Childrens Literature Collections
Exhibitions



Moving Tales: Paper Engineering and Children's Pop-Up Books

18th August to 1st October, 1995
Foyer, State Library of Victoria


The empathy between book and child is beguiling when a child is so drawn into a story that cupping a figure from a page seems the natural reaction to have. Another physical dimension is added to books for children through various techniques of paper engineering. The use of revolving parts and movable flaps increases the symbols of reading by combining the imaginative power of pictures and story with the manual use of movable parts. The history of movable books dates back to the thirteenth century while their application in children's books appeared relatively recently late in the eighteenth century.

Until the eighteenth century books with movable parts were employed in various scholarly works. The earliest example of the use of a revolving disc comes from a thirteenth century manuscript drawn up by Ramon Llull of Majorca, a Catalan mystic. These volvelles were used to predict the future. An early example of the use of volvelles for astrology can be found in a Latin manuscript of about 1428 which describes the movements of planets for the years 1428- 1808. The introduction of volvelles into printed books first appeared in the Calendarium (1474) by Regiomontanus. In 1543 Andreas Vesalius printed the human anatomy showing chest, abdomen and the viscera on loose leaves fastened at one point at the neck so that they could be lifted up to show layer after layer of the entrails as a method of anatomical teaching. Movable discs were used to make mathematical calculations in the Opera Mathematica (1551) by the Nurnberg professor Johannes Schoner. Here basic circles were printed so that the reader could cut them out and put them together to make calculations. In the seventeenth century volvelles were commonly used in atlases and handbooks for mariners.

The notion of books for recreation or entertainment only emerged in the latter part of the eighteenth century with the great advances in book illustration and production at that time. Robert Sayer, a London book publisher, produced 'metamorphoses' books for children's entertainment using paper engineering. About 1765 Sayer began experimenting with the idea of a thin book of four sections each with two flaps which when turned up revealed different scenes. These turn up books featured the adventures of Harlequin and were commonly known as Harlequinades.

The nineteenth century saw the creation of the Paper Doll books by the London publishing house of S. and J. Fuller. These books appeared from 1810 and involved a dolls head slotting into a pocket behind various hand coloured costumes to show the doll in different attire. William Grimaldi, a nineteenth century miniature painter, published the forerunner to the 'lift the flap' book in the 1820s. The 'toilet book' as it was known, featured items from Grimaldi's dressing table to which were assigned specific virtues, eg. an image of a container of rouge could be lifted to reveal a scene labelled modesty.

In the 1830s F. C. Westley, another London publisher, extended Fullers' Paper Doll book principle by devising an elaborate slot book, The Paignon. With twelve scenes from everyday life, liberally cut with slots, sixty five figures could be placed in an almost infinite variety of settings.

Another variant of the movable book was the Peep Show book, available in the nineteenth century. Though little is known of their origin, they are likely to have evolved from travelling peep shows used in fairs. Peep Show books extended accordion style and the illustrations were given a three dimensional effect when viewed through a hole in the cover. Panorama books appeared in the mid nineteenth century with their colourful array of folding pictures, a format often used for retelling famous dramatic stories.

By the 1860s, the London publishing house of Dean and Son was the first publisher to specialise in the children's toy book trade. Dean's craftsmen and designers used the peep show principle of cut out scenes aligned one behind the other. Each layer was connected by a ribbon which when pulled, stood the scene up in perspective. Another technique used in Dean's movable books was the transformational plate based on the venetian blind principle. When a tab was pulled one picture was transformed into another through a series of horizontal or vertical slits.

In 1870 Raphael Tuck began a serious challenge to Dean and Son in the genre of movable books, with the publication of Father Tuck's Mechanical Series. This series included stand up items with three dimensional effects as well as movable books. To produce his books he formed editorial and design studios in London but took all his printing to Germany.

In about 1880, the Ernest Nister and Lothar Meggendorfer pop-ups produced in Germany entered the market as entertaining and beautifully produced luxury items for children of the elite of Europe and America. At this time there was a tide of European made toys flooding into the newly affluent American market, which left in its wake books that were actually fun to read. Pop-up picture books transformed nursery libraries into places of wonder and delight. By the second half of the nineteenth century, Germany was the centre for mastery of colour printing and in 1877 Ernest Nister's printing business was capable of producing works by all of the major processes of the time. The difference between Nister's pop-up books and his contemporaries was that Nister's illustrations stood up automatically by connecting paper guides to figures which stood up within their setting when the pages were turned. Based in Germany, Nister was sensitive to the possibility of differences in taste between German and British children, and consequently set up a London office with staff to vet titles, prepare translations and create new text and illustrations if necessary. Nister also produced movable books with revolving transformational slats.

The most original movable picture books of the nineteenth century were devised by the Munich artist, Lothar Meggendorfer. He produced movable books with multiple and simultaneously moving parts on a single page using intricate levers hidden between pages. He used tight curls of copper wire to attach the levers, so that a single pull tab could activate all of them, some with delayed actions as the tab was pulled further out. Meggendorfer wrote and designed more than three hundred mechanical books between 1878 and 1910.

McLoughlin Brothers of New York produced the first American movable books issuing the Little Showman's Series in the 1880s. These contained three dimensional scenes where colourful plates unfolded into multilayered displays.

During the nineteenth century publishers of movable books established departments of skilled craftsmen who prepared the hand made mechanicals involved in movable books. Because the manufacture of movable books was so labour intensive, production was curtailed with the onset of World War I and the market for quality movable books never really recovered during the post war depression and WWII.

However in 1929 the British publisher S. Louis Giraud designed a new series of movable books, known as 'living models'. The illustrations covered a double page spread and stood up when the book was opened so that the image could be viewed from all four sides. Giraud pitched his output at a more modest level, perhaps reflecting an increasing egalitarianism between the Wars. His production standards were kept basic using coarse absorbent paper, crude photolithic printing and colour reproduction, and cheap covers and bindings which have rarely endured the ravages of time.

As the Depression years deepened, American book publishers sought to rekindle interest in book buying. In the 1930s Blue Ribbon Publishing of New York animated Walt Disney characters and fairy tales with pop-ups. In the 1940s a new group of artists and publishers entered the movable book market. A notable series at the time featured the animation of Julian Wehr who engineered partially concealed, tab operated mechanicals which permitted arms, heads, legs or other moving parts to protrude through slits in the page. By moving the tab, the reader put various parts of the animation into motion.

After World War II a series of innovative pop-up books featuring the illustrations of Voitech Kubasta was produced by the publisher Artia in Prague, Czechoslovakia, marketed in London in the 1960s by Bancroft and Co. These books often contained large double page pop-ups with text printed parallel to the spine.

Pop-up publishing began to expand in the 1960s with significant contributions by Random House and Hallmark Cards. In 1976 movable book collector and bibliophile Waldo H. Hunt established Intervisual Communications, Inc. Hunt estimates that no more than ten million pop-up and dimensional novelty books were produced in the world from 1850 to 1965. Today, up to twenty five million are produced each year, a large proportion of which are produced by Intervisual Communications, Inc.

Pop-up books are assembled by hand, sometimes requiring over one hundred individual handwork procedures. Creation of movable books begins with the basics of concept, theme and images after which the project goes to the paper engineer. Paper engineers must be imaginative and practical in putting into motion the characters and action created by the authors and illustrators. How movable pieces attach to the page, which points need glue, how long pull tabs should be, and how high up a piece can pop must be determined. The final step for the paper engineer is to lay out or nest all the pages and pieces so they fit onto the size sheet that will be run through the printing press. Movable books of the past two decades have become increasingly complex, with sophisticated pop-up illustrations and intricate mechanical devices.

The popularity of movable books for children has never been questioned. Their quality and creativity received official recognition in 1979 when Jan Pienkowski was awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal for Haunted house, as the most distinguished work in the illustration of children's books published in the United Kingdom.

Whether children's pop-up books involve complex or simple techniques of paper engineering, their publishing history bears witness to the timeless fascination encompassed in this format. Children's ability to cup an imaginary figure from a page, or in essence to lose themselves in a book, assumes added meaning in movable books.

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