New Altered Book Pages
I'm teaching a class in creating altered books at the Rye Public Library. For class samples, I prepared two books. One with only pages removed, others glued and gessoed with a first coat of a light color paint. The surfaces of the other book were prepared in much the same way but for this one I prepared a niche or shadow box at the end and some folded pages in the center of the book and another area that is ready for inserts.
The pages below are not complete and may yet change quite dramatically before they are but I wanted to have samples for the class.
The book isn't terribly old really and the binding is tight. There is an ugly place on the jacket that got chewed up somehow making the book a perfect specimen for an altered book project. I don't have a single theme for this book but am letting some of the original images and text guide me. One of the images was of tango dancers and that lead me to the internet for research and more images.
The title of the book is, The Afternoon Tea and it included a nice history of tea, how to prepare the perfect cup of tea, and all sorts of tea parties from tea dances, to tango dances that featured tea, and garden parties. I maintained some of the images from the book. For example, the small tango dances in the background in the photo below and the Japanese tea ceremony in the photo that follow were kept used as jumping off points.
This is the right side of the first spread. Already I have "repented" (as Lillian Hellman says). This is the second incarnation of this page; the first just wasn't working. Perhaps, that's why I love altering books -- a very forgiving craft!
This page includes:
To give the pages texture and dimension,
This page features original ephemera ~~
The angle of the photograph creates a wonderfully sensuous feel. 
