paper folding

Matchbook number eight

Sarah_Grace

Wayanad is a particularly beautiful and fertile part of Kerala. Whilst there I visited a bamboo workshop where some beautiful products were being created everything from blinds and matting to braclets and pens. As a maker myself I really enjoyed watching the ladies at work and even had a go myself stripping the bamboo with a very sharp knife! Whilst there I couldn’t help but notice lots of delicate little curls of discarded bamboo on the floor. I collected some and used them to make a cyanotype print a few days later. I also collected some beautiful leaf skeletons and some random scraps of paper.

I used a zine fold for the cyanotype print so I didn’t have to chop it about too much and used the long and elegant leaf print as a wrap around cover for the book. My aim was simply to make something beautiful to echo the beautiful work I saw going on there. It always suprises and delights me when a book kind of makes its own shapes once I’ve made it, things I never envisaged in the first place! This was definitly one of those.

Finally I used the receipt for the little things made from bamboo I bought in the shop as the cover for the matchbox/draw the book lives in and kept the tiniest little curl to live with the book in the matchbox.

Matchbook number six

Sarah_Grace

This book was inspired by a trip to the Gandhi Memorial Museum in Madurai.  On a previous trip to India I had visited the Gandhi Museum in Mumbi called Mani Bhavan. As a child my dad used to talk about Gandhi often I think he was something of a hero for him and he made sure we kids knew all about his life and what he had achieved. My dad was a pacifist and I think saw many commonalities of ethos and conflict resolution. So now on two occassions I have been fortunate to visit places this man had been or lived and learnt about his life first hand. Both times I have found it moving and had a sense of my dad over my shoulder telling stories of this great man of peace.

The start to this book was a receipt I collected when I donated some money to be able to take photos inside the museum. I didn’t want to chop this up to much so used a modified zine fold to create a little book that still has the ability to open out to become one sheet again and at the same time creates the accordion fold to hold the rest of the sections together. From there I created two more zine fold books from a ten rupee note. I thought long and hard about using actual money as a book (I’ve been toying with the idea for a long time). I feel that Gandhi would have disapproved because although to me as a westerner this note is worth the equivalent of about twelve pence to many people in India it could be a meal. To a great extent it felt quite frivolous to cut it up, but I felt on this occasion it was warrented. It symbolises the struggle for fair wages and prices for cotton and the fact that it bares the face of Gandhi goes to show how important he is to this country.

The cyanotype prints used were made by a piece of fabric I found on my journey and the detail of the weave reminded me of the simple cloth that Gandhi chose to wear, some of which was on display in the museum. I had a little bit of the original receipt left over so made a second zine fold book covered with more cyanotype print. The matchbox used was found in Madurai and seemed appropriete with the symbol of a light bulb on the front. Gandhi was most definitely a light for India.

With this book, as often happens, it has become a tiny sculpture as much as a book. I love how many shapes it can make just by opening it in different ways. This one more than most!