The Book/Box Thing: Part 1.The Maquette

I have been working on a few projects in tandem recently. One is coming to a conclusion, I can never quite say finished.

I have mentioned before that every year I attend the excellent City Lit course “Artists Books” run by Sue Doggett. This year was my 6th. I wish I could say that I always produce a finished book but I don’t. Sometimes it’s enough to try some ideas and be with some inspiring like-minded company for a few weeks.
(Find my first post from the course about the “moth book”, based on Thomas Hardy’s lovely poem “August Midnight” here .. I still have it and still like it. And yes I did make a maquette for it.)

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This year I wanted to try to make a reasonable box with folding lids to contain some prints and something else. The first stage was to make a trial maquette.

The Maquette:

A maquette is a thing of joy; of expectation and promise. It holds hopes and dreams. Very often my work does not get past the maquette stage. The crippling disappointment of all that early promise being dashed by my own incompetence haunts me. I have many maquettes.

But making one starts to give the “thing”  life and potential. Here you can iron out possible problems, see how to construct it and how to assemble it.

Basically this box is a tray, with a partition, on a base, with flaps which fold over to create the lids which, of course, will meet beautifully in the middle? This is a half size model of the final box.

The most exciting stage is when you pick it up and hold it and examine it from all and every direction and see the possibilities it holds.

Oh happy days!