Lisa Occhipinti - The Repurposed Library: 33 Craft Projects That Give Old Books New Life

Published in 2011 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang

Text and illustrations copyright 2011 by Lisa Occhipinti

Photographs copyright 2011 by Thayer Allyson Gowdy

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Occhipinti, Lisa.

The repurposed library / Lisa Occhipinti.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-58479-909-2 (alk. paper)

eISBN 978-1-68335-599-1

1. Altered books. I. Title.

TT896.3.O255 2010

745.5--dc22

2010020797

Editor: Liana Allday

Designer: Meg Mateo Ilasco

Production Manager: Tina Cameron

ABRAMS The Art of Books
195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007
abramsbooks.com

For Evelyn Grace

As a child I adored books, despite the fact that I hated to read. What I loved was the object of the book, its feel in my hands, the whisper of flipping pages, and of course, illustrations. My mother kept a family Bible in her nightstand that I would quietly seek out from time to time. I wouldnt read a word, but I would marvel at the translucent, onionskin pages and the faux shagreen cover embossed with gilt letters.

Since childhood, my passion for books has only grown. Around age ten I realized that I enjoyed reading booksnot just looking at them. In junior high school I started to write thoughts and poetry and to sketch on the pages of blank journals. And in college I began to see books as a form I could create entirely from scratch, choosing not just the content but the size, the paper, and the covers. My first one featured a collection of photos I had taken based on the five senses, and was bound together using a simple side-sewn Japanese technique. I loved how I was able to arrange my images into a cohesive, interactive form.

After college, my appetite whetted, I took courses to learn more about creating books. With these new skills, I made blank journals and custom books with cloth-covered cases as well as leather-bound books with signatures. But then, as I am prone to do, I began to wonder what else a book could be. How could it have a greater presence? How could a book become an active object? That is when I discovered altered booksthe art of giving books a new form.

I began painting and cutting the pages of books and gluing objects to their covers. I started to wonder, what if I just used the covers? What if I simply thought of the pages as paper? What if I broke down the elements of the book and used them as basic materials? I considered all of these questions in depth and began to see books in a brand-new light. What appears in The Repurposed Library are the results of my experiments. Many of the projects show you how to transform existing books into new art objects, such as mobiles (). Detailed how-to instructions and illustrations walk you through each step of the process, from deconstructing a book to making it into something new.

I know it may seem strange for a person who loves books so much to have made a career out of deconstructing them. But repurposing a book is simply a different way of experiencing it and embracing its beauty. I feel a deep connection to the weight of a book, the tooth of its paper, and the smell of its ink (or mustiness). I wonder where books have been, who has owned them, and in what sorts of rooms they have resided. Have they been taken on vacation, and if so, where did they go? Have they been lent to friends, and were they eventually returned to their owner?

Over the last twenty years I have been building my library, voraciously collecting grand tomes and antiquated novels that speak to me. Some books are to read, some are to use in my art projects, and some are just to look at and enjoy. The sad fact is that not everyone can maintain a large librarynot even public librariesand consequently, many books get thrown out. Bookstores remainder titles that dont sell quickly enough, unloading them at a fraction of their original price. Libraries dispose of books with cracked spines or obsolete information, and neighbors sell off unwanted, dusty volumes for mere coins at yard sales. And with so much information available online or in electronic formats in our technology-driven world, there is a sense that physical books could become relics.

So what to do with all these orphaned books? The Repurposed Library is my attempt to answer that question. Whether you are transforming a book for the first time or youve been doing this your whole life, I hope that you enjoy giving new function to the books you love. You wont look at them the same way again.

Every project in this book is made from books, so before you get started, there are a few things youll need to know: Which books are best to use? Which ones are valuable and shouldnt be deconstructed? How can you repurpose a book thats falling apart? What are the various parts of a book, and whats the best way to deconstruct it for a project? The information in this chapter addresses these questions and will guide you toward making successful projects out of books.

The best books to use in craft projects are ones that do not have any significant value. What is significant value, you ask? Now, Id be the first to say that every book has significant value, but in this case, we mean the monetary and historical worth. Valuable books are usually first-edition printings or they are rare and collectible, though it can sometimes be tricky to figure out if a book falls into either category. Following are a few guidelines to help you identify a potentially valuable book before you put it under the knife.

First editions are copies from the first print run of a title and are typically given more value than subsequent editions (especially if it turns out to be an important book, like a Pulitzer prize-winner). It is not always easy to identify a first edition, but the first place to look is the copyright page. In a perfect world, youd see the words first edition, first printing, or first impression printed on the page. To indicate first editions, some publishers put their logo or colophon on this page, along with a 1 or A below it. And in more contemporary publishing (1950 and later), a first printing is indicated on the copyright page with a series of numbers, starting with 10 and counting down to 1. For the second printing, the 1 is removed so the 2 is the lowest number shown (and so forth for subsequent editions).

Publishers of pre-1950 books may denote a first edition in a less transparent way. If you see nothing that indicates the books edition, you can likely find the answer by inquiring at a local rare book dealer, used bookstore, or with a librarian.