Thursday, January 27, 2011

Day 3, January 26th - A Palm Leaf for Maya Angelou

Today I tried a very simple book structure I've known about and liked for a long time but have never made. It's an ancient form of making books, and traditional to Tibet, India and South Asia. Named for the early books when the pages were made of palm leaves, they are simply a pile of pages, usually long and narrow, stacked on top of each other. They have one, two, or three holes punched through the stack and the pages are strung together on a cord or string. You read it by flipping the pages.




My palm book is a tribute to Maya Angelou. Each of the 20 pages is printed with a quotation by her. The cover also features a quotation, "A bird doesn't sing  because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song." The leaves are strung on waxed linen cord and two fluorite beads are knotted at the ends.


2 comments:

  1. I found your blog a few days ago in April2011 and so l thought l would go back to the beginning and see each day. Wow you are a brave lady to take on this challenge.xxwell done..l will be cheering you ALL through the yearx lynda

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is beautiful! I have never seen this style of book. It'll be neat to see all the classic book styles you use as well as the ones you come up with yourself. I saw a post of yours on livejournal and am now going through all your books. :) I made a handmade book one time for my friend but I wish I had come across sites like this first so I could have been more creative with it. I just found a site online that told how you can use a cereal box to make a simple bound book and learned how to stitch it and everything all in one day...it turned out alright with what I had. I didn't have the right thread and Id idn't have a needle big enough so I had to use a bent paperclip lol....

    ReplyDelete