This is an artist book from the National Art Library collection.
What makes an artist book special is that the artist has a hand in designing the book, and
in deciding not only the content, but then what the book looks like and how it's put together.
This particular book is designed by an artist in collaboration with a poet,
which is quite typical of the livres d'artistes tradition of artists books.
It's different from a traditional codex book that you might be used
to – the kind of books that you have at home which are usually bound in some way.
With this book, it comes in loose leaves – so all the
individual leaves are separate from one another, and it has some very interesting
extra elements inside of it as well which we'll come to as we open up those individual leaves.
You can see that it's copy number 23 of 120, so only 120 copies of this book produced.
When we photograph books for the National Art Library,
we usually get a list of the openings from the person who's requesting the photography.
One page that we always add in is a title page,
because it's very important in identifying the book.
So I'm going to be requesting this title page
be photographed so I'm therefore going to lift this out.
And I'm going to mark this opening or this page with a paper strip.
This isn't any old paper – this is acid free paper,
and this is what we use when we mark pages of books in the National Art Library.
This paper is very good for using when working with rare books or special books or fragile books,
such as the kind that we hold, because it doesn't have any nasty chemicals in it,
like much of the industrial paper and that we use day to day has, and what that means is that it's
not going to cause any damage to the book so I can with confidence place this inside of an opening,
knowing that it's not going to cause any damage to the object and the object is going to remain safe.
Now because this is loose leaves, I am going to put this paper strip inside of the opening
but I'm going to indicate to the photographer who will receive this book next,
that it's the title page that I would like.
So I'll just write that on the slip
and put that inside there.
Now this form is linked – it's actually inside of the museum catalogue,
which all of the staff across the museum use for recording information about our objects.
We use it when we're entering information about photography
or when a conservator works on an object they will use the catalogue and enter
information about what treatments or what assessments they've carried out on the object.
All of that gets stored in the object record, so that in hundreds of years time we'll be
able to look back at all of the activities that happened on that object, and trace them back.
So this is not an ordinary book, as I said, it's got extra elements inside of it.
And those extra elements are 13 wire puppets that appear within the folds of the paper.
Usually when we're handling books we don't wear gloves – that's a rule that we kind of generally
go by within the National Art Library – and the reason for that is that when you have gloves,
on you lose a little bit of dexterity, and so you're more likely to damage the pages of
a book – paper being very fragile and very easy to tear – however there are exceptions
to that rule and one of the exceptions is when the book has metal elements.
Because metal will pick up fingerprints very easily,
so in that instance we would wear gloves to handle those particular parts of the book,
and so in order to take this puppet out from the book I'm going to put on a pair
of these nitrile gloves that are what we use when handling these kinds of objects.
So now that I've got my gloves on I'm not going to leave any fingerprints in the metal, and so what
I need to do now is just very carefully slide out of these paper slots that it's sitting inside of.
It has to slide across the surface of the paper very slightly. I'm just
lifting it a little so that it doesn't scratch the surface of the paper.
So now lift the puppet up.
If I hold it at the back
I'm going to slide it back in.
I think that's a really striking opening. So although that opening didn't come through
in the photography request, I'm going to add it in by putting a paper strip on this page.
It's a good chance to get it photographed while it's going to the photo studio anyway.