Random Musings: World's Smallest Book

First of all: have you entered my giveaway yet? You could win a $25 gift certificate to Literary Tease! (Contests end April 29th @ 5 PM)

Tiny books, coptic-stitch, made by me

I wasn't so foolhardy as to believe that the tiny coptic-stitch books I made last year after taking a bookbinding class with Joann of Paper Girls Studio were tiny enough to be considered for the title of World's Smallest Books, but compared to the book that actually has that title, my books are positively gargantuan!

Second book - 2.5 inches x 2 inches

When I came home from my bookbinding lesson, I decided to try my hand at making a smaller book that my original (7 inches x 4 inches). My second book measures 2.5 inches tall by 2 inches wide. But that still wasn't small enough!

Third book - 2 x 1.25 inches

My third book is even smaller at 2 inches by 1.25 inches. Could I go smaller? I sure could!

Fourth book - 1.25 inches x 1 inch

The smallest book measures 1.25 inches by 1 inch. I did the stitching a little too tight; I suspect I was getting tired by that point. The book won't stay closed flat. I meant to add a tie to it, like the other two miniature books, but never did get around to it. I made the signature using scraps of watercolor paper and  pages from a copy of Alice in Wonderland, which just seemed appropriate.

Coptic-stitch bound

Still, despite being very small, this book is giant compared to the tiny book owned by Mark Palkovic. His tiny volume .9 x .9 millimeters. You read that right. Millimeters. Not centimeters. Millimeters. Go, right now, look at a ruler to get a sense of just how small that is. How would you even look at it? Apparently, only 100 copies of the book were made, and I just bet that over half of them were lost or accidentally inhaled! In fact, the book is so small, that Palkovic keeps a larger copy of the book around to show people:

Guinness World Records has confirmed that Palkovic is the owner of the smallest book in the world. Palkovic's book, Chekhov's Chameleon, measures just .9 by .9 millimeters, not much larger than a grain of salt. Amazingly, this miniscule book has 30 pages and three color illustrations. The print cannot be read by the naked eye, but Palkovic keeps another larger copy of the book, still measuring just a tiny 2 by 1.8 centimeters, nearby.

The "larger" copy is still about 1/3 the size of my smaller book. Wow.

Here's my favorite part of the article:

As for the tiniest book in the world, Palkovic does not just let it sit in its decorative collector's box. Even though it's as small as a little grain of salt, he has to take it out and look at the book, bound in gold and silk. "If you ever get a miniature book, you will never lose it," he says. "You may not be able to find it for awhile, but you'll come across it again. You just tend to put it somewhere safe because it's a treasured little thing."

So, what are your thoughts about tiny books? Ever made one? Own one?

Random Musings: World's Largest Book

First of all: have you entered my giveaway yet? You could win a $25 gift certificate to Literary Tease! (Contests end April 29th @ 5 PM)

For some reason, last night as I was falling asleep, I started wondering about the world's largest book. I have this huge board, 4 foot by 8 foot, in my studio and I was imagining how I would make it into a coptic-stitch bound book using rope. (Books were on my mind, I think, because I made two finished journals and two almost finished ones yesterday.) I asked Nick how big he thought the world's biggest book would be, and he, half asleep, muttered a number that seemed way too small. No, I said, I bet it's huge. Well, he said, I'm sorry, but I'm too tired to look. I wasn't going to get up to research it either, and figured I'd probably forget all about it by morning. And I did. But Nick didn't.

So what do you think? How big is the world's biggest book? According to Nick's research, this is it:

Source: http://www.luxuo.com/events/worlds-biggest-atlas-book-fair-frankfurt.html

The 128-page page atlas measures 6 x 9 feet and debuted at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2010. It's part of a limited edition run of 31 and has 128 pages. The article states that the book took three hours to get into position for the book fair and requires a man's full strength to turn the pages. I think it would be so cool to see this book in person. Maybe the RISD museum will buy one?

Second in line to the atlas is Bhutan, a book published by Michael Hawley of the MIT Media Lab in 2003.

Source: http://www.lib.washington.edu/specialcoll/exhibits/bhutan/book1.jpg

"Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom" weighs in at more than 130 pounds and stands at five by seven feet, nearly as big as a Ping-Pong table. The book features more than 100 pages of spectacular images of a country often referred to as "the last Shangri-la," and showcases a variety of new digital, photographic and printing techniques.

The rest of the MIT press release details the making of the book and is definitely worth a read.

The third largest book, 2nd largest atlas, is the Klencke Atlas, which was presented to Charles II of England on his restoration.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/26/klencke-atlas-british-library-exhibition

The book, owned by the British Library, is 350 years old and measures 5ft 10in by 3ft 5 in. It's 4 inches thick.

Here's an interesting entry on Wikipedia about the world's largest stone book, which stands upright and resides in the Kuthodaw Pagoda in Myanmar. It's not the type of book I was thinking about when I thought about giant books, but it's still worth a read! (The entry I mean, not sure about the book!)

Stop back tomorrow and we'll talk about books at the opposite end of the spectrum! How small do you think a book can be?