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Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.

An Exhibition at Oxford Highlights the Sensorial Splendor of Books

October 12, 2022
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In 1940, Dorothy Kunhardt published a book that would forever change the way young children read. Pat the Bunny, an interactive book full of activities such as touching the sandpaper of “Daddy’s scratchy face,” playing peekaboo with a piece of cloth, or gazing in a mirror, imbued the act of reading with a new form of sensory engagement. Today, “touch and feel” books for babies and children are almost required reading—their cellophane stuffing produces a satisfying, A.S.M.R.-level crunching sound, while the use of faux rabbit fur or horse hair offers an exhilarating tactile experience. As we age and our reading comprehension sharpens, the books we pick up prioritize a single sense—sight—their stories seemingly locked away in lines of text.

An exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford, titled “Sensational Books” (on view through December 4), delves into the many roles that books play in our lives across the senses. Co-curated by Kathryn Rudy, professor of art history at the University of St. Andrews, and Emma Smith, professor of Shakespeare studies at the University of Oxford, the exhibition opened to the public in May after two years of delays due to the pandemic. Celebrating the physical book in all its exquisite and unusual forms, “Sensational Books” draws from the centuries-old library’s illustrious collections to understand more deeply what books can tell us beyond the words and images they contain.

The “Kindle or Codex?” vitrine. (Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.)
The “Kindle or Codex?” vitrine. (Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.)

As visitors enter the gallery in the Bodleian’s Weston Library, they are greeted with a vitrine asking “Kindle or Codex?” that acknowledges the shifting role of books in our lives due to the increasing presence of digital and audio reading. Though these more recent advents are more efficient for delivering content, their streamlined simplicity dissolves a world of sensory inputs once associated with reading. “There’s the weight of the book, the sense of the paper, the feel of the cover, the smell of it, the sound it makes when pages turn,” Smith says. “We tried to start with that, to remind people that they are conscious of using different senses when they read books.”

One interactive exhibit invites visitors to encounter famed literary objects and refine their olfactory palate through a collection of perfume atomizers containing scents distilled from books including Shakespeare’s 1623 First Folio and one of the Bodleian’s greatest treasures: a 1217 copy of Magna Carta. A scent distilled from a collection of 17th- and 18th-century books, usually housed on the timber shelves of the Bodleian’s oldest reading room offers a warm, sweet aroma characterized by meadow hay, pipe tobacco, and cedarwood. The prized Magna Carta, by contrast, boasts “an aromatic mix of moist wheat bread and beach sand,” Smith says.

The smokey, spicy aroma extracted from an Ethiopian gospel bound in kid leather demonstrates a book’s rare ability to absorb and retain the scents of its surrounding environment for decades. Smith reflects upon a project when, years earlier, the Bodleian worked with members of local Ethiopian and Eritrean communities to co-curate a selection of manuscripts and icons produced in the Ge’ez language. In the process of reviewing materials for the display, a group of co-curators of Eritrean descent opened the kid-bound gospel and concurred that the scent contained within its pages had the aroma of “home.”

The scents from these celebrated works on paper were developed in collaboration with the Oxford-based Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA), a venture that promotes the development and use of digital imaging techniques in conservation. Using noninvasive techniques specially developed by the IDA, technicians placed objects in sealed glass containers and used circulated air to capture the compounds that carry each book’s scent. Olfactory specialists then bottled the scents to be experienced alongside one another, with the aid of an informative wheel chart of aromatic notes created in the spirit of those used for cheese or wine tasting. “It is indeed a bit like wine tasting,” Smith says. “Once you’ve got the vocabulary, you can begin to differentiate the smells.”

Through a series of objects that employ books as an artistic medium, “Sensational Books” also investigates the relationship between bound pages and our taste buds. In her piece “Farmer’s Market” (2019), artist Dizzy Pragnell examines the materiality of books’ early antecedents, centering upon the layering of natural papyrus fiber, a technique used in ancient Egypt and other Mediterranean cultures to create writing materials before the introduction of paper. Pragnell’s technique reimagines this history in the form of five books whose pages are composed of thinly sliced dried fruit and vegetables—materials that tempt the viewer’s appetite and satisfy the senses through exquisite color and pattern.

Another particularly magnetic piece on display comes from New York–based artist, designer, and publisher Ben Denzer. No stranger to the book as an art form—his credits include designing book covers for Penguin Art Group and running the Instagram account @ice_cream_books, which counts both Bella Hadid and art critic Hal Foster among its fans—Denzer is behind 20 Slices (2018), a hard cover book whose pages are substituted by shelf-stable, plastic-wrapped slices of American cheese. The book rotates slowly—perhaps infinitely, one might wonder—in a mini fridge, its pages an imperishable material offering a point of inquiry about art books and preservation.

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Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.
Photo: John Cairns. Courtesy the Bodleian Libraries.

Several works in the exhibition examine the sense of touch in connection with reading, using books that have collided with hands... and lips. A German 16th-century missal printed partly on silk includes in its pages a pasted-in “osculation plaque” for a priest to physically kiss the book in an act of religious devotion. Another ecclesiastical artifact, designed as an aid for repentant 17th-century sinners, is “Nouvelle invention d’une excellente methode, pour ... une bonne confession.” Composed of hundreds of perforated tabs, each bearing a different transgression, this “catalog of immorality” permitted users to conveniently tear out a prewritten confession and present it to their priest rather than speak the words themselves.

John James Audubon’s colossal illustrated The Birds of America (1827–38) demonstrates the sense of proprioception—the body’s ability to sense movement, action, and location, often described as the “sixth sense.” The brown leather-bound book is just under a meter and half in length, or about the wingspan of a large seagull, as the audio guide appropriately notes, and requires two people to open it and turn its blanket-like pages. “We’re focusing attention on the physical work we’re always doing with books,” Smith says. “It’s how hard we need to hold them open, how tight the binding is. It explores how books are bits of paper and engineering.” Contrasted with a group of smaller volumes, one can begin to imagine the incongruity in the physical experience of handling and reading each one.

As visitors approach the section on sound and hearing, they are greeted by an impressive 14th-century book of psalms from the Church of St. Lawrence in Trau, its pages rippled and warped by the moisture exhaled by singing chorus members of centuries past. Andy Warhol’s Index (1967), a tongue-in-cheek “children’s book for hipsters,” serves as a multi-sensory encounter personified by a pop-up castle, a sheet of LSD stamps, and a 45-rpm flexi-disc that plays a previously unrecorded song by Nico and the Velvet Underground.

Further sonic studies in the exhibition include a series of sound-based works by artists Helen Frosi, Pale Blue Dot Collective’s Louise Beer and John Hooper, and Amy Sterly and Andrew Albin. Pale Blue Dot Collective’s “Audioscripts,” a piece co-commissioned for the exhibition with Fusion Arts in Oxford, looks at the auditory output of our physical interactions with books. Recordings include the sound of pages turning, books being arranged on shelves, and hands moving across textured covers against a backdrop of sounds documented from nature in three audio compositions. “We wanted a lot of noise in the exhibition room—some of which was specifically of books, and some which was creatively spinning off of that,” Smith says.

“Sensational Books” also explores sound as a means to enrich and provide access to the art-viewing experience. Exhibition curators partnered with VocalEyes, whose mission is to foster opportunities for blind and visually impaired people to enjoy art and heritage, to create an audio described highlights tour. The guide—which was developed with all viewers in mind—connects visitors intimately with the objects on display using lush descriptions of how each book may look, sound, feel, and smell.

One idea that began to materialize in the early stages of producing the exhibition is the reciprocal nature of reading physical books. As books shape our thoughts and experiences, we, too, imbue them with traces of ourselves, from handwritten annotations to smudges that show signs of frequent use. In this way, the story of the material books is a story of human nature—our activities, our relationships, and our hopes for the future.

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Courtesy Aedes de Venustas

A New Perfume Translates the Greek Island of Corfu Through Kumquat

Growing up in the Midwest, I wasn’t exposed to the widest range of foods. True to the Scandinavian heritage and harsh winters of the region, I remember a hearty, meat-and-starch focused cuisine, one meant to warm and sustain through the cold and dark. As I got older, I started expanding my palate, and I can remember many firsts: my first pho, my first dosa, my first doro wat. But out of all these first experiences of more far-flung tastes and flavors, none stands out in my memory as sharply as my first kumquat.

An array of Baudar’s wildcrafted vinegars. (Courtesy Chelsea Green Publishing)

“Culinary Alchemist” Pascal Baudar on the Art of Foraging and the Craft of Vinegar

Pinning a single job title on the award-winning food expert and forager Pascal Baudar is no easy task. A self-described “culinary alchemist” who cans, dries, smokes, ferments, steams, and pickles cactus buds, harvester ants, and other obscure flora and fauna, Baudar is the go-to source for Los Angeles–based chefs Curtis Stone, Josiah Citrin, and Ludovic Lefebvre, as well as cocktail maestros, including Matt Biancaniello, seeking these delicacies. “The majority of chefs use 30 wild ingredients, maximum,” Baudar says. “We deal with four hundred and fifty-six.”

Courtesy Strange Attractor Press

A New Book Explores How, Via X-Rays, Banned Albums Made It Into the Cold War–Era U.S.S.R.

The bad news is that this particular set of X-rays won’t be covered by your health insurance. The good news? Discarded hospital film of broken bones can defy a communist regime, deliver banned music to the masses, and endure as art.

The Sculpture Gallery at The Glass House. (Photo: Michael Biondo)

Robert Stadler Has a “Playdate” With Philip Johnson at His Glass House

It’s a serene, bluebird-sky day, a slight chill in the air, and I’m walking with the Paris-based, Austrian-born designer-artist-provocateur Robert Stadler along a central pathway on Philip Johnson’s 49-acre Glass House estate in New Canaan, Connecticut. We’ve just exited the property’s whitewashed, brick-floored, glass-ceilinged Sculpture Gallery, a transfixing space of light and shadow built in 1970 that’s home to works by artists including Michael Heizer, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella. Now, for one of the first times ever, a temporary installation by a contemporary artist—Stadler—is being shown among the sculptures of these art-world giants.

Photo: Marco Galloway

Willo Perron’s Debut Furniture Show Makes the Case for a “No Coasters” Design Movement

With everything he does, the Los Angeles–based designer and creative director Willo Perron always considers the macro and the micro. From the L.A. headquarters of Roc Nation, to Stüssy stores around the world (including in Kyoto, Milan, and Shanghai), to the set build-outs for Rihanna’s and Drake’s latest tours, to album art for those same artists, to the branding and art direction for the non-alcoholic aperitif company Ghia, Perron has an adroit ability to work across many scales.

The “shite” (primary performer) in “Makura Jido” (“Chrysanthemum Boy”). (Photo: Yutaka Ishida. Courtesy Japan Society)

Ever Heard of Noh Theater? Our Primer to Three Major Productions Arriving in New York City This Fall

Two winters ago, I picked up a copy of Penguin Classics’ Japanese Nō Dramas, a volume of two dozen translations by Royall Tyler I’d been meaning to read since tearing through Yukio Mishima’s Five Modern Noh Plays a decade previous. I had moved into a New York City gem (an apartment with a fireplace), and with Covid cases skyrocketing and temperatures dropping, I decided that a winter fireside with a handful of centennia-old ghost stories (cat in my lap, or reading aloud to a friend) might carry me away from the pandemic—from Brooklyn, 2020—to somewhere entirely distinct.

Cover of “The Seed Detective” (left). Adam Alexander (right). (Courtesy Chelsea Green Publishing)

“Seed Detective” Adam Alexander Imagines a Better World—Through Rare, Endangered, and Unusual Vegetable Varieties

For British author, TV gardening producer, and “seed detective” Adam Alexander, the supermarket serves as perhaps the finest symbol of our modern food systems and their discontents. Of course, there’s undeniable quantitative material abundance, with aisles upon aisles of vegetable varieties—chopped, pickled, canned, and fresh—all that one could imagine within the confines of some idea of a generic palette. But it arrives at a qualitative price, and not just in terms of flavor, but also in context, in our ability to see this food as a part of our own story—as a connection to the land we live on or a cornerstone of the traditions we uphold. Vegetables are more than just so many anonymous pounds on a scale. “This strong connection with the land and what we grow and what we put in our own mouths has been lost, especially in the U.K.,” Alexander says. “To me, it’s really important that we try to reconnect and recognize that these vegetables are part of our human story and, in that way, we can do a lot to serve rare and endangered varieties.”

Courtesy Assouline

Why Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak Remains One of the Most Enduring Watches Ever

Designed in 1972, at a time when a luxury watch made of steel was still a radical concept, Audemars Piguet’s nautical-inspired Royal Oak captured the “stealth wealth” style of the moment, mirroring the cutting-edge ethos of the French fashion scene (think: Hubert de Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Emanuel Ungaro, Pierre Cardin), as well as the era’s groundbreaking architecture, such as Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano’s inside-out postmodernist Pompidou Centre in Paris, completed in 1977. “To me, the Royal Oak is a work of art that happens to be a watch,” says British GQ editor Bill Prince, author of the new book Royal Oak: From Iconoclast to Icon (Assouline), coming out October 12. “It’s one of those works of culture that has managed to cut through time, in the sense that it was born of an era, but it already had the criteria to be bigger than the era.”

Courtesy Olivia Sammons

A New Zine Highlights the Poetry and Beauty of Food

Each of us has our own individual way of following the changing of the seasons, a private choreography in relationship to the calendar. For interior designer and prop stylist Olivia Sammons, the produce available from the farms, orchards, and markets near her family’s Hudson Valley home marks time for her, leading her forward through the year. “I spend so much time thinking about food,” she says. “What I’m going to eat, where I’m going to find it, which orchard has the best blueberries.” This focus led her to create the new zine Is My Favorite Flavor, which just launched its first issue, appropriately titled Summer! Is My Favorite Flavor, at the design-focused Head Hi bookshop and café in Brooklyn.

Photo: John C. Hawthorne. Courtesy Alex Tatarsky.

Alex Tatarsky on Art as a Means to Live Out the Absurd

It’s late August, and I’m walking on Grand Street in Lower Manhattan. It’s one of those summer evenings that’s cooler than expected, a pleasant foreshadowing of fall. I’m on my way to discuss compost with the artist Alex Tatarsky, and as I head east from the subway, I pass through the dense, networked scents of the edge of Chinatown: the briny tang of fish markets, the sweet snatch of a fresh egg waffle from a rolled ice cream shop, the yeasty cloud that floats around the famous bialy shop. Approaching Abrons Art Center, where Tatarsky is doing pick-up rehearsals for an out-of-town run of their show Dirt Trip, this close-packed olfactory landscape opens up into something with more space: a faint vegetal whiff from a small vacant lot, the not unpleasant chemical tang from a passing truck, and beyond these, the smell of a certain rot rolling in from the East River.

Courtesy Blue Note Records

An Album of Cover Songs Honors the Legacy of Leonard Cohen

Though nearly six years have gone by since Leonard Cohen’s passing, the long shadow cast by his legacy as one of the 20th century’s most esteemed and idiosyncratic singer-songwriters shows no signs of lifting from the public’s imagination anytime soon. From the enveloping warmth of “Suzanne,” to the high drama of “Hallelujah,” to the chilling minimalist and gospel juxtaposition of his swansong “You Want it Darker,” Cohen managed to constantly reinvent himself, leaving behind the rare achievement of a musical body of work whose most impressive moments exist across eras.

Courtesy OMA

For a Tiffany & Co. Pop-Up in Paris, OMA Designs a Literal Jewelry Box

Hiring a world-class architecture firm to design a tiny temporary retail space may seem an extravagant choice, but given the high aspirations of Tiffany & Co.—especially now that it’s owned by the French luxury conglomerate LVMH—it makes sense for the American jewelry company’s Paris debut under its new French banner.