The final book with a fish theme that I made used a paper fold that was taught to me as a “Shepherd’s Purse”, a fold which I’ve seen before used to make a compact guide map to a city that opens up into three fairly large pages.  I expanded upon the form to make a book of nine pages.  Each page opens to 8.5” x 10”, but closed the book measures 4.75” x 5.5” x .66” thick.

This book explores the fish and fishing as an icon in myth, symbolism, and folk wisdom for the last four or five thousand years.  The text and images on all pages was laid out using InDesign 2.0 on a Powerbook G4. Twinrocker paper pages were then ink-jet printed, hand watercolored -- some pages were also rubber-stamped -- and sealed prior to folding.

Each folded set was glued onto card stock armatures and onto the covers.  The lengths and folds of the covers and supporting pieces onto which the sheets were glued were precisely measured to allow creation of a “floating” text block that acts like it has a spine, but doesn’t.  The cover, being one long piece onto which both the first and last sheet are glued, holds everything together.