From Scroll to Codex

The following are two excerpts from the Book_Arts-L listserv “Definition of the Artist's Book; What is a Book; BSO's (Book Shaped Objects); Art vs. Craft” A Discussion held March 1998.

I have copied them here (without alteration) because they are related directly to one of ART317’s topics (topic 1) from earlier this semester and they’re an interesting read.

"Thinking About Scrolls
So, next month there will be a solo show of my books at UCLA called "Toying With Books: Playing With Conventions". I'm working on the catalog for it and I'm very excited about how it is developing. When you open the cover so it lies flat, then start pushing it towards the center, the pages start advancing one at a time. It's really nifty. And, since is has covers and the dozen individual pages are attached to one side, I guess it fits most people's definition of a book. I got the idea from a 1954 manual by Victor Strauss called "Point of Purchase Cardboard Displays". I figured I was taking a 1950's idea and updating it to the 1990's. But I was surprised when I recently showed the model to a group of colleagues. One of them, Nancy Tomasko, immediately recognized a connection between my structure and an ancient Chinese scroll. Whoa! I thought to myself, a Chinese scroll? I don't think so. The next time the group got together, Nancy presented me with a file of documentation on a particular type of Chinese scroll called a "whirlwind binding". For this type of binding, anywhere from eight to 24 additional leaves are attached to the surface of the scroll. Each sheet is indented from the previous one for easy access. What a great idea: a scroll with pages! When it was used around the 9th century, it was a very acceptable type of book. I had never seen this structure before, yet there was a definite connection between it and the 20th century book I was producing. The point I'm trying to make is that all of us who love books are operating on an historical continuum. The structure that we call a book has changed drastically from what it was in the past, and it will change drastically in the future. Other subscribers have pointed out that our word "book" pre-dates the codex, our word "library" predates the introduction of papyrus, and Richard Miller cleverly alluded to "volume" being derived from "roll", as in a scroll. Rather than being locked in time, I've found it productive to be aware of historical models and to embrace them in my development as a book artist. It's not an either/or situation. There's room on my library shelves for all kinds of books. I feel that my life and my library have both been enriched by a broad definition of what constitutes a book. Thanks to Nancy Tomasko, I am posting a selection from "The Story of Chinese Books". It traces the development of the book in China from a scroll to a sutra binding (what today we call a concertina binding) to what we now call a codex. Notice that the author identifies a modified sutra binding as a "whirlwind binding". We're not the only ones who have had trouble agreeing on definitions! For those who are interested in a further discussion of scrolls, I invite you to visit my web page. Under the heading "What is a Book?" there is an essay I originally posted to the Book Arts List on October 5, 1996 called "Is the Scroll a Book?". It a further elaboration of my continuing fascination with this ancient book structure.
Ed (Hutchins)"

"From Scrolls to Leaves
The period of the Sui and Tang dynasties, when hand copying flourished, was also the period when the scroll and rod system reached its height and when beautiful bindings appeared. In the mid-9th century, however, books in scroll form were gradually replaced by books in leaf form. The scrolls were long--often several tens of feet--and rather troublesome to unroll. The process of looking up a single sentence in the text might require the unrolling of most of a scroll. During the Warring States Period and the Qin and Han dynasties scrolls caused few problems because there were few lengthy writings. But from the Sui and Tang dynasties onward, after a number of dictionaries had been published, the matter of looking up a word or a sentence was an oft-occurring necessity. The great inconvenience and inefficiency of rolling and unrolling became more and more of a problem. Some inventive person then decided that, instead of using the scroll form, a book might be made by folding the paper to form a pile in a rectangular shape. The front and back covers of such a book were made of strong, thick paper, sometimes dyed in colour or mounted on cloth for protection. This new form was called a "leaf binding", or "sutra binding". With this new kind of binding, a reader could easily turn to any leaf to look up a word or a sentence, without having to unroll the whole book. This was a great step forward in the development of books. Before long, however, this new form was also found to have some drawbacks. A long piece of folded paper could easily become unfolded and spread out. To avoid this, book makers added another sheet of paper to the folded pile. This was creased in the middle and one half of the sheet was pasted onto the first leaf and the other half was pasted onto the last leaf. The extra sheet held the pile together and prevented it from spreading out, while the leaves of the pile could still be turned forwards and backwards. (This came to be called a "whirlwind binding".) These two forms of binding appeared in the mid-9th century. They overcame the defects of the scroll and rod system, yet they had a disadvantage in the fact that the place where the paper was folded might break after a lapse of time. Disarrangement and loss of leaves then occurred unavoidably. The next step was to bind the separate sheets into a book. When this step was taken books bound as they are today were created.

The Story of Chinese Books, written by Liu Guojun and Zheng Rusi, translated by Zhou Yicheng. Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1985.
Ed (Hutchins)
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