Beautiful objects

Many people (myself included) are fairly squeamish at the thought of purposely damaging books. Some artists and crafters, however, have created incredibly beautiful and just plain cool items out of the pages and covers of books. Here are a few examples for your enjoyment. Happy Friday!

Thanks to Alison at Shelftalker for sharing this amazing stop-motion video, which was produced for the 25th anniversary of 4th Estate, a HarperCollins imprint in the U.K. (Due to Wordpress constraints, and my own shortcomings as a  computer user, I can't embed the video, but do click through--it's jaw-dropping.)

Su Blackwell is a British artist who builds incredibly detailed sculptures from old books. Each piece is inspired by the book it is created from and uses only the pages from that book. See the article here and a slideshow of the sculptures here.



I love Thomas Allen's gorgeously pulpy diorama photographs, which he creates using covers from vintage paperbacks.



I could probably spend all day clicking through on images from a simple Google search for "book art." Just, wow.

Of course, I haven't even gotten into books as works of art in themselves. Powell's blogger Kirsten Berg writes about rare books and book bindings that are so beautiful it could make a bibliophile swoon. My favorite entry was on fore-edge art, something I have never seen on any modern book.



Finally, some edible art based on books. Cake Wrecks (a site that spends most of the week hilariously riffing on terrible cake decorations) has had a couple of book related cake posts, including children's books and Harry Potter.

PBS offers more examples of kid's book inspired cakes that are nearly too lovely to eat.