Mass production of movable books for children did not begin until around the middle of the 19th century, when the London publisher Dean & Son began to produce its now famous and coveted series of New Scenic Books.
These were the first movable books that probably would be considered pop-up books in the sense that this word is used today. As noted in a recent University of North Texas exhibition of such books,
[e]ach was illustrated on at least three cut-out sections. The sections were placed one behind another and attached by a ribbon running through them. This way, they could stay together and be folded flat as flaps, face down against a page. When a reader lifted a flap, a three-dimensional scene would actually pop-up!
During the period from roughly 1860-1900, Dean & Son produced some fifty such books, in the process introducing several innovations to the production of movable books.
In the 1860s the company perfected a means of animating parts of a book with a tab mechanism, which they advertised as living pictures. Their Royal Punch & Judy as Played before the Queen at Windsor Castle & the Crystal Palace (published in 1861 and based on the somewhat anarchic Punch & Judy puppet shows that were a favorite of Victorian audiences) is a well-known example:
Another popular Dean & Son series, Home Pantomime Toy Books, is almost as famous for its gorgeous chromolithographs (see our posts of 14-16 November 2009) as for its animation, which effect was created by layering pages of different sizes upon each other (as the pages are turned, parts of the scene change, "changing the subject matter of the entire scene"):
Ann Montanaro reminds us that these types of innovations are due to the fact that Dean & Son
established a special department of skilled craftsmen who prepared the hand-made mechanicals...[which included] transformational plates based on the jalousie or Venetian blind principle.... The illustrations in these books had either a square or an oblong picture divided into four or five equal sections by corresponding horizontal or vertical slits. When a tab at the side or bottom of the illustration was pulled, the picture "transformed" into another picture.
An example of this type of transformational book can be seen in the right-hand column of this blog by clicking on Moving Animal under Bookish Podcasts and Webcasts (for the full effect, make sure your sound is on). [For other video samples of movable books, click on Always Jolly or Cock Robin or Robert Sabuda under Bookish Podcasts & Webcasts. For an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the actual mechanisms that animate such books, be sure to click on the video Preservation of Movable Books.]
Dean & Son's pre-eminence as publishers of moveable books for children would not be seriously challenged until the 1870s, as we shall see in tomorrow's post...
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