Scroll artists' book

©2019 Barry Smith - Mock-up of the vertical scroll artists' book

I have made reasonable inroads into another artists' book for the Compassion Artists' Book Exhibition. The structure of this book is a vertical pull-out scroll as you can see from the photo above.

The core element of this book was a small brass pump about 17cm long and 5cm in diameter. In have made a couple of horizontally held scroll books in the past - so I wanted to add a new design element; and after talking to Fiona I decided on a vertically held scroll.

Of course one needs to fossic around in the stash and see what will complement that core element and enable one to hold the brass cylinder in a stable vertical position - see pieces below.

©2019 Barry Smith - Chosen bits including a brass door hinge decoration

I cut the vertical aperture in the brass pump-cylinder using a side grinder - gentle work.

©2019 Barry Smith - Drilled holes to act as stops for the cutting process

A brass rod fits through a hole in the screws plug at the top and is housed in a drilled out hole in the base. A butterfly screw and a silver-plated object act as the winder for the rod. The scrolls is to be fitted to the rod and drawn out and held horizontally by another rod. I got the scroll into the brass cylinder by tightly rolling it around the brass rod and inserting it into the base through the hole at the top with the screw plug off.

The photos below show the scroll before rolling and inserting through the plug hole at the top; and the roughly completed book.

©2019 Barry Smith- The scroll is strong paper from a pianola scroll.

©2019 Barry Smith - Scroll roughly attached to the brass standing rod

©2019 Barry Smith - Scroll pulled out to the first holding point

©2019 Barry Smith - Scroll pulled out to the second holding point - the printed surface area of the scroll on display will be about 22cm long and 11cm wide

©2019 Barry Smith - Looking down over the book.

Obviously the scroll needs to be printed; and the whole piece needs to be finessed - but I'm happy with the concept.