Nag Hammadi is a City in North Egypt, where archeologists found a library of books, most of them with Gnostic texts, and all bound in similar style. These are the oldes codices that we know of.
For this interpretation I wanted to combine old and new assocciations in one book, in material as well as in content. The contemporary apect is mainly represented by computers: the circuit boards as covers (material), and a mother board design on the interleaves of the book (content).
The old and traditional is represented by the material leather, and by the coding system I chose. The text is written in a self developed cuneiform writing system, which is explained in a booklet that comes together with these books. The language is actually English and the text an excerpt from the Gospel of Thomas, one of the texts found in Nag Hammadi.
Coptic written language looks completly different, by the way, this was not an attempt to mimic the original look.
Writing has such an inherent beauty that, I think, is more easily seen and acknowleged when unfamiliar with the writing system that is used.
I made two copies of this book that are slightly different: One was given away as a gift to a fellow book artist. The other one can be seen in the pictures here. In both cases I used circuit boards for the covers, joined by leather and closed by leather strips. The papers inside the book are blue Lokta paper for the book that I gave away, and green Lokta paper for the one that I still have with me. The pattern on the Lokta paper is from a soft lino stamp that I cut for this purpose and which resembles a mother board layout on a PC. The paint is water based lino printing color.
The print on the pages is only in my version originally stamped with wodden wedges and with oil based printing color. (That gives a musty smell that is eminating from the pages that just fits the whole concept). For the book that I swaped away I scanned the original pages and bound laser prints of them into the book.
The general binding style is very close to a Nag Hammadi bindings with a hidden sewing at the spine.
Price: £140 (contact me if interested in a purchase)
