Body Language

As I mentioned last Sunday, I am participating in the #areyoubookenough_bodylanguage challenge. I spent the first part of the week making square and triangular paper beads out of the pages of a discarded book.

 

My original plan was to make a sort of breastplate out of triangular and square beads strung together with wire and cotton cord. I was partially successful.

The small curved area of square beads sits at the back of the neck with the arc of triangles above it hanging down the wearer’s back. The double row of triangles sits across the upper chest. The plan had been to make multiple rows of triangles to completely cover the chest.

It looked pretty good on the workbench, but was a fail when worn on a real body. I think it could have been successful if I had had some silver wire to work with, and possibly a tame silversmith to assist with fabrication.

The next stage looked like this.

I did, however, have a plan B. The book pages are now two armbands. The connections on the triangles slide enough to allow a circle of them to stretch over the wearer’s hand and contract again to fit snugly on the arm.

I played with some other structures made of triangles while I was at it. This one may reappear —with instructions— next December in the 2021 Byopia Press Advent Calendar.

I was pleased with my ‘bookish’ armbands, and thought I would make one out of the shiny paper leftover from another project. The shiny triangle armband was another fail. The paper was too slippery and when the circle was stretched to fit over my hand, it began to fall apart. Again, a silversmith could have saved the day.

Now I had a bunch of shiny paper triangles. I tried assembling them in threes.

Very pretty, but what to do with them?

I made a wind spinner and hung it outside my studio where I can see it during the day. This was not a fail.

I saw something else out that window earlier this week. The crows announced it.

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In other book arts news:

I will be signing up for this talk at The Book Club of California.

I have been following Coyote Bones Press on Instagram and watching the progress of this book, which was created while Schroeder was Artist-in-Residence at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts.

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New listings for summer online workshops at Book Paper Thread are now up.

You can find course descriptions and registration information here.

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A friend passed along this pair of little videos on Instagram. (I suspect it was originally posted on TikTok.) The first shows the operation of a Zhen Xian Bao/Chinese Thread Book. The second shows all the steps in folding and assembling it.

Doesn’t the second video make it look effortless?!