Accordion and Concertina Books

Note: Not all accordion books were documented. Others not listed here may be extant.

19. Peter and Donna Thomas. The Real Accordion Book. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2001.
    41 x 41 x 15 cm (16” x 16” x 6”).

“In 2000 I first had the idea to make an accordion book. The book would use the accordion keyboards as covers, and the bellows would be cut along the vertical ends so that when pulled open it would look like a real accordion book! I play the accordion and couldn’t pass up the opportunity presented by the visual pun, but the real purpose for making the book was to address a point of confusion among book artists: whether a folded paper book should be called an accordion book or a concertina book. From playing both musical instruments, I knew that an accordion is rectangular and a concertina is hexagonal. So I made my first real accordion book in tandem with a book made out of a concertina to physically explain why, unless a book is hexagonal in shape, the correct term is accordion book.

For this book, a vintage two row, 12 bass piano accordion was used to make a ‘real’ accordion book. The bellows were cut so they hinged as accordion folds, and printed panels were inserted in the folded bellows: one side of the panel has digitally manipulated photographic images of accordion players, the other side has text, and both were embellished and hand colored by Donna Thomas. The keyboard and button boxes were re-attached to become the covers of the book.”

20. Peter and Donna Thomas. The Real Concertina Binding. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2001.
    18 x 18 x 18 cm (7” x 7” x 7”).

“To complete the visual pun and nomenclature lesson started in the Real Accordion Book [C18], a cheap concertina was used to make a ‘real concertina binding.’ The bellows were cut to create an accordion pleated spine. The text, limericks featuring the concertina or squeeze box, was hand-lettered and painted by Donna Thomas onto double hexagon shaped pieces of yellow handmade paper made by Peter Thomas. Those hexagon pages were folded and sewn into the pleats of the spine. The concertina’s two button boxes then became the book’s covers.”

21. Peter and Donna Thomas. The History of the Accordion Book. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2009.
    (University of California Santa Cruz)

“Several years after seeing our Real Accordion Book [C18] at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, Christine Bunting, the special collections librarian at UCSC, contacted me to see if it was for sale. That accordion had sold, and I decided to make one for her that would be a series of real accordion books. I have made a number of real accordion books now, and I hope this bibliography is correct, but I don’t know exactly how many we have made. At first, after one sold we made another, then after a few years started to document their creation. As a series, the works are tied together by structure, text and image. A collection of photographs rotates thru the series, old favorites reappearing, and new images being presented for the first time. Though some texts have been literary stories featuring the accordion, for the most part they been explorations into the history of the accordion and accordion book. I have given myself the challenge to add new information to each new work in the series. Oddly, but then again perhaps not, the history of the accordion book has not been published (until my article in Bound and Lettered Vol. 13 No. 4) so finding information has been hard, and finding more just gets harder.”

22. Peter and Donna Thomas. The Accordion Book. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2010.
    (University of Nebraska, Lincoln)
23. Peter and Donna Thomas. The History of the Accordion Book. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2011.
    (University of New Mexico)
24. Peter and Donna Thomas. The Accordionist. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2012.
    (Savannah College of Art and Design)
25. Peter and Donna Thomas. A History of the Accordion Book. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2013.
    (University of Houston)
26. Peter and Donna Thomas. The Actual Accordion Book. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2014.
    (Vanderbilt University)
27. Peter and Donna Thomas. Brave Combo Accordion Book. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2014.
    (University of North Texas)

28.Peter and Donna Thomas. The Concertina Book. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2014.
18 x 18 x 18 cm (7” x 7” x 7”), 2 copies.

“Text (concertina limericks) and images (hand colored photographs of concertina players) vary slightly. The two binding structures vary because of the differences in construction of the two concertinas.”

29. Peter and Donna Thomas. The Actual Accordion Book. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2014.
    (Free Library of Philadelphia)
30. Peter and Donna Thomas. A History of the Accordion Book. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2015.
    (Yale University)
31. Peter and Donna Thomas. The Actual Accordion Book. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2016.
    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
32. Peter and Donna Thomas. A New History of the Accordion Book. Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas, 2016.
    (Phoenix Public Library)