By Kelly Fu, WPAMC Class of 2022
Overview
Figure 1. Volvelle with Unicorn, in Kartenlossbuch (1543). Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library. New Haven.
Although movable books all boast pages with three-dimensional elements, the genre encompasses a wide range of forms and functions. From pop-up books and books containing movable paper dolls most often associated with a juvenile audience, to Renaissance treatises containing volvelles used by Humanist scholars to illustrate complex mathematics, movable books can be slim or substantial, large or small, read by adults or children. The movable paper element, furthermore, proliferated in many forms. Early movable books with volvelles, which are paper structures that can be rotated to visualize complex astronomical calculations, were usually round or oval, both to facilitate the rotational motion and to mimic the rotational trajectories of heavenly bodies (Figure 1). Books with paper dolls, usually catering to a juvenile audience, contain interleaved human-shaped cut-out figures that can be taken out and manipulated. Pop-up books, arguably among the most prolific genre of movable books, often featured paper structures attached to the codex page that can be flipped up to stand, creating three-dimensional vistas that literally bring two-dimensional text to life.
While their contents are as varied as their forms, the didactic function of the movable paper components, born of a necessity to elucidate two-dimensional textual descriptions in a three-dimensional and interactive manner appears to unify this diverse genre of anomalous books. The didactic potential of movable books, especially children’s pop-up books, to make two-dimensional content three-dimensional, interactive, and therefore more effectively communicated, has been discussed in literature. Notably, Hannah Field’s recent work on Victorian pop-up books explores how pop-up books were mobilized by Victorian Britain to inculcate socially acceptable conduct and gender roles in children.¹ This entry, however, focuses specifically on a type of movable books that have not been discussed as a separate genre: those that employ paper flaps that can be easily lifted and lowered to enable the viewing of multiple layers of visual information in quick succession. While this genre of movable book, also, has little formal consistency, the use of an easily peeled back paper overlay, nevertheless, invites the quick comparison of information, offering access to multiple places, temporalities, and realities at once. Responding to the enlightenment drive of improvement, books with paper flaps, or flip and see books, served as an efficient didactic tool that made information that cannot usually be accessed together viewable in close juxtaposition.
Figure 2. Page from Interiorum Corporis Humani Partium Viva Delineation (R.S., London, 1559), Art Institute of Chicago, 2015.345.
The use of the paper flap date to early modern anatomy treatises, which used movable paper flaps to make visible the layered organs in a human body in an age when the public display and dissection of actual human bodies remained taboo. As seen in the 16th-century example of a human anatomy diagram from the Chicago Art Institute (Figure 2), the movable book with paper flap allowed one to lift up paper overlay that represents the human skin to learn the organs that lie underneath. By lifting and lowering the paper flaps in succession, the reader of the anatomical book could replicate, albeit on paper rather than in person, an anatomical dissection of a human cadaver. The easily lifted paper flap, operating as a material surrogate for the human skin, organ, and bones, provided an interactive, easily reproducible, and socially acceptable way of disseminating knowledge about the human body. Unlike an actual dissection, the paper flap that represents skin could be lowered easily at the end of a reader’s viewing, restoring the paper cadaver to its original, untouched state and prompting the reader to compare his/her newly-gained knowledge of what lies underneath the skin with his/her accustomed view of an undissected human body. Furthermore, unlike an in vivo dissection, which can only be performed when cadavers became available, the paper flap can be raised and lowered as many times as the reader pleases to allow for the view into the body’s hidden anatomical structures. The reproducibility of this anatomy lesson enables the viewer to repeatedly rehearse the dissection on paper, until his/her knowledge is improved.
Figure 3. Title page of Humphry Repton’s Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1794). Wintherthur Rare Book Collection, SB471 R42s.
Not only were flip and see books used to improve human knowledge, they were also used to advertise the proposed benefits of proposed “improvements” on nature. Advanced treatises on aesthetics, perspectives, and landscaping in the 18th and 19th century often used paper flaps that viewers can flip back and forth to model views from different perspectives on the same page, comparing the visual content on different paper layers at each turn to decide what is the superior view. Humphry Repton’s 1803 illustrated treatise on landscaping (Figure 3), for instance, used paper flaps to illustrate the proposed effects of his landscaping efforts on different country estates: by lifting the paper overlay and placing it back down, the viewers of his illustrations can alternately observe the current state of an estate and what it would have looked like after Repton’s proposed “improvements”. The reader, lifting and lowering the flap, is prompted to make comparisons and aesthetic judgments between the two views (Figures 4 and 5). Repton’s illustrations of his “improved designs”, which are somewhat dramatically revealed as the reader lifts away two long strips of smooth, heavy, woven paper of good quality, are evidently the implied winner at every turn. The ease of lifting the overlay further tantalizes the viewer to flip the paper strip back and forth to make frequent comparisons across layers, a prompt that contemporary readers no doubt took, as evidenced by the broken-off paper flaps in some of Repton’s treatise pages. Bridging two temporalities, of what a place could have been like and what it was like in reality, Repton’s use of movable paper flaps enabled his readers to compare and contrast between the present state of affairs and a promise for an improved future. The reader’s ability to travel across the present view and a future view of the same location through the flip of a piece of paper overlay further points out that the flip-and-see book transforms the reader’s access to the book’s two-dimensional content to a four-dimensional experience. The flip-and-see book prompted the reader to search for the possibility to improve on the status quo, accomplished through a simple flip of a book page.
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Figure 4. Illustration from Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening: Collected from Designs and Observations Now in the Possession of the Different Noblemen and Gentlemen, for Whose Use They were Originally Made by Humphry Repton (London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1794). Wintherthur Rare Book Collection, SB471 R42s.
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Figure 5. Movable flap removed from illustration in <em>Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening: Collected from Designs and Observations Now in the Possession of the Different Noblemen and Gentlemen, for Whose Use They were Originally Made </em> by Humphry Repton (London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1794). Wintherthur Rare Book Collection, SB471 R42s.
Diagram of a Book with Movable Didactics
Glossary of Terms
A paper construction with rotating parts, usually inserted in a codex. It is, at least in its early examples usually used to accommodate calculations in astronomical subjects.
Annotated Bibliography
This Winterthur collection item, from 19th century France, demonstrates more sinister ways in which movable books can be used to socialize children into problematic racial hierarchies. By encouraging them to interact with Robinson Crusoe’s “domestication” of Friday, the indigenous person he encountered on the island, this book encourages children to literally manipulate bodies of Friday, to make three-dimension and therefore to bring to life the scenes of his subjugation to Crusoe.
Field illustrates the Victorian proliferation of movable books, mostly in the forms of pop-ups and tunnel books and makes clear the antecedents of the pop-up books in humanistic treatises used for medical purposes. This book, however, mostly focuses on the cultural and social history of childhood through the lens of engagement with Victorian pop-up books.
This work is an early anatomical treatise, in which multiple paper overlay create representations of the layered skin, organs, and bones of the human body. By making the paper flaps easily movable, the book encouraged the readers to lift them and examine at what lies usually unseen underneath the skin. The penetrative, analytical, and clinical gaze that this anatomical treatise encourages, is distinct from the diversion that later pop-up books aimed to inspire. Nevertheless, the two forms of movable books shared a genealogy and were both employed to educate.
Full Citation: Interiorum Corporis Humani Partium Viva Delineation. R.S., London, 1559. Art Institute of Chicago, 2015.345. https://www.artic.edu/artworks/229830/interiorum-corporis-humani- partium-viva-delineatio-from-the-second-edition-of-the-compendiosa-totius-anatomie-delineation.
This didactic volume aimed to teach the complex rules of artistic perspectives and to make plain three-dimensional concepts, such as vanishing points, which are difficult to make sense of on a two-dimensional surface. The Book featured elaborate paper architecture that mimicked an actual built structure that artists might be expected to replicate.
Ann Montanaro, the founder of the Movable Book Society, has written several book-length treatments of movable books (though mostly pop-up books). This short article offers a helpful overview of the short history of movable books, from Renaissance uses of volvelles to the 18th century birth of pop-up books, as well as a list of references on the subject. The Movable Book Society (movablebooksociety.org) appears to be the only organization dedicated to this genre of books. It organizes conferences and supports new publications on the subject, but does not seem to specify much on what is valued in collecting these books. Edition, condition, aesthetics, content, and other common elements of consideration appear most relevant in the collection of these books.
Full Citation: Montanaro, Ann. “A Concise History of Pop-up and Movable Books.” Rutgers University Library, https://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/libs/scua/montanar/p-intro.htm.
All of Humphry Repton’s treatises in the Winterthur collection feature movable paper implements, installed in similar ways. I also discovered, but failed to access, a 1806 Philadelphia gardening publication utilizing Repton’s technique of flip-and-see book to visualize proposed improvements on gardens.
Additional books by Repton:
- Observations on the theory and practice of landscape gardening: including some remarks on Grecian and Gothic architecture, collected from various manuscripts in the possession of different noblemen and gentlemen. London: J. Taylor, 1803. Winterthur Rare Book Collection, SB471 R42o F.
- Fragments on the theory and practice of landscape gardening: including some remarks on grecian and Gothic architecture, collected from various manuscripts in possession of the different noblemen and gentlemen. London: J. Taylor, 1816. Winterthur Rare Book Collection, SB471 R42f.
Helen Smith’s article discusses the three-dimensionality of the pages in Renaissance codices, pointing out how paper implements, such as the volvelle, were widely used to enliven otherwise flat-laying contents of the page.
Full Citation: Smith, Helen. “‘A Unique Instance of Art’: The Proliferating Surfaces of Early Modern Paper.” Journal of the Northern Renaissance 8 (2017). http://www.northernrenaissance.org/a-unique-instance-of-art-the-proliferating-surfaces-of-early-modern-paper/.
Notes
[1] An example of this is the copy of Robinson Crusoe’s adventures in the Winterthur Library collections. See Daniel Defoe. Voyages et aventures de Robinson Crusoë. (Paris: Guérin-Müller, 186[?]), Winterthur Rare Books Collection, PZ3 D31v.
