destination by Caroline Penn

Book artist Caroline Penn was asked to collaborate with thirteen other artists on a project, published by WhnicPRESS and launched at the Bristol Artist Book Event (BABE). Project C is about inter-semiotic translation: the translation from images to words, and words to images and the paths that form between them. Each artist was given an anonymised book cover and asked to respond to it with another book form.  All of the resulting fourteen books are held within a slip case in an edition of 25 copies.

Caroline wanted the form of her book to reference dictionaries and an unfolding train journey, hence the choice of Offenbach Bible, a double-sided, single sheet of Offenbach Bible folded into a concertina, and sewn into a cover.

Click on images to enlarge

The finished size is 173x124mm with the 8pp concertina text folding out to a 494mm length. You can see from the below image how the text folds into the 4pp cover...

Concertina text fully extended...

Given the lightweight nature of the Offenbach Bible, you probably won't be able to believe that it's digitally printed! The job was printed and finished by print company Typecast Colour, based in Paddock Wood. It was printed on their Xerox digital press and the result is excellent. For a limited run, such as this (25 copies) printing digitally makes a project such as this viable.

Click on images to enlarge

The above image shows the '5 hole sewn' binding, which is hand finished, as is the hole punching. Five hole sewing is just an evolution of three hole sewing, which I wrote about on this blog before HERE. The below picture shows the text fully extended:

The Offenbach Bible is enclosed within a Pergamenata paper cover which was all put into a loose cover, with the photo of the train in snow, supplied by WhnicPRESS. The other 13 artists also had their books enclosed within similar printed covers. All 14 books were then put into a slip case, see below...

Image courtesy of whnicPRESS

This was a lovely project to be involved with and many thanks to Caroline for taking the time to send me a copy of the finished publication and a handwritten note.

https://carolinepenn.com/
https://whnicpress.tumblr.com/
http://www.typecast.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 22.11.2023