Like many people these days, Wen Tzu-hsiu (文自秀) reads books on a Kindle. But that hasn’t stopped her from becoming a prolific collector of physical books.
Having amassed a library of classical Chinese texts and art books, Wen’s collection of pop-up books has grown the most in personal and professional significance.
“Pop-up books, aside from being books, combine the quintessence of aesthetics and craftsmanship,” Wen tells me at We Do Pop-up Lab (有度立體實驗室), Asia’s first pop-up book specialty store that opened in April.
Photo: Davina Tham, Taipei Times
The bright and airy space in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) displays titles from Wen’s personal collection accumulated over 20 years, and is open to anyone who wants to come in and view them.
“In the past usually we would hear parents say, ‘Aiya, don’t let my child touch pop-up books, they’ll get ruined!’” Wen says, when actually, “it’s in the process of looking at pop-up books that children learn to respect books.”
MODERN BOOK-LOVERS
Photo: Davina Tham, Taipei Times
The wonderment of pop-up books has no age restrictions. When families visit We Do Pop-up Lab, children and adults alike ooh and aah over the magical transitions taking place on paper.
“Sometimes we hear ‘Wow!’ as soon as we open a book. When we get to hear that, I feel like it’s the best sound on earth,” Wen says.
Wen, a university lecturer and mother to a son of military conscription age, expresses girlish delight whenever she opens a pop-up book.
Photo: Davina Tham, Taipei Times
She gleefully demonstrates to me paper animations from her in-store collection, which includes not just children’s tales, but art books featuring detailed landscapes and still life, as well as titles released by brands like Hermes, Lego and the Game of Thrones television series.
Her enthusiasm is all-embracing. Among Wen’s prized possessions are a number of almost century-old pop-up books based on nursery rhymes, designed by American illustrator Geraldine Clyne. Lifting the yellowed pages, she pauses before opening one.
“Would you like to know what a really old book smells like?” she asks, holding it up to my nose.
Photo: Davina Tham, Taipei Times
The answer: sweet and vanilla-like, caused by a distinctive release of chemicals as paper, ink and adhesives age and break down. But the older the book, Wen says, the more brilliant the illustrations are likely to be, because there is a higher chance that they were hand-painted.
Wen’s first professional foray into pop-up books happened four years ago, when she took up an offer to set up the first pop-up book museum in Beijing.
After returning to Taiwan, she felt compelled to do something for pop-up books in her own country, and settled on We Do as an experimental space to try out new things in the medium and market.
Photo: Davina Tham, Taipei Times
While no Luddite, Wen says it is a pity that electronic devices have largely replaced books as a popular means of finding entertainment and information.
The book-lover holds faith in pop-up books because of their unique ability to inspire joy and engagement. Whereas computer programs and videos are usually controlled environments giving users a passive experience, pop-up books are a freestyle interaction that children can lead by themselves, she says.
For Astor Lai (賴冠傑), the pop-up book format was a way to distinguish his illustrations in Taiwan’s crowded publishing scene and seize the attention of young readers.
Photo: Davina Tham, Taipei Times
Although pop-up books do not contain a lot of text, they act “like a guide, leading you to develop an interest in the topic,” says Lai, who has designed two pop-up books to educate readers on the natural environment.
“In the current state of things, where sources of information are too scattered,” pop-up books become an effective way to summarize information and present it attractively, he adds.
That is the sentiment behind Our Plastic Ocean, Lai’s second book and a collaboration with Herminia Din (丁維欣), professor of art at the University of Alaska Anchorage, which uses thought-provoking imagery to spotlight the environmental disaster of marine plastic pollution.
EASTERN FRONTIER
Lai is a millennial who grew up at a time when pop-up books were already common in Taiwan. But Wen’s first encounter with the form took place well into adulthood, when she was studying in England. That first book, about the British royal family, made such an impression that she bought it on the spot.
As Wen’s collection grew, it became evident that the art of pop-up books — the earliest instance of which is widely attributed to a Benedictine monk living in Europe in the 13th century — had not found much application in the East.
Although intricate Chinese paper cuttings demonstrate an ancient familiarity with the aesthetic promise of paper, there was no equivalent to paper animations. In recent years, Wen’s independent publishing house has busied itself with bridging that gap.
“The first reason is to let people from Eastern cultures know that we can enter the world of pop-up books, that we can rival the Western world in aesthetics,” Wen says. “The second reason is to let Westerners know that it is not that difficult to understand Eastern cultures.”
Theses efforts have taken the form of pop-up books illustrated with Chinese imagery and painting techniques, distilling the most accessible parts of Chinese culture.
“I think the happiness that [pop-up books] can bring to people exceeds that of the ancient texts,” Wen says, referring to the high barriers of entry for readers to actually reap the benefits of classical Chinese writings.
The simple ingenuity of paper animations also lends the form to do-it-yourself projects, such as a series of cards based on Wen’s prints of classical Chinese and Japanese artworks, with each one teaching a basic technique of paper animation.
Wen says it is her way of giving Taiwan’s young designers more encouragement and exposure to the paper arts. And if Lai — who picked up paper animation through the Internet and local hobby classes — is any example, such efforts might just bear fruit.
“I believe that pop-up books have a future,” Lai says, “because there will always be the kind of person who is drawn to things with nostalgic appeal.”
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