In 2006, Helen Hiebert invited me to Haystack to attend her class on making paper lamps. It was such fun and Helen is an amazing educator, as everyone knows who has ever read any of her books. Today she sent me a link to her website where she published a photo of some of the blooks I made in her class. By the way, they are Reference Blook lamps and lanterns, if you can't tell. I had forgotten about this photo and thought maybe you'd like to see them. Here is a link to her site: http://helenhiebertstudio.com/summer-camp/. Since then I've made many book objects and hopefully always will.
While we are on the subject of sweet-smelling blooks, I thought I'd write a short post about one of the most peculiar genres of blooks I'm aware of -- book soap. The soaps shown below are the only commercially produced book soaps I have seen, but I hope that you will correct me if I'm wrong. Both of the book soaps depicted below are from the Book Cadillac Hotel in Detroit, Michigan. The 'book' in Book Cadillac stands for the name of the three Book Brothers, who were the original developers of the hotel. I know that souvenir hotel soap collecting is a traditional pastime and I'm so happy that someone decided to save these sadly deteriorated examples for us to enjoy (or be a bit turned off by).
Bar of Ivory Soap
Book Cadillac Hotel, Detroit Michigan
American, after 1924
6.3 x 3.7 x 1.2 cm (2.5 x 1.5 x .5 in)
Dubansky Collection
Sterns’ Bay Dreams
Soap (Savon Superfin) in paper wrapper
Book Cadillac Hotel, Detroit Michigan (made in Paris)
American, after 1924
5.7 x 3.3 x 1.5 cm
(2.2 x 1.3 x .6 in)
Dubansky Collection
Here is a description about the Book Cadillac Hotel from its current website:
Located at the corner of State Street and Detroit's Washington Boulevard, once dubbed the Fifth Avenue of the Midwest, the hotel first opened in 1924 as the tallest hotel in the world with 33 floors and 1,136 guestrooms. Presidents, entertainers, major sports celebrities like Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, and many other notables were guests of Book Cadillac.
Designed in the Italian Renaissance style by architect Louis Kamper, the
‘Book' was the top hotel in Detroit for several years hosting conventions,
weddings, and many high society social events. The hotel played a role in the
1948 film State of the Union starring Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn
and Angela Lansbury - it was room "2419" where Presidential hopeful, Grant
Matthews (Tracy), readied for his speech to Detroit's business leaders. A
nighttime image of the hotel's marquee is seen in the movie. The hotel went in a downward tailspin when America was in its economic
dilemma in the late 1920s and 1930s. New ownership pumped up the property and
the Book Cadillac continued to flourish through the 1940s and early 1960s.
However the grand lady of Washington Boulevard fell on hard times again and
struggled through ownership changes and was re-flagged a Sheraton and later a
Radisson, until the doors closed in 1984 and the hotel was liquidated in
1986...
This is making me want to send out a challenge for a blook soap-carving contest, let me know if you are inspired to make one.
In addition to regular posts, I would like to have guest posts and also the occasional blook how-to project. I'll make an attempt to inspire you with a couple of faux bookshelf projects, including my favorite, the haunted bookshelf.
You know, when you search the Internet for the term 'faux books' the objects that show up are not at all the common items from daily life, like most of the items I own. They are quite fru-fru and there are lots of gold-tooled leather bindings. Faux books are certainly a blook category in themselves. They are the types of items interior decorators might place in a den or library to impart an air of culture. A number of manufacturers and binderies make book walls and panels for book walls as shown in this video, but bookbinders, artists and crafters could easily make their own personal blook libraries. If you are in New York City and go to Scully&Scully on Park Avenue, you'll see them in every imaginable configuration.
Here is a YouTube video about turning regular door into a book wall. You could apply the same principle to any cabinet door. Please don't cut the spines off of real books. You'll go to hell, really. (Well, actually I don't know if you will or not, but I told you I felt strongly about so-called altered books):
Over the last few years I've been expanding my collection of Halloween blook props. They are a recent addition because I never knew they existed. I play with them all year, but make a special attempt to put them out around the library during the Halloween season (yes, some consider it a season). Many of them are motion-activated and they tend to activate each other, that gets really wild and very noisy, too noisy for a library. I'll have to put a post up in October, but here is one I want to share now because you'll have to get started on it to have it ready for your haunted library or house. I haven't made one, but I would love to. I need to.
This is a three-part video on making your own haunted bookshelf. Every book-lover should probably have one. It uses real books, but you could easily substitute blooks made of wood, Styrofoam, cereal boxes, etc. Don't forget to look on YouTube for others, they are there. I just like the highbrow/lowbrow juxtaposition of the two videos.
I hope you enjoyed the first project post! Send pictures and descriptions, and/or add
comments if you make something. We all want to see.
