You'll never look at brick walls in the same way again, after experiencing this exemplary piece of book art by a building-obsessed designer
Designer and book-maker Melissa Price continues to delight us with her obsession with buildings in a new book that pays homage to the humble brick. If you have not pondered the graphic qualities of the brick before, you have not been looking properly. As Price proves, there is a visual lexicon to the different way bricks can be laid, as well as the terminology of bricks, which, she observes, “have an unexpected poetry, in contrast with their practical and down to earth use”.
The standard patterns of brick laying have an unexpectedly rich history, but Price’s book is not in the vein of an instruction manual or architectural history – it is a formal ode to the brick and a beautiful example of book art. Each page is printed on 2.5mm cellulose board, a raw fibrous board normally used in the backing of picture frames. The books were bound by Wyvern Bindery, using a material called mull, an open-weave cloth material usually used in the internal structure of hardback books. Price screenprinted the inner pages in two colours at East London Printmakers, and the cover was foil-blocked in gloss red. Each book has a brick red Cairn board slipcase with foiled-blocked title in gloss red, also made by Wyvern Bindery.
The book has been produced as a limited edition of five.
