PAPER BLOSSOMS, Ray Marshall

This is an art book with a difference: a collection of five pop-up bouquets to adorn your dinner table.

Pop-up books are usually meant to entertain children. While retaining the format, Marshall has designed his book with an entirely different audience in mind, and added elements to the book’s construction where necessary to ensure it works as intended.

The front cover of the book. Note elastic loop
and absence of the word 'pop-up'

The cover doesn’t advertise the book as a pop-up book: a subheading describes it as “A Book of Beautiful Bouquets for the Table” and I, at least, initially thought it would be a heavily illustrated guide to arranging flowers. The first bloom of paper blossoms was therefore a very nice surprise (though I admit anyone who looks a bit more closely at the book before opening it would not be fooled – a quick glance along the page block makes the book’s nature clear to anyone who has seen pop-up books before).

The vertical green line along the right-hand side of the cover is actually a length of elastic. There is one loop of elastic on the front cover and one on the back, and you use them to secure each page of your selected bouquet so that it doesn't flip over or collapse part-way through your meal. I think this is a handy touch, and shows that the designer put a lot of thought into this book's construction.

One of the book's bouquets. Note how I have not secured the
pages with the attached elastic loop, and how the left one
is threatening to flip over ...

The bouquets themselves are splendid, though as with all complex pop-ups, turning the page is a delicate procedure. The bouquets are all in different colour schemes and set on different ‘table-tops’ – doilies, imitation wood, and so on – so you can choose whichever suits your décor best.

I enjoyed this book as an example of innovative use of an existing format. This is a concept of ‘book as decoration’ that I never would have imagined.

Samples collected: 10 May 2012