MY TRIP TO MECCA
Seeing Pop-ups Made

by Ellen G.K. Rubin
(reprinted from Movable Stationery vol.8 no.3 August 2000)

No less compelling than the holy city of Mecca, Ibarra, Ecuador is the pop-up collector’s center of the Universe. Imagine my demeanor of reverence layered over the giddiness of good fortune at having to go to Cargraphics, S.A. in Ibarra to witness the production of Brooklyn Pops Up, the pop-up catalog for the forthcoming exhibition, Brooklyn Pops Up! The History and Art of the Movable Book-see photos. (The issue of the disappearing exclamation point will not be addressed here.) As on any first time pilgrimage, one must have an experienced guide. Mine was none other than Robert Sabuda, designer of the catalog, a contributing paper engineer, and co-curator of the exhibition along with Ann Montanaro and myself. Over twelve years of collecting and writing about pop-ups had led to my having a part in making one.

Now we were off to the real thing, the dreams and plans of two years behind us. The catalog would have eight spreads each depicting a Brooklyn landmark which satisfied the Library’s challenge to make the exhibition relevant to Brooklyn. Twelve paper engineers and illustrators from around the world were enthusiastically contributing their expertise. Maurice Sendak, a Brooklyn native and a collector of pop-ups, was enlisted to do the cover art. Robert made the artwork movable with a peek-a-boo window on the reverse side, a la The Genius of Meggendorfer, the pop-up book celebrating Meggendorfer's artistry.

The preliminary nesting sheets I had seen in New York were printed and die-cut in Cali, Colombia and trucked to Ibarra, 10 hours away. The 150 copies of the Limited Edition would be assembled and
numbered during our stay. Fifty of them were to have tipped-in sheets of signatures by the contributing artists. Robert had sent the sheets around the world. We were scheduled to meet our hosts from Cargraphics, Alvaro Lopez and Guillermo Holguin, for a week’s stay.

After driving through the lush green mountainous corridor from Quito (elev. 9,200 ft) to Ibarra, and congratulating ourselves on beating the usual high-altitude headache, we were greeted by a ‘Welcome to Ecuador’ sign over Cargraphic’s front door, a harbinger of the friendliness we encountered throughout our stay. I stepped through the portal atwitter with expectation. Here the very air felt different; everyone inside was concerned with the production of pop-up books. This visit was to be much like my Hanukkah trip to Israel. No longer in the Diaspora, I would be in a place which was singly centered on my interests, my passion.

Much like a sacred place, the interior of the Ibarra plant was awash in a great white light. The white walls of the factory were rimmed with windows at ceiling level on three sides letting in the sunlight filtered through the high thin air. Seated at over 15 long tables, in rows like pews, were almost 600 workers, mostly women, dressed in white coats. More than 200 were assigned to Brooklyn Pops Up alone and would produce the 16,500 book run in a week to ten days. Since there is no heavy machinery used in this facility, the quiet was broken only by the rustling of paper. In fact, the highest tech item I saw was an oscillating fan used to dry the glued stacks of completed spreads.

After being introduced to the supervisory staff and digging deeply into my limited Spanish-I had thumbed through my Berlitz book on the plane- we were ushered into the plant. Passing the on-site medical facility, we entered the scrapping room where die-cut pieces are separated. My heart jumped as it does when one recognizes a celebrity on the street. Lying on an entrance table were die-cut parts from Brooklyn Pops Up. These landmarks of New York were totally out of context. Here in the Andes, with a mix of Spanish and indigenous peoples, most of whom had never ventured beyond their village, lay the Brooklyn Bridge, Coney Island, and Nathan’s frankfurters. It was like finding a yo-yo in a Tibetan monastery. On shelves lay miniature boxes of Junior’s cheesecake and glasses of foamy egg creams for Moerbeek’s and Dijs’ Flavors of Brooklyn. The workers, with total indifference, used rubber mallets to pound out the shapes.

Worker pounds out die-cut pieces for movables in Brooklyn Pops Up

Like proud parents, Robert and I took photographs of our offspring (my first born!) from every vantage point. The workers smiled at our intensity of purpose and the dangerous positions we assumed as well. For them, this was just another book, another day’s work. But I was smiling beatifically. I was escorted from table to table by Alvaro whose business card boasts, Account Executive, Pop-up and Board Book Division. With more than 16 years of experience, he has devoted his working life to pop-ups. My kind of guy! In fact, what kept me grinning were the constant reminders that every person and artifact in the three assembly plants I visited were all devoted to pop-up books. Thinking of Robert’s oft quoted remark, "Pop-ups are the stepchildren of publishing," I recalled feeling like an ignored stepchild myself. I know what it’s like to have my interest trivialized, relegated to the insubstantial. But here you could hear me humming the opening bars from "This Is My Country!"

(buy Brooklyn Pops Up)