Artist keeps craft alive with beautifully bound books
In a world taken over by digitised forms of just about everything, book artist Liz Constable says her beautifully bound bohemian journals, handmade envelopes and painstakingly stitched self-help books still inspire the biggest shrieks of delight from total strangers.
Journaling in cafés, Constable often feels eyes shrouding over her diary. "They say, oh that looks like a very old book," Constable says. "Oh yes, it's two weeks old," she laughs.
Type 'book art' into online creative depository, Pinterest, and it will come up with 636 ways of turning old, clunky books into works of art. Likewise, Google images paints a pretty picture of the ways you can up-cycle unwanted novels.
But unlike the art we relegate to a shelf or a picture hook, Constable's creations are usable. They're designed to be drawn on, hauled around in a tote and pulled out to illustrate ideas, and are made with any material she can get her hands on.
"It's that old worldy style," she says. "Everyone wants things to look old. You see people with laptops in bags that look like they're carrying old typewriters."
What started off as a hobby 16 years ago turned into a full time business called Book Art Studios in 2007, when Constable, then a careers counsellor, says she counselled herself out of her former job and into where her heart truly lay- making books.
It began with dying her journal papers with tea and coffee, then a friend introduced her to coloured dye. Now the "scavenger by nature" says her books are made with paper taken from the likes of old shipping maps, cloth and other recycled materials, before being stitched and bound in her own West Auckland studio.
The UK migrant makes books for the likes of happy couples who need something special to keep track of wedding guests, to soda giant Coca Cola who commissioned Constable to make books for staff training, and Fonterra, whose Constable-made creations went all the way to a conference in China.
Constable believes it's the nostalgia that inspires such gushing responses from people who frequently request to hug her when they see her creations. Not so long ago she hand delivered a job application written in a handmade book, nestled in a mail art envelope.
She despairs walking into bookstores and seeing the rows and rows of identical book spines, prompting ever more thoughts about how she can make her work stand out.
It's a thought at the forefront of her mind as Constable prepares to undertake something she's never done- producing her first book series en masse by enlisting the help of potential publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. After years of ensuring each of her works is unique, Constable said the decision to take hand made to mass made came after reading a theory that it takes 10,000 hours to perfect a skill.
Constable realised she'd clocked up more than enough over time, and enjoyed 'the simple life' long enough to begin relishing the fruits of her labour.
She wants to produce a series of semi-autobiographical self-help books, whose roots can be traced back to the death of Constable's aunt many years ago. "Oh, I see a door," were her finals words on her death bed, prompting Constable to wonder just what exactly was behind that door.
"I was so curious," Constable says. The words kept coming and before she knew it, nine books were conceived. The Martha series, she calls it. Stories for adults grappling with bigger issues.
In March she published and began selling another self-help book, One Small Drop, in order to help fundraise for Frankfurt. Unlike the text heavy self help books of yester-year, you can hold One Small Drop in one hand. The pages are laser cut with small drops that turn into hearts with every page turn, the colours gradually turning from dark to light.
More than 7,000 authors and book makers at the book fair will be vying for the attention of publishers who scout the exhibits for "innovate business models".
After attending the fair some years ago Constable walked around searching for fellow book artists, disheartened to find they were "miles away from anywhere." Her exhibit, she promises, will be like walking into one of her storybooks.
"I came back and I said I'm not going to stand in a queue trying to get someone to read it. I said I don't care how it happens, I'm going to get someone to pick up the Martha series."
Written by Kelly Dennett. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.
Image credit: Getty