Dead Tree Books

September 3, 2010 7:32 AM

Books are made out of trees, right? Artist Randall Rosenthal follows a slightly different path in that transformation. Books, newspapers, cutting boards, baseball cards, and legal pads also come from trees. The process Randall Rosenthal uses to make books and other objects out of trees is a does not involve a paper mill, though.
posted by drlith (15 comments total)

The more I look the more amazing it is. Awesome post.
posted by DU at 7:49 AM on September 3, 2010

That's really neat. :)
posted by zarq at 7:52 AM on September 3, 2010

Those are really cool; great find!
posted by TedW at 7:53 AM on September 3, 2010

This is stunning. I am actually stunned. As in, my jaw is on the floor. Fantastic post!
posted by Gator at 7:58 AM on September 3, 2010

must be nice to have talent.
posted by archivist at 8:06 AM on September 3, 2010

Whoa! The process link especially totally bowled me over. Thank you for this!
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 8:09 AM on September 3, 2010

Fantastic. The cutting board is amazing of course, but don't gloss over the legal pads. If I was in a position to buy art, those are the ones I'd want to be able to look at every day.
posted by Herodios at 8:19 AM on September 3, 2010

The cutting board is amazing of course, but don't gloss over the legal pads.

Yeah, the cutting board looks like a really well-made toy (the pepper in particular is just Not Right) but the others are wow. There's pink highlighter on one of those legal pads. And the letters on the newspapers are so perfect.
posted by DU at 8:24 AM on September 3, 2010

Wow. The cardboard on the box of cards looks perfect.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 8:46 AM on September 3, 2010

That has to be real cardboard. ...Right?
posted by DU at 8:50 AM on September 3, 2010

Elsewhere he also has a bit of a Grinling Gibbons thing going on.

For which see also David Esterly
posted by IndigoJones at 9:54 AM on September 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

The pictures took a while to load for me, so it was a slow reveal.

As soon as I caught sight of the painted open binder, I was delighted, but kinda wondered why he took a picture of it on a cutting board. Was it because it was made out of a cutting board, and he was juxtaposing it with an unaltered board? I scrolled back and forth a few times, stilll waiting for all the pictures to load and also wondering what happened to the odd shaped wood pieces that weren't the binder. And then it all clicked, and it was totally awesome.
posted by redsparkler at 10:18 AM on September 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

I love the canted spine on Randall's Cookbook for the Inept. That's a well-used book!
posted by redsparkler at 10:23 AM on September 3, 2010

This description reminded me of a different kind of wooden book, the "xylothek" -- a little wooden box in the shape of a book, which contains specimens of trees and shrubs, made two hundred years ago: The Wooden Library in Alnarp, another picture, inside view, another picture.
posted by dreamyshade at 11:36 AM on September 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

DU: nope.
posted by IAmBroom at 12:21 PM on September 3, 2010