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Altered Book HistoryAltered Books have hit the scene recently as a "new and exciting" artform, however, these artforms have literally been around for CENTURIES... One writer has traced Altered Books in their literal meaning to Archimedes Palimpsest, a 10th century Altered Book. Monks had written down one of Archimedes' Treatises, then later took pages from the text, scratched out the original text, rebound the pages into a prayer book and wrote another text.
According to the American Heritage College Dictionary, a palimpsest is "A manuscript, usually of papyrus or parchment, written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible.”
Medieval monks often scraped the text off old books and reused illustrations for new books. The resulting altered book was called a palimpsest. The motive for making palimpsests seems to have been largely economic, as reusing parchment was less expensive than preparing new skin. For much of history, this was common practice due to the lack of technology to mass produce paper and texts.
Book artist during the Victorian era created some of the first scrapbooks with clippings, mementos, and collage. In the 1960’s, Tom Phillips, a London artist, created the now classic altered book "A Humument" and inspired present day book artists to create the altered books we see today.. The Humument web site also offers images of Tom Phillips work.
Grangerism “The practice of illustrating some particular book with engravings torn from others." The custom itself was known in the last century, but the name is derived from the special delight bibliophiles took in thus illustrating Granger's Illustrated Biographical History of England. On this date (January 12/13) in 1889, the New York Tribune announced a policy aimed at accommodating its picture-clipping readers: 'The portrait of actors will be paged separately, with blank backs, for the benefits of Grangerites.”
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