of handmade paper in the West.

While an obvious subject to conservators and curators, studying the substrate of early movable books is a new angle for me since previously I focused on the affordances of the interactive components. My new approach takes my questions about affordances to the level of the material: what kind of paper is the early turn-up composed of? How does the material effect the movable components? How am I affected by engaging with the original versus a facsimile? What can I learn from studying the paper through touch or from sparingly using a light box to see any marks in the paper?

I am learning about paper in several ways: by consulting specialists like paper conservators, engaging with suggested key readings, and participating in an occasional paper-making session.  I am pleased that two conservators have agreed to consult with me: Katie Smith from the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature at the University of Florida and Bill Minter from the Penn State University Libraries. This project is in its infancy but each new revelation is challenging me.

So, what have I learned so far?

The durability of the earlier artifacts stems from the strength of the rag paper. I wonder if the qualities of the rag paper and its innate affordances enable the transformations created with simple flaps that turn up and turn down to be so effective.

When I carefully touch the flaps, the paper feels soft and buttery. When I gently move the flaps, they are light and pliable and move beautifully. When I lift a flap up or down, it holds its place (so needs no weight). The transformations and mistransformations hold still so they can be engaged with. Similarly, when I turn the flaps back, they lightly stick together so two sets come down together! Since the paper seems to be an active agent, the impression of incipient or latent action in the woodblock figures is emphasized. The characters almost move on their own — the paper figures seem to possess their own vitality and enact the traditional “stages of man” life story stated by the words. The impression is that the paper and the human interactor are equal collaborators in creating the animation effect. This is the opposite effect to engaging with the facsimile.

Further questions stem from the qualities of the linen paper. For instance, could this be connected with the timeline of the harlequinade turn-up books? Could it be that the phenomenon of the turn-up book being later 17th and 18th century — then petering out — is linked to the change in paper and the shift to machine made paper?

Another stage in my project!

Good news to tell! The Beginning, Progress and End of Man turn-up book with colored illustrations

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Jacqui Reid-Walsh

If the world of rare books’ libraries were a consortium of print sellers we would blazon the news: there is a “new found” edition of the rare The Beginning, Progress and End of Man turn-up book! On the Cotsen Children’s Collection blog dated June 30, 2021, Andrea Immel describes and provides tantalizing information about the new acquisition. This five-part edition is the only known one that has colored illustrations!

First there is an illustration of the first panel, both sets of flaps closed showing Adam with a fig leaf and holding a red flower with yellow leaves. The bibliographic information beside Adam gives the title. When the five flaps are opened fully, we see the remainder of the information: beside the skeleton we learn that it is a J. Deacon edition and that his location is the Angel in Gilt Spur street.  The blog entry further relays how the turn-up book was bought at the Justin G. Schiller Ltd. Sale at Heritage Book Auctions in Dallas, Texas on December 16, 2020.

Immel provides a brief history of the turn-up book from the 1650 four-part edition printed by Bernard Alsop held at the British library, and the subsequent five part editions that include a Cain and Abel sequence.  All versions of the text feature metamorphic pictures and doggerel verse. The pictures transform as the flaps are lifted up and down to accord with the text: Adam turns into Eve and then a mermaid, the rampant Lion turns into a Griffin and then an Eagle who steals a baby, a young man turns into an inverted heart and then a money bag, and finally an older miser with his money bags turns into a skeleton.

The choice of colors or absence of color enhances the dramatic effect of the moveable images. Adam and Eve are colorless but for their red flower and the mermaid’s comb and yellow belt; the angry, yellow-haired Cain wears red, contrasting with the otherwise colorless Abel’s red hair; the regal, yellow lion is transformed in to a splendid bi-colored eagle; the young man and his purse are both red with yellow money, and the elegant bi-toned miser’s yellow money bags turn into a yellow hour glass in his yellow skeletal hand.

Important details make this version of The Beginning, Progress and End of Man significant for researchers. It is the only known 17th century one in color; it appears to be complete, despite some tears, and one of the few known ones in strip format. The 1650 Bernard Alsop edition and the other J. Deacon edition held at the Bodleian library are attached to large volumes by their collectors; George Thomason and Anthony Wood respectively. Two other editions are also strips –the 1654 one printed by Elizabeth Alsop held at Harvard, and one at Penn State with incomplete bibliographic information and in fairly poor condition. Since the Beginning, Progress and End of Man at the Cotsen is a colored, stand-alone artifact means that researchers can become bi-modal viewers and players and able to experience the object in new ways. In so doing we begin to appreciate the powerful interactive appeal of the 17th century religious turn-up book whose flaps may be lifted with or against the stated moral and religious text.

Images from the Penn State copy of The Beginning, Progress and End of Man for comparison:

The Beginning, Progress, and End of Man, part 1

The Beginning, Progress, and End of Man, part 2

The Beginning, Progress, and End of Man, part 3

Discovering a previously unknown moveable book from the early 18th century

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[Guest blog post from Dr Sian King, an academic librarian in the UK who wanted to fill the vacuum left following retirement by spending many happy days in libraries and archives researching and writing! Having already done an MA in the History of the Book, the foundation was laid to pursue the topic in greater depth and with expert guidance. This blog post is based on her recent (2020) University of Birmingham Ph.D. thesis, The Distribution and Ownership of English Chapbooks and Other Cheap Print in South Wales and Its Borders, 1660-1730: Developmental Influences on Commerce, Religion and Education.]

During my research for a doctorate on the production and distribution of chapbooks and other cheap print in south Wales 1660 to 1730, I spent some time in Gloucester Archives examining their records on Robert Raikes (1690-1757), an early provincial printer. He set up the very first press in Gloucester in 1722, producing a newspaper, the Gloucester Journal, which his agents distributed far and wide. He was an innovative and entrepreneurial businessman who also spotted a market for small books of folk tales, poetry, scandalous tales and prophetic stories.

From the archive catalogue, I requested and examined a box labelled with the name of Robert Raikes which contained his will and one other small and delicate item which I unfolded with a growing sense of curiosity and wonder. Although slightly restored by some later hand, and also given a paper cover, the original very fragile item entitled The Beginning, Progress and End of Man lay within. It was a little book with flaps revealing ‘metamorphic’ pictures with text, printed by Raikes (no date) and sold by John Wilson in Bristol for 1d. After taking photos, I carried out some research on this genre and, of course, came across the Learning as Play website and Jacqui-Reid Walsh’s research.

Manuscript title page of Raikes' Beginnings ... and end of Man

The Raikes edition is based closely on the 1654 edition by Elizabeth Alsop (in London), even to the extent of possibly using the same woodcut blocks. The text is also identical, so it is hard to believe that Raikes did not somehow have access to a previous version. The book measures 16cm x 16 cm, (folded) and has been created from a single sheet 29.5 cm x 31.5 (approx.).

Raikes printing of Beginnings ... and ends of Man

The 5 pages with flaps closed

Raikes printing of the Beginning ... and ends of Man, flaps open

The 5 pages with flaps open

The date of publication is unknown, but based on Raikes relationship with John Wilson of Bristol gleaned from the advertisements in his newspaper, I have estimated 1725 to 1727. I have drawn the attention of archivists at Gloucester as to the rarity of this item, and they have now afforded it a separate catalogue entry with information . The hope is that they will also send a record to ESTC, but at least this unique item now has a record in the Union Catalog of Early Moveable Books.

Pop-up activism: pop-up against coronavirus

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“Pop app libri animati” is an ongoing initiative undertaken by the Fondazione Tancredi di Barolo, jointly formed by Professor Pompeo Vagliani and Professor Gianfranco Crupi. The multipronged initiative that covers research, conservation and educational outreach is  supported by local and regional governments and La Sapienza University in Rome.

The foundation has an impressive collection of movable books in Italian and different languages across time including some spectacular and little known ones even to specialists in the field. In 2019 they held an exhibition in two locations, Rome and Turin.  It was called Pop-App. Science, art and play in the history of animated books from paper to app.

This link shows a virtual tour of the impressive objects, organized in rooms based on genres and introducing to non-European viewers Italian movables:

https://www.pop-app.org/visita-alla-mostra-di-torino/

The follow up event was an international conference scheduled for Feb. 27-28 in Turin Italy. It was cancelled abruptly by the start of the onslaught of the coronavirus. Intrepidly they turned their attention in two directions. Professor Crupi is spearheading the English translation of the collection of essays based on their curated exhibit in 2019 in Rome and Turin called Pop-App. Science, art and play in the history of animated books from paper to the app, which will soon be available on their website. Professor Vagliani has turned his attention away from scholarly investigation of the pop-up books to activism with children who are housed inside for long periods due to the outbreak of the corona virus.

When I was in contact with Professor Vagliani to inquire how they were faring, on March 18, 2020 he wrote back to describe his new initiative. He stated that while they are waiting to be able to reprogram the various initiatives, they have started a collaborative venture between Italian designer Massimo Missiroli and Chinese artist Guan Zhongping to entertain and instruct children through the medium of movable books:

Meanwhile we started, in collaboration with pop-up designer Massimo Missiroli, the initiative “Pop Up against the coronavirus” which aims to involve and raise awareness among children and schools on knowledge and prevention of the virus through the educational and creative potential of movable books. […]

The project consists in making available online downloadable models and tutorials to create animated tables and small pop-up books from home that have as their subject fantastic stories against the virus or insights on prevention practices. All materials made so far can be downloaded at this link https://www.pop-app.org/costruisci-il-tuo-pop-up-contro-il-virus/

He goes on to describe the work of Guan Zhongping in China:

The idea stems from a similar experience promoted in China by animated book expert Guan Zhongping, involving pop-up designers, families and children in isolation at home during the epidemic. Photos and videos of pop-up products made in China are available exclusively on the pop-app site: https://www.pop-app.org/pop-up-contro-il-coronavirus/.

Since I am on the Foundation listserv, I received notice of further collaboration with Dutch pop up designer Paul De Graaf who has devised a pop-up mask (not medical). In addition to imaginative adapting of fairy tale and folktale figures of witches, intrepid child heroes a magic cloud and magic cow, there is rendering of life for children today. This includes a model of living under quarantine in an apartment with balconies.

Download the color template “Quarantine pop up card”

Download the black and white template, to be colored

This link to their YouTube page shows 84 animations of selected books–some from the collection but notably and importantly including books from the activist project “Pop-up against coronavirus:”

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGR7kP3lbJZ8NCZJRcQjT3w

This includes tutorials such as the evokingly entitled – Tutorial “Pop up contro il coronavirus” including that of a mask. The templates for making pop-ups are available in three languages: Italian, French and English and the logo is “united even from a distance.”

When I went to the emerging page devoted to the children’s artworks, I saw a jack in a box hero.

I am awed by the resilience and creativity of the foundation in this extremely difficult time for Italy and by the power of transnational collaborations that are occurring across Europe and oceans.