Book-like Objects
Exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art Library
![Maker unknown, graduated, three-tiered, footed box in book form c. 1870. American [Maine], painted wood (yellow poplar, birch). 18.0 x 23.0 x 16.3 cm. Gift of Lynn and Bruce Heckman, 2023](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84d43005-c5ff-4c01-85fa-a47ef26b6676_1600x1280.jpeg "Maker unknown, graduated, three-tiered, footed box in book form c. 1870. American [Maine], painted wood (yellow poplar, birch). 18.0 x 23.0 x 16.3 cm. Gift of Lynn and Bruce Heckman, 2023")
Emulating Books: Book Objects at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Creating objects in book form has been an artistic practice for a millennium. These personal, inventive objects are ubiquitous in many cultures.1 Running through July 16 in the Thomas J. Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibit explores inventive book-like objects which have been made from stone, wood, and precious metal, and serving as lockets, lanterns, toys, and needlework accessories.
Exhibition link: Emulating Books: Book Objects from the Lynn and Bruce Heckman Gift - The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org)
Some Recent Writing About Books as Objects That are More Complex
Stewart, Garrett. Bookwork: Medium to Object to Concept to Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Bookwork may lay claim to a civic politics as well, which tends to emerge as an ethics of information in the realm of bureaucracy and its dehumanizing violence.
Sjöberg, Sami. Experimental Book Object : Materiality, Media, Design. Routledge, 2023.
The heterogeneity of cases in this volume emphasizes multiform experimentation with and within the book: as an object, process, site, and source of knowledge. Experimentation with the book form, or more generally, the material support of writing, also expands the book towards what Rafael Climent-Espino has called “object-books.”
Borsuk, Amaranth. 2018. The Book: As Object, Content, Idea, and Interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
The history of the book, the future of the book, and the idea of the book. Tracing the interrelationship of form and content in the book's development, she bridges book history, book arts, and electronic literature to expand our definition of an object we thought we knew intimately.
From tablet to codex & beyond: the history of the book (State Library Victoria).
Exhibition of Book-like Objects Opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (finebooksmagazine.com)
There are many days when I feel like a book-like object: My spine is bent, my cover is blown, my footnotes are overwhelming, and my contents are disorganized.