Home | Elephant Folios | Artists’ Illustrated Books | Fine Press Editions | Exquisite Corpses | Accordion Folds | Gatefolds | Democratic Multiples | Multipart Books | Enclosures
Accordion books come in many shapes and sizes, but they all zig and zag. You’d be surprised at the variety of ways paper can be folded or cut to create pages—back-to-back, tunnels, cut-outs, or pop-ups. The artwork or text can be placed on both the front and back of the pages. Look at one side, see one thing. Look at the backside, see a different set of images. So much to discover.
Zigzag books can be set on their bottom edges or laid on their backsides. Either way you can squeeze and stretch the pages, like an accordion.
For more information about accordion folds, click here.
1929–2014, South Africa
Bits and Pieces
Ocean View, South Africa: Peter E. Clarke, 2005–06
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, museum purchase, 2014-9-1
Do you think this snakelike “book” can fit into its narrow box? Would you believe there are 138 tiny pages, folded like an accordion, in Bits and Pieces? If stretched out as far as possible, how long would it be?
Peter Clarke saved bits and pieces of junk mail—advertisements, flyers, mail-order catalogs—and imagined ways to recycle them into intriguing and whimsical artworks. Even the box is covered with envelope liners: clutter into art.
For more information about Bits and Pieces, click here.
b. 1956, Ghana
Grace Kwami Sculpture
London: Atta Kwami, 1993
Edition 6/32
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, purchase funds donated by Brian and Diane Leyden, 93-17-1
In Ghana, the spider is the trickster known as Ananse. Imagine a spider with its eight legs. Now count the number of unfolded leaves of this artist’s book.
Atta Kwami constructed this book to resemble Ananse. The pictures you see printed on both sides of the spider “legs” tell the story of his mother, Grace Kwami (1923–2006). She was an artist as well.
Ananse the spider is known for his cleverness and skill, apt metaphors for the creativity of Grace Kwami and her son.
For more information about Grace Kwami Sculpture, click here.
