A87. Pandora's Box
Title
A87. Pandora's Box
Creator
Thomas, Peter and Donna
Author: Vonnegut, Kurt
Author: Vonnegut, Kurt
Description
63.5 x 25.5 mm (2½” x 1”), scroll (16 ½") 42 cm, 130 copies.
Binding: Scroll, housed in a handmade box covered in marbled paper and set between two wooden blocks. Scroll is attached to a dowel on one end and a board covered in marbled paper on the other that acts as a cover. Title in gold on cover board. Paper: Duplex sheet; white on front and blue on reverse. Handmade by Peter Thomas. Printing: Letterpress. Typography: Unknown metal typeface. Linocut lettering by Donna Thomas; printed in blue, green, and yellow.
“We first imagined Pandora’s Box as some sort of jack-in-the box like book, but after 4 years of imagining it ended up a scrolling book. Like the Pandora’s box of Greek myth, when this box is opened and the scroll is pulled out, all the evils are released into the world. In the end all that is left is hope, which is represented on the scroll by the text, a quote from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.
This was a breakthrough book for us, as it solidified our relationship, as book artists, to text. As fine press printers we had been taught to see the text as primary, the book a beautiful vehicle to house the text. In Pandora’s Box the structure was driving force and the text was chosen to support it rather than vice versa. We did use a great work of literature, a sentence from one anyway, but much like collage artists, we reinterpreted it and used it to our own aesthetic ends. We saw this as a mutually beneficial use: we used Vonnegut’s creation, his words, and those words benefitted from us using them, as we brought them to a new audience who may otherwise never thought to read his writings.”
Binding: Scroll, housed in a handmade box covered in marbled paper and set between two wooden blocks. Scroll is attached to a dowel on one end and a board covered in marbled paper on the other that acts as a cover. Title in gold on cover board. Paper: Duplex sheet; white on front and blue on reverse. Handmade by Peter Thomas. Printing: Letterpress. Typography: Unknown metal typeface. Linocut lettering by Donna Thomas; printed in blue, green, and yellow.
“We first imagined Pandora’s Box as some sort of jack-in-the box like book, but after 4 years of imagining it ended up a scrolling book. Like the Pandora’s box of Greek myth, when this box is opened and the scroll is pulled out, all the evils are released into the world. In the end all that is left is hope, which is represented on the scroll by the text, a quote from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.
This was a breakthrough book for us, as it solidified our relationship, as book artists, to text. As fine press printers we had been taught to see the text as primary, the book a beautiful vehicle to house the text. In Pandora’s Box the structure was driving force and the text was chosen to support it rather than vice versa. We did use a great work of literature, a sentence from one anyway, but much like collage artists, we reinterpreted it and used it to our own aesthetic ends. We saw this as a mutually beneficial use: we used Vonnegut’s creation, his words, and those words benefitted from us using them, as we brought them to a new audience who may otherwise never thought to read his writings.”
Publisher
Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas
Date
1996
Language
English
Files
Collection
Appears in Exhibits
Citation
Thomas, Peter and Donna
Author: Vonnegut, Kurt, “A87. Pandora's Box,” Digital Exhibits - UWM Libraries Special Collections, accessed November 18, 2024, https://web.uwm.edu/lib-omeka-spc2/items/show/546.