| Pop-up
and Movable Books
In the Context
of History (cont'd from page
1)
(see also A
Timeline History of Movable Books )
It’s said, “All good things come
to an end.” World War I destroyed the
German production centers for printing and
toy manufacturing. It became difficult to gather
the manpower required to produce movable books,
which were hand-assembled and labor-intensive.
Paper production and the demand for ‘frivolous’ pastimes
decreased as well. It would be over 50 years
before these inventive books would again be
in demand and published in large numbers.
 Throughout this dearth of production between
the World Wars, one man breathed new life
into mechanical book publishing. It
was Stephan
Louis Giraud (1879-1950) of England, who
patented a paper structure he variously
called, “stand-up
life-like,” “living models,” and “pictures
that spring to life.” From 1929
to 1949, Giraud published both the
Daily Express
Annuals
and then the Bookano Series, featuring
three-dimensional structures that stood
tall on the page when
opened. They were the first true pop-ups.
[Image:Reproduction
from Giraud's Daily ExpressChildren's
Annual no.2, c.1930 from
A Celebration of Pop-up and Movable
Books:Commemorating the 10th Anniversary
of The Movable Book Society-2004;
photo courtesy of Robert Sabuda]
The use of movables in books languished
but did not completely die. America’s
 publishers
and artists now joined England
in greater numbers
in using movable structures and devices
in books, advertising, and greeting
cards. In
1932, during the doldrums of the Depression,
a New York company, Blue Ribbon Press,
produced a series of pop-up books
of classic fairytales
and cartoon characters, such as Popeye,
Dick Tracy, and Little Orphan Annie.
It was Blue
Ribbon Press that coined the term, ‘pop-up,’ and
used it in their titles.
[Reproduction
from The Pop-up Pinocchio-with
'pop-up' illustrations by Harold
Lentz-Blue
Ribbon Press-1932 from A
Celebration of Pop-up and Movable
Books:Commemorating the 10th Anniversary
of The Movable Book Society-2004;
photo
courtesy of Robert Sabuda]
Providing much merriment and diversion
during WWII was Julian Wehr of
Brooklyn, New York.
He patented a paper rocker panel
that sat behind the base
page and allowed
for multiple
movements with a single
tab, much like Meggendorfer’s
but without the use of a rivet.
Also from New York was Geraldine  Clyne
who produced the Jolly
Jump-up series from the late
1930s to the 1950s. She used
fan-folded
pop-ups, which are simple
accordion, cut-and-folded illustrations.
Her subjects ranged from the
poetry of
Robert Louis
Stevenson, to life-styles in
the new suburbia, to the imagined
frontier
of space travel.
[Image: from The Jolly Jump-ups
Journey Through Space by Geraldine
Clyne, McLoughlin
Bros., Springfield, MA 1952; photo
courtesy of Robert Sabuda]
The
course of pop-up books
took a major turn in the mid-1960s
when the American
entrepreneur
Waldo Hunt of Graphics
International almost single-handedly
launched
a
Second Golden
Age of Movable
Books.
While in Europe, he  came
upon the pop-up
books of Vojtech Kubasta of Prague,
Czechoslovakia. Kubasta’s highly
inventive pop-ups, brightly colored with faux
naif-style illustrations, were being translated
into 37 languages and distributed by Westminster
Books of England with great success in Europe,
Asia, and the Middle East. Hunt’s proposal
to distribute Kubasta’s books in the
United States was rejected by Artia, the Soviet
producer, because Hunt’s large order
wouldn’t fit into the Communists’ Five
Year Plan! Hunt went back to America and put
together a remarkable team of pioneering paper
engineers, chiefly, Ib Penick, Tor Lokvig,
and John Strejan. With Random House, he published
Bennett Cerf ’s
Pop-up Riddle Book (1965) and
gave it away as
a Maxwell House
Coffee premium.
Random House
went on to produce
a series
of pop-up
and
movable books
into the
60s and 70s as
did Hallmark Cards,
which
later took over
Graphics International.
Hunt,
in 1976, formed
the packaging
company, Intervisual
Books.
It produced
many of the pop-ups
we consider classics
today.
[Image:Pop-up
creche, Prazsky
Betlem, Orbis,
1969 byVojtech
Kubasta with 2
free-standing figures;
photo by James
A. Findlay]
Innovations in
paper engineering
continue
to be made. In
1992, Ron Van
der Meer began his
multi-media series
with The Art
Pack, emphasizing
movable
paper’s unique ability to teach
by drawing upon the reader’s active participation.
Included in each book were audio tapes, removable
booklets and pop-ups, and text behind gatefolds.
Robert Sabuda, using solely white paper in
his first pop-up book, The
Christmas Alphabet (1996), stressed the sculptural aspects of
three-dimensional paper and continues to dazzle
readers with evermore complex pop-up surprises.
Kees Moerbeek, after 25 years of searching,
found a format for his unique roly-poly pop-ups.
The Caldecott-winning illustrator, Paul O.
Zelinsky, teamed up with the Meggendorfer Prize-winning
paper engineer, Andrew Baron, to create today’s
most complex
movable book,
Knick-Knack
Paddywhack (2003),
with over
200 moving parts!
In the last few
years, the number
of titles
of pop-up
books printed
has
waned. Movable
books are still
hand-assembled,
and publishers
and packagers
continually seek
the
least costly
labor forces,
now
primarily in
Asia. It’s
hard to say if the downturn in titles is a
consequence of the vagaries of the current
marketplace, the shrinking number of publishers,
or the books’ ever-increasing
costs, largely
based on labor,
glue-points
and
paper use. What
clearly has not
changed in
over 700
years is that
pop-up and movable
books
are still
the products
of inspired
artists, still
have a unique
ability to teach,
and are
still loved
by adults
and children
alike.
Return to page
1 or top of page
2
References
Carlino, Andrea. Paper Bodies: A Catalogue
of Anatomical Fugitive Sheets (1538-1687),
transl. by Nega Arikha. Medical History,
Supplement No. 19. Wellcome Institute for
the History of Medicine, London, 1999.
Dawson, Michael, “Collecting Pop-up Books:
A Collector’s Guide to Children’s
Pop-ups, Movables and other Novelty Books,” Book
and Magazine Collector. No. 139, October 1995.
Dawson, Michael, “S. Louis Giraud and
the development of pop-ups,” reprinted
from Antiquarian book monthly review, May & June,
1991, and June, 1992. Ampersand Books, England,
[nd 1992].
Freeman, Ruth and Larry. Cavalcade of Toys:
A Fascinating Story of Bygone Play. Century
House, NY, 1942.
Gingerich, Owen, “Petrus Apianus-Astronomicum
Caesareum [Ingolstadt, 1540], Rosenwald Collection
678,” #94 Vision of a Collector: The
Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection in the Library
of Congress. The Library of Congress, Washington,
1991.
Haining, Peter. Movable Books: An Illustrated
History by Peter Haining. New English Library
Limited, England, 1979.
Montanaro, Ann, “A Concise History of
Pop-up and Movable Books,” Unfolding
the POP-UP: A History of the Movable Book,
1880 to the Present from the Collection of
Ann Montanaro, January 9-31, 1997, HarperCollins
Exhibition Space.
Walker, Gay. “The Eccentric Book” Eccentric
Books from the Yale University Library, January-March
1988. [Exhibit Catalog]
Whitton, Blair. Paper Toys of the World. Hobby
House Press, Inc., Cumberland, MD 1986.
Electronic References
Anon. From Script to Print: The Transformation
of Medieval and Renaissance Documents: An Exhibit
in Archives and Special Collections, A. M.
Bracken Library, Ball State University, October
14-December 31, 1999.
http://www.bsu.edu/libraries/viewpage.aspx?src=./collections/archives/script_to_print.html#Case%201:%20Introduction%20 (March 15, 2005).
Anon. Johann Remmelin-Catoptrum Microcosmicum.
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/rbr/imaging/remmelin/about.htm (March 16, 2005).
Anon. Key dates in Education Great Britain
1000 - 1899.
http://www.thepotteries.org/dates/education.htm (March 15, 2005).
Anon. Robert Raikes, 1736-1811, Sunday
School Movement.
http://www.believersweb.org/view.cfm?ID=143 (March 15, 2005).
Hiner, Mark. A Short History of Pop-ups.
http://www.markhiner.co.uk/history-text.htm (December 2004)
.
Lewis, Jacquelyn. Children's Publishing at
the Turn of the Century - A Lasting Impression?
http://apm.brookes.ac.uk/publishing/culture/lewis.html (March 15, 2005).
|
