Update to a very old design
Way back in 2015, or maybe 2016, I was invited to exhibit some of my very large pieces in an Art Gallery. Nah, it must have been 2015, because I still had my day job, and this exhibition was a bit of a turning point in my story.
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I crowned this body of work my "Bibliophile Collection". Mostly very large, very unusual and very old books, which I'd folded in to a selection of completely unique designs, most of which I've never reproduced.
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Amongst them, was my very first "Atlas". It was a huge piece of work. Physically, it stood over a foot tall, and must have been about 1.5' wide. Labour wise, once I'd finalised the going back and forth to the design stage, and trial running numerous portions of the fold, the actual, final sculpture took me 11 full days to fold. 11 days where that was ALL I did. A conservative estimate would put this at more than 100 hours of work, and much, much more, if I was able to go back and tot up all the work prior to the final piece.
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This was the result:
Now, if you've read many other NoBooksBlog posts, you'll know that my terrible, low quality photography is something that drives me daft, especially when it comes to looking at my older work. This is no exception.
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I'm delighted to say, this piece went to its new home, during the exhibition. A few months later, I was asked to fold another.
Upon folding the second one, I made the decision to remove it from my website. It's an absolute beast to work with, and even with all of my design notes finalised, that second one still took me a full 8 days to fold. 8 days of doing no other work at all. I mean, I love it! Focusing entirely on one piece is, in many ways, the ultimate joy of what I do ♥ But, realistically, it's very difficult to charge appropriately for such work.
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In the years since, I've often looked at the map of the globe, and pondered if I could shrink it further, to fit in a more 'normal' sized book, whilst keeping the feel of the world. And I've usually decided I couldn't. But, during a recent NoBooksOnTour.com pop up, a visitor asked if I'd ever tried to do a map of the world - and out came these terrible old photos haha But it watered that seed, and over the last few days, I have revisited this old favourite of mine, and am DELIGHTED to say, I think I've nailed it!
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A smaller (easier to display) version, which should only take me a day or maybe two days, to fold (making it less costly), and whilst it's a slightly more simplified silhouette, I'm confident it does indeed look like what I want it to look like! Sounds like a good result all round!
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So, if you'd like a behemoth Atlas piece, drop me a line, and I'll see if I can convince myself to immerse myself in 8/9/10 days work (probably not, this side of Christmas)...or if you'd like this equally beautiful, smaller version, just you click on the photie below!
