Thursday, January 26, 2012

To Tear or Not to Tear

Is it right or wrong to tear up or make over old books. I know, I know, A lot of people are doing just that and making incredible art - Some incredibly awful, some incredibly wonderful - I don't know if I can do it.
My wonderful friend Emanda is going to bring me a couple of dead books from her second hand emporium. They might be possibilities, still I do believe I will struggle.
We are off to Fiber Forum in April, I am not using the Royal "We" here as The Husband is coming with me to partake of a class making a reliquary with Christine Atkins similar to the photo above from Chris's site.
This year I am making a book with Jenny Crossley of A Mark In Time.

I have to tear up and/or remake books too.
Part of our requirements lists are old books to tear up. We agreed that the thought of that, let alone the actual act, is just wrong and we don't think we can.
So I have spent some time today downloading a few old books that appealed to him as possibilities for his class and I am looking for some for ancient needlework texts for mine.
Here's a site I've been too courtesy of Feeling Stitchy's list of downloads.
Web. Archive Org   to have a look at "A booke of curious and strange inventions" which is actually a book of needle work patterns.
The wonderful book selections from Pin Tangle.
Patterns from the 1886 pattern book from J. F. Ingalls
Therese Dillmont's Encyclopedia of Needlework
The Digital Scriptorium
and some beautiful plates from BibliOdyssey

Yes, I do believe I would rather download and print reproductions of individual pages than tear up a book. For me it is definitely "Not to Tear".

3 comments:

Christine Atkins said...

Hi Peta I enjoyed reading your post, it is an interesting topic and one for lots of discussion. The books I tend to use are not classics or that old. One book that I am using at the moment is the davinci code, in paperback. Feel free to not bring any old books as Greg will be fine without them. Bring some images or typed up words. Hope this helps and thanks for blogging about my class.

Unknown said...

You are welcome Christine. Looking forward to seeing you soon.

Sparklyjools said...

I tried to do this once - like you I couldn't do wanton damage to any book! Thanks for the list, a few links there I haven't visited.