In the 1960s a Los Angeles-based print brokerage firm, Graphics International, which had been creating pop-up magazine ad inserts for company's like Dodge and Wrigley's, tried to market Atria's pop-up books in the USA (see yesterday's post). Thwarted from doing so by Czechoslovakia's Communist authorities, the company's president, Waldo Hunt, had the firm begin publishing its own line of pop-up books. Thus began the second golden age of movable books....
Hunt's firm moved to New York in 1964 and began producing books for Random House. The first publication produced by this partnership was Bennett Cerf's pop-up riddles (1965), a promotion for Maxwell House Coffee (which the company's customers could receive "by sending in two can labels and $1"). Some thirty additional movable books were published for Random House within the next two years:
Hunt had developed a considerable number of international contacts as a print broker, and he was able to use these contacts to have his movable books assembled in countries where the enormous hand labor required to produce such books was less expensive than in the United States. Initially, he had this work done in Japan, then later in Mexico, Colombia and Singapore.
Hunt sold Graphics International to Hallmark at the end of the 1960s, and Hallmark moved the firm to Kansas City (Missouri), where the firm produced an additional forty+ movable books. In 1974, Hunt left the company and returned to California, where he founded the book packaging company Intervisual Communications and the publisher Intervisual Books (now part of Dalmatian Press). Over the next quarter century Hunt's companies would dominate movable books, marketing over 25 million copies, available in over 1000 titles (including some 150+ titles for Disney). Among Hunt's personal favorites of these titles was Haunted House, a 1979 bestseller for children featuring six complicated pop-ups designed by famed paper engineer Jan Pienkowski:
Hunt also was largely responsible for the renaissance in adult movable books, and among his personal favorites was Andy Warhol's Index (1967):
A collector, as well as a publisher, of movable books, Hunt donated some 500 antique movable books to UCLA. Sadly, Waldo Hunt passed away earlier this month (6 November 2009), just three weeks shy of his 89th birthday. You can read a tribute here.
Today's movable books, which utilize sophisticated, systematized construction techniques (though still very much reliant on hand labor for the final product), has made superstars of paper engineers like David Carter...
...John Strejan (who passed away in 2003)...
...Robert Sabuda...
...and a host of other talented paper engineers from around the world (Fernando Ferreras Arguello, a sample of whose work is depicted below, is from Spain):
The earliest movable books, from the first golden age of such books in the 19th century, are very rare, especially in anything approaching Fine condition (as noted previously, hard usage by generations of children has taken its toll). On the infrequent occasions when these movables become available in the marketplace, they nearly always command substantial premiums.
On the other hand, today's movables can frequently be picked up for just a few dollars at your local yard sale, garage sale, friends-of-the-library book sale and the like. The caveat here is condition, condition, condition....make sure the book you're purchasing has all its moving parts, and that all such parts are in working order. To help you in your quest for such treasures, you may want to arm yourself with Ann Montanaro's bibliographies, as well as one or more of the following titles...
Whether you collect movables for children, or movables for adults, or both, your private library will likely be a much happier place....
Recent Comments