The Fold
The structure uses a cross-cut fold, devised in the workshop and registered as a design under number 6008862. A registered design on a paper fold is unusual, and it says something about how the structures were regarded here — not as packaging for the pictures but as part of how the story gets told.
The five inside pages vary in size and format, so the reading sequence changes shape as it goes rather than presenting the same rectangle each time.
A fold learned from tulip leaves, registered as design 6008862.
Specifications
- five inside pages, fully illustrated, varying sizes and formats, complex fold
- folded size 9.5 × 12 cm
- screen printed on 100gsm inside and 300gsm card for the cover
- 2 colours outside, 3 colours inside
- made in March 2017
- signed and numbered test edition of 30
What a Test Edition Means
Thirty copies is small even by the standards of hand printing, and the word test is doing real work. A complex fold has to be proved at full size and in the final stock before a larger run is committed: paper that folds cleanly at 100gsm in a dummy can crack along a cross cut once three layers of ink are sitting on it.
The cover stock at 300gsm is three times the weight of the interior, which is what lets a book this small hold its shape when opened into a form, not laid out flat.
Text, images and concept are all by the same hand, as with the rest of the catalogue.
Where the Fold Came From
The cross-cut fold was worked out from tulip leaves, after watching the way they fold in on themselves. The result is essentially a diagonal leporello: a concertina whose folds run across the sheet at an angle instead of square to its edge, so that the closed book settles into a postcard sized rectangle while the open sheet is nothing of the kind.
The structure was registered as a design, number 6008862. Registering a paper fold is unusual, and it marks how the construction was regarded here. The fold is not packaging for the pictures. It is the part of the book that carries the story, which is why it was worth protecting.
What the Structure Allows
No two pages in a cross-cut fold are the same shape, and none of the angles are square. That is a problem for anyone imposing the artwork and an opportunity for anyone drawing it, because a page that is a narrow wedge asks for a different picture from a page that is a broad trapezium.
The fold also produces windows and covered areas. Parts of the sheet sit under other parts at different stages of opening, so an image can be hidden, half revealed and then complete as the reader unfolds, without a single page being turned in the ordinary sense.
The Second in the Series
Galactic Narrowboat followed, using the same fold: a narrowboat enters the Islington tunnel in London and comes out among the stars instead of at Kings Cross. It was drawn from six years of living on a boat in London, and it shares a structure with this book, and not a subject.
Paper Weights
The interior is printed on 100gsm and the cover on 300gsm card, a threefold difference across one small object. The light interior is what allows a complex fold to close without the folded edges stacking into a wedge, and the heavy cover is what lets the book hold a shape once it is opened into a form rather than laid flat.
The Premise
Leaving the problems of the world behind in a folded space ship is a children’s solution to an adult’s complaint, and the book does not resolve which of the two it is for. The text, the images and the concept are all by one hand, as with every title in the catalogue.