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(Allix, Susan) Pagoda Memories: Golden Pagodas of Myanmar with Burmese Notes Artist’s book by Susan Allix. [London.] 2009. 50p. 13.5″ x 9.75″. Eight intaglio prints which use line-drawing, aquatint, open-bite, sort-ground and carborundum methods are printed in color on Magnani handmade paper. After drying, gold leaf was added to the pages. Burmese gold leaf is sometimes still beaten by hand, a lengthy and exhausting process. The text is handset and printed in 24pt. Bodoni on Magnani Biblos. Other title sheets are Burmese Mulberry paper, made in the remote region near Pindaya. Binding is full leather over boards. It is biscuit-colored goatskin overlaid with random- dyed red, yellow and dark leather, the front board with flat-rubbed gold and gold tooling, deep yellow onlays and tooled in black and red foil and blind, with red acrylic lines. The end papers are red and gold geometric Kinwashi paper. An edition of 10 signed copies. New.

Allix writes: “This is a straightforward book about pagodas (or payas), the fantastical pieces of architecture that exist in their thousands in Myanmar. They are everywhere, and as they are fortunately inescapable they do stay in the memory. “As memories , the prints and their accompanying words are not concerned with historical facts and locations, or with interpretations of use or construction. They are in the nature of descriptive records of passing moments, remembered for some special quality.” To remind herself, Allix also wrote a short description of the making of the Burmese Mulberry paper: “Slice the bark; boil it in water; pound it on a piece of wood; put it into a big mould (no deckle) which is in a concrete pit of water in the ground; decorate, or not, with bougainvillea; take the mould out of the water and prop it up to dry; peel off the paper.”

Related items: Artists' Books, Catalogue 37 - Summer 2009, Susan Allix