"The Eye of the Dragon"
A set of six media and theme connected concertina books.
Black Canson Mi-Teintes decorated with Ziller acrylic inks, and then plastic-wrapped.
Finished sheets carefully perused for dragon 'eyes', and surrounding,
dragon-evocative head shapes. 'Eyes' cut from spectrachrome, and affixed
to the sheets first
.......front covers cut from 'eye' area, two strips cut for text, and back
cover cut from remnants.
Mount board used for the boards, silver interference mixed with gum arabic
and water for the writing fluid, various pointed pens and silver thread
for interior stitching.
The two text strips were sewn together at the centre as a small panel, and
the edge emphasized
and finished off with Japanese stab binding - each centre piece carries
virtually
the same information, which can be clearly seen on the scans.
The 'container' in which the books were presented is a piece
of very heavy pale-colored paper,
decorated in the same fashion. Here was the only place that silver spectrachrome
was used,
the 'eye' being cut from the centre of a radiating pattern.
The dragon head can actually be very clearly seen on this piece of paper,
in the lines and swirls
of the design. The paper was carefully wrapped around the six books, and
creased and folded
as one would do with a present......the flaps were reinforced with circles
of paper,
and holes punched through.
Caron handpainted cotton thread was braided for the ties, with a
final, and delicious irony - the name of the thread was: "Burnt toast"