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Libraries, Books, Words, Ideas

By Peter Lloyd

If you think the term e-book stands for electronic book, think again. It makes me think “Edinburgh-book” for a series of ten anonymously created book sculptures found in a selection of the city’s book-friendly locations. Every message left with each sculpture included the words “in support of libraries, books, words, ideas.”

It started in March, 2011, when a design binder, or so it was assumed, placed a book sculpture (left) titled “Poetree” in the Scottish Poetry Library. The only clue—words on a gift tag.

“We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books… a book is so much more than pages full of words… This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas…”

Then in June the National Library of Scotland found (right) ”Coffin and Gramophone.” A cinema received a book sculpture of an audience viewing a scene of the wild west.

A dragon sculpture appeared in July at the Scottish Storytelling Centre. Three more sculptures arrived in August, two at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and one at the Central Lending Library.

On went the mysterious appearances, tributes to books, ten in all, ending in November with my favorite (below) “Cap and Gloves,” which graced again the Scottish Poetry Library. The message: “Often a good story ends where it begins. This would mean a return to the Poetry Library. The very place where she had left the first of the ten.”

Even though the sculptor has not been identified at this writing, her sculptures have been honored with a nationwide tour of Scotland’s libraries through December of 2012.

Scottish Poetry Library Director Robyn Marsack says in Edinburgh’s mysterious book sculptures to go on display:

These book sculptures have moved us not only because of their exquisite and intelligent craft, their tribute to what all of the recipient organisations try to nurture and share, but also because they are the purest of gifts, unrequested and anonymous. They remind us that we are a community that can dream, and nudge the impossible into the actual: a cap of feathers, a glove of bee’s fur.

All of the book sculptures also appear in a beautiful coffee-table book. What an creative way to get such an important message of support for libraries, books, words, and ideas! So write I on my book-emulating iPad.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.

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