What do you think?
Rate this book
500 Series
500 Handmade Books: Inspiring Interpretations of a Timeless Form
Interest in bookbinding and the related arts has exploded in the past decade, inspiring artists to explore the unlimited possibilities of the form—and delighting collectors, crafters, and gallery owners. Lark’s Cover to Cover has been a bestseller for more than ten years, and this new and provocative on-the-page gallery, richly illustrated with hundreds of breathtaking photographs, will appeal to that same large and discerning audience. They’ll appreciate the artistry of a finely tooled leather cover, embellished with traditional gold-leaf lettering; the intricacy of an exotic Ethiopian binding with a show-stopping open spine; and others that resemble mysterious puzzle boxes, or that curl, hang, and swirl. The sublimely talented contributors all put their finest work on display: Jeanne Germani’s Cloudspeak showcases her own handmade papers, made from such varied materials as recycled denim, thistle, and other plant matter. Chris Bivin’s codex-style volume features curious, tiny, found objects. One of Laura Wait’s untitled pieces utilizes a handsome raised-cord binding to connect a pair of stained-cedar covers with abstract aluminum letterforms attached.
The entire collection is juried by the esteemed Steve Miller.
The entire collection is juried by the esteemed Steve Miller.
419 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2007
About the author
Suzanne J.E. Tourtillott
19 books4 followersSuzanne Tourtillott was born in post-war Germany but lives and works, happily, in Asheville, North Carolina. After studying and then teaching fine art and commercial photography, she turned to writing arts journalism for periodicals and, ultimately, to writing and editing craft books. Suzanne has edited more than 50 titles in jewelry, ceramics, needle crafts--even poetry. Her business/Twitter is @editorious; see the site at http://editorious.org and tweets via #editorious. you can follow Suzanne's visual interests on Pinterest (pinning as username suzanne33).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
December 7, 2019
this was really neat! i don't think i've given much thought to the art of bookmaking in the past, so this was a great first look. although, i do wish some of the entries included more pictures, and perhaps some more background on the artists and the works. but overall very refreshing and soothing to peruse through! and the works included have inspired me within my own work :)
June 26, 2026
In an age when books are increasingly dematerialized into digital files, 500 Handmade Books offers a compelling reminder that the book itself remains one of humanity's most expressive artistic mediums. Edited by Suzanne J. E. Tourtillot, this remarkable volume is less a survey of bookbinding than a celebration of the book as sculpture, performance, architecture, and intimate object. Like the other titles in Lark Books' celebrated "500 Series," it gathers together hundreds of contemporary works from artists across the world, revealing astonishing diversity within a single artistic tradition.
The collection ultimately argues that a book is never merely a vessel for text. It is itself a language. Rather than organizing the works chronologically or according to technical schools, the editor presents a visual conversation among artists who continually redefine what constitutes a "book." Some creations remain comfortably recognizable, while others stretch the definition until the object borders on installation art. Throughout the collection, viewers encounter accordion books, tunnel books, altered books, scrolls, concertinas, folded structures, sewn assemblages, carved volumes, textile books, and sculptural constructions that seem simultaneously ancient and futuristic.
One of the volume's greatest strengths is precisely this refusal to establish rigid boundaries. As Tourtillot notes in the introduction, handmade books represent "inspiring interpretations of a timeless form." That phrase encapsulates the collection's central insight: the codex is not obsolete but infinitely adaptable.
The artists repeatedly return to one profound question: “What makes something a book?” The answers vary dramatically.
Some works privilege narrative. Others abandon language almost entirely, allowing paper, fibre, wood, metal, wax, thread, and found objects to become the vocabulary. Reading becomes less an intellectual exercise than a tactile experience. One "reads" by unfolding, peering, rotating, lifting, opening compartments, or tracing stitched pathways with one's fingers.
The collection therefore shifts our understanding of literacy itself. Many of the accompanying artist statements reveal this transformation. Rather than describing illustrations or stories, artists discuss memory, landscape, ecology, identity, ritual, loss, and materiality. Their books invite participation rather than passive observation.
One artist remarks that the book becomes "an intimate space between maker and reader," while another describes the page as "a place where time unfolds physically." Such statements illuminate why handmade books continue to flourish despite digital publishing: they engage the entire body.
Material choices become forms of meaning. Throughout the volume, paper is rarely just paper. Handmade fibres evoke fragility. Rust suggests memory. Wax preserves while simultaneously obscuring. Thread becomes both literal binding and metaphorical connection. Transparency allows pages to converse across layers, while cut paper transforms absence into presence.
Several artists exploit repetition masterfully. Identical folds become rhythms resembling poetry. Sequential openings create cinematic pacing. Others deliberately interrupt expectations, producing books that refuse linear reading altogether. One unfolds vertically like architecture; another spirals inward; another resembles an archaeological artifact more than a manuscript.
Such innovations recall the insights of literary theorists like Roland Barthes, who argued that texts are not fixed objects but dynamic encounters between creator and reader. Here, that encounter becomes literally physical.
Equally striking is the collection's dialogue with sculpture. Many pieces occupy space like small monuments. Some stand independently without requiring support. Others cast intricate shadows that become part of the artwork itself. Several books seem designed as much for galleries as for libraries, reminding us that contemporary book arts occupy an increasingly interdisciplinary territory between literature, design, architecture, printmaking, ceramics, textiles, and installation.
This sculptural sensibility distinguishes 500 Handmade Books from traditional bookbinding manuals. Readers seeking detailed instruction or step-by-step techniques may initially find themselves surprised. Technical explanations remain intentionally brief. Instead, the emphasis falls on inspiration rather than pedagogy. That editorial choice proves wise. Technique can be learned elsewhere. Vision cannot.
For artists, educators, and students, the collection functions as an inexhaustible sourcebook of creative possibilities. Opening the volume at random often generates entirely new ideas about sequencing, structure, materials, or conceptual approaches.
The diversity of artistic voices also prevents visual fatigue. Unlike many exhibition catalogues where aesthetic similarity dominates, each page offers genuine surprise. Delicate minimalist constructions stand beside exuberant mixed-media assemblages. Precision coexists with improvisation. Traditional craftsmanship appears alongside playful experimentation. The result feels less like a museum catalogue than an ongoing conversation about what books have been—and what they might yet become.
If the collection has one limitation, it lies in the unavoidable constraints of its format. Each artist receives only a page or two, allowing little room for sustained discussion of individual practices. Many readers will inevitably wish for longer interviews, more process photographs, or deeper contextual essays. Yet this brevity is also intrinsic to the project's success. By presenting 500 works rather than fifty, Tourtillot creates an extraordinary panorama of contemporary practice whose cumulative effect far exceeds any individual entry.
The volume's design complements its subject beautifully. High-quality photography captures textures, folds, fibres, stitching, embossing, translucency, and dimensionality with remarkable clarity. Although photographs cannot reproduce the tactile pleasures of handling handmade books, they succeed in conveying the extraordinary craftsmanship involved.
Perhaps the book's greatest achievement is philosophical rather than aesthetic. It quietly dismantles the assumption that digital technology has rendered books obsolete. Instead, it demonstrates that the physical book possesses expressive capacities unavailable to screens. Weight, texture, resistance, unfolding, concealment, surprise, smell, and touch become essential components of meaning. Reading becomes embodied once again.
For educators in visual arts, book arts, design, and creative writing, this insight is especially valuable. The collection encourages interdisciplinary thinking, suggesting that storytelling need not be confined to words alone. Structure itself tells stories.
Ultimately, 500 Handmade Books celebrates one of humanity's oldest inventions by revealing its limitless capacity for reinvention. It invites readers to look beyond the printed page and recognize the book as an artistic form capable of infinite transformation. Every binding, fold, stitch, cut, and material choice becomes an act of meaning-making. Long after closing its covers, one finds oneself looking differently at every book thereafter—not merely asking what it says, but what it is.
500 Handmade Books is an indispensable volume for book artists, librarians, educators, ceramic and mixed-media artists, designers, and anyone fascinated by the intersection of literature and visual art. Suzanne J. E. Tourtillot has assembled not simply a gallery of beautiful objects but a profound meditation on the enduring possibilities of the book itself. It reminds us that every handmade book embodies an ancient paradox: it is both container and content, object and idea, artifact and living conversation.
The collection ultimately argues that a book is never merely a vessel for text. It is itself a language. Rather than organizing the works chronologically or according to technical schools, the editor presents a visual conversation among artists who continually redefine what constitutes a "book." Some creations remain comfortably recognizable, while others stretch the definition until the object borders on installation art. Throughout the collection, viewers encounter accordion books, tunnel books, altered books, scrolls, concertinas, folded structures, sewn assemblages, carved volumes, textile books, and sculptural constructions that seem simultaneously ancient and futuristic.
One of the volume's greatest strengths is precisely this refusal to establish rigid boundaries. As Tourtillot notes in the introduction, handmade books represent "inspiring interpretations of a timeless form." That phrase encapsulates the collection's central insight: the codex is not obsolete but infinitely adaptable.
The artists repeatedly return to one profound question: “What makes something a book?” The answers vary dramatically.
Some works privilege narrative. Others abandon language almost entirely, allowing paper, fibre, wood, metal, wax, thread, and found objects to become the vocabulary. Reading becomes less an intellectual exercise than a tactile experience. One "reads" by unfolding, peering, rotating, lifting, opening compartments, or tracing stitched pathways with one's fingers.
The collection therefore shifts our understanding of literacy itself. Many of the accompanying artist statements reveal this transformation. Rather than describing illustrations or stories, artists discuss memory, landscape, ecology, identity, ritual, loss, and materiality. Their books invite participation rather than passive observation.
One artist remarks that the book becomes "an intimate space between maker and reader," while another describes the page as "a place where time unfolds physically." Such statements illuminate why handmade books continue to flourish despite digital publishing: they engage the entire body.
Material choices become forms of meaning. Throughout the volume, paper is rarely just paper. Handmade fibres evoke fragility. Rust suggests memory. Wax preserves while simultaneously obscuring. Thread becomes both literal binding and metaphorical connection. Transparency allows pages to converse across layers, while cut paper transforms absence into presence.
Several artists exploit repetition masterfully. Identical folds become rhythms resembling poetry. Sequential openings create cinematic pacing. Others deliberately interrupt expectations, producing books that refuse linear reading altogether. One unfolds vertically like architecture; another spirals inward; another resembles an archaeological artifact more than a manuscript.
Such innovations recall the insights of literary theorists like Roland Barthes, who argued that texts are not fixed objects but dynamic encounters between creator and reader. Here, that encounter becomes literally physical.
Equally striking is the collection's dialogue with sculpture. Many pieces occupy space like small monuments. Some stand independently without requiring support. Others cast intricate shadows that become part of the artwork itself. Several books seem designed as much for galleries as for libraries, reminding us that contemporary book arts occupy an increasingly interdisciplinary territory between literature, design, architecture, printmaking, ceramics, textiles, and installation.
This sculptural sensibility distinguishes 500 Handmade Books from traditional bookbinding manuals. Readers seeking detailed instruction or step-by-step techniques may initially find themselves surprised. Technical explanations remain intentionally brief. Instead, the emphasis falls on inspiration rather than pedagogy. That editorial choice proves wise. Technique can be learned elsewhere. Vision cannot.
For artists, educators, and students, the collection functions as an inexhaustible sourcebook of creative possibilities. Opening the volume at random often generates entirely new ideas about sequencing, structure, materials, or conceptual approaches.
The diversity of artistic voices also prevents visual fatigue. Unlike many exhibition catalogues where aesthetic similarity dominates, each page offers genuine surprise. Delicate minimalist constructions stand beside exuberant mixed-media assemblages. Precision coexists with improvisation. Traditional craftsmanship appears alongside playful experimentation. The result feels less like a museum catalogue than an ongoing conversation about what books have been—and what they might yet become.
If the collection has one limitation, it lies in the unavoidable constraints of its format. Each artist receives only a page or two, allowing little room for sustained discussion of individual practices. Many readers will inevitably wish for longer interviews, more process photographs, or deeper contextual essays. Yet this brevity is also intrinsic to the project's success. By presenting 500 works rather than fifty, Tourtillot creates an extraordinary panorama of contemporary practice whose cumulative effect far exceeds any individual entry.
The volume's design complements its subject beautifully. High-quality photography captures textures, folds, fibres, stitching, embossing, translucency, and dimensionality with remarkable clarity. Although photographs cannot reproduce the tactile pleasures of handling handmade books, they succeed in conveying the extraordinary craftsmanship involved.
Perhaps the book's greatest achievement is philosophical rather than aesthetic. It quietly dismantles the assumption that digital technology has rendered books obsolete. Instead, it demonstrates that the physical book possesses expressive capacities unavailable to screens. Weight, texture, resistance, unfolding, concealment, surprise, smell, and touch become essential components of meaning. Reading becomes embodied once again.
For educators in visual arts, book arts, design, and creative writing, this insight is especially valuable. The collection encourages interdisciplinary thinking, suggesting that storytelling need not be confined to words alone. Structure itself tells stories.
Ultimately, 500 Handmade Books celebrates one of humanity's oldest inventions by revealing its limitless capacity for reinvention. It invites readers to look beyond the printed page and recognize the book as an artistic form capable of infinite transformation. Every binding, fold, stitch, cut, and material choice becomes an act of meaning-making. Long after closing its covers, one finds oneself looking differently at every book thereafter—not merely asking what it says, but what it is.
500 Handmade Books is an indispensable volume for book artists, librarians, educators, ceramic and mixed-media artists, designers, and anyone fascinated by the intersection of literature and visual art. Suzanne J. E. Tourtillot has assembled not simply a gallery of beautiful objects but a profound meditation on the enduring possibilities of the book itself. It reminds us that every handmade book embodies an ancient paradox: it is both container and content, object and idea, artifact and living conversation.
March 26, 2011
I love this '500' series. Great color pictures. Would be nice to have a paragraph or two on the artist's intent in the making of the books.
October 30, 2022
I love books about art and here we have a book about the art of book. Each example qualifies as not just as a book but as a piece of contemporary art.
These books aren’t just pretty faces. One of the prerequisites of inclusion in this volume was that each entry actually functions as a book. The artists find creative solutions to this requirement.
I only wish I could experience holding these works and turning their beautiful pages.
These books aren’t just pretty faces. One of the prerequisites of inclusion in this volume was that each entry actually functions as a book. The artists find creative solutions to this requirement.
I only wish I could experience holding these works and turning their beautiful pages.
October 11, 2020
I found a preview of this title on Google Books -- it was similar to others that I had looked through that showed an illustrations of a highly crafted book art project with name of the artist. But the book is more for inspiration and display than instruction. I enjoyed looking at the examples, but will not need to read it again.
August 28, 2011
What a wonderful book with great inspiration for bookmaking, art journaling and any other creative project. The interpretation of "book" is somewhat liberal, so even a brush with its head made of strips of text can be considered a book! But that's what makes 500 Handmade Books unique. The plethora of ideas and interpretations from different artists that really make this a selection of art pieces, rarely in the form we expect of books. The incredibly varied materials and techniques used are often eye-opening. Many of the designs are gorgeous.
If you're looking for a how-to book, look elsewhere. Otherwise, this is absolute eye candy and inspiration. The reason why I'm giving this 4 stars and not 5 is the little detail provided for each handmade book. The list of materials and binding techniques are indicated but there's at most 2 photos of each book. I would like to have had a better look at the truly unusual ones.
If you're looking for a how-to book, look elsewhere. Otherwise, this is absolute eye candy and inspiration. The reason why I'm giving this 4 stars and not 5 is the little detail provided for each handmade book. The list of materials and binding techniques are indicated but there's at most 2 photos of each book. I would like to have had a better look at the truly unusual ones.
July 12, 2008
Book Art, some of which I thought was very clever and some of which were items that probably only the artist could love. There were two that I particularly enjoyed. One was a book using a Jacob's Ladder structure that illustrated the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Corollary to the First Law of Thermodynamics. The other was called the Office Politics Alphabet were "I" stood for Interminable Staff Meetings. I think most of us could come up with our own equivalents.
February 1, 2009
There were all sorts of imaginative books in this collection. I was pretty impressed with the variety of textures, colors, and techniques that were used. I really enjoyed looking through all the different books. Granted, there were a few books that I thought were a little disturbing or unnaturally dark. I would probably recommend this book to people who like art or crafts.
*Taken from my book reviews blog: http://reviewsatmse.blogspot.com/2009...
*Taken from my book reviews blog: http://reviewsatmse.blogspot.com/2009...
November 6, 2013
I wanted to love this book, I really did. Instead, I found most of the creative works to be extremely pretentious and got the impression that the majority of artists who make books (or at least the ones chosen for this collection) are incredibly self-involved! Rather than being impressed (and believe me, some of the "books" in this collection are amazingly complex), I was mostly just annoyed :(
August 19, 2015
A heavy little book that is full of inspiration for those of us intrigued by the art of the handmade book. Many unusual interpretations, and brimful of inspiration, book art lovers will not be disappointed. Be warned though, this book does not contain instructions it is simply loaded with visual beauty of other artists' interpretation of handmade books.
April 18, 2016
Chock full of a variety of artist books. A nice variety of type. In a few cases I wish there were more pictures of the inside of the book and there is at least one book that you would just think was a photo if you didn't know it was a book(ie - probably could have been omitted). Not a how to book - but still lots of inspiration to be had within the pages of the book.
August 3, 2008
Exquisite handheld objects... There is a world of imagination in these pages. If you are looking for sublime book ideas, you'll find them here. As a bookmaker, I love this book. This isn’t a “how to” book--but if you get the basics, these pictures will get you moving on your own creations.
December 2, 2008
This is an absolutely beautiful book. I just wish it were larger and contained more pictures of each of the books. If you love books and bookmaking then this is a must-see. Several of the books are personally inspiring to me and my bookmaking plans are back at the front of the line.
May 6, 2009
This is a book of artistic and creative books handmade. Not a book to read! I love it, so inspiring for those who are into the literary market and creative arts. Publishers can also look at this book. I will have to add this to my collection in near future.
May 11, 2012
opl.
zero instructions. more of a museum/gallery book.
very pretty pictures, often only one vantage-point though, so it's hard to see how they're made or even what they look like.
good for inspiration.
zero instructions. more of a museum/gallery book.
very pretty pictures, often only one vantage-point though, so it's hard to see how they're made or even what they look like.
good for inspiration.
August 5, 2008
a great book visually, but I would like to have a little more detail about artists and process.
December 17, 2008
Me likey this 100 percent.
March 12, 2009
This was a great book for the creative mind. It had a lot of ingenious ideas that just sparked my brain a-thinkin'. I'm glad I picked it up at the library.
June 20, 2009
Examples of beautiful books without instructions. Very nice photography.
August 5, 2009
Steve Miller is The Man and did a bang-up job curating this collection.
December 27, 2009
Great photos of amazing art books in here. Some of the techniques can be extrapolated from the pictures, but it is certainly not an instruction manual!
April 5, 2011
I should start a book shelf titled 'please-buy-this-for-me-for-xmas' so this book would have a home.
April 6, 2012
Thoughtful, well crafted, intricate, gorgeous hand made books.
August 9, 2013
Great book for inspiration,
Read
January 24, 2014745.59 A11182 2008
March 1, 2014
I love looking at what artists can do with books, but it is frustrating to see them represented as only one still picture.
October 17, 2014
This is a neat book with a lot of inspiration!! Well worth the read to get the creative juices flowing. Reminds me how much I love handmade paper.
October 27, 2014
A beautiful collection of handmade artist books by first class book artists.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews