September 16 - December 16, 2011
This unique exhibit featured a selection of pop-up books from the UNH Special Collections’ Carel Chapman Collection of over 1,800 books. The exhibition illustrated the history of paper-engineering with a hands-on area to build your own pop-up creation.
Movable books were first created in the 13th century as tools both for studying anatomy, astronomy, and for communicating secret codes and telling fortunes. By the 19th century, craftsmen created movable books to entertain children, but this exhibit showed that today's movable books are not just for kids!
Today's pop-up books can be used to illustrate just about any subject, ranging from history and science to art, architecture, and fashion. As they were in the past, contemporary engineered pop-ups are individually crafted and assembled by hand.
For more history about movable books, check out A Concise History of Pop-up and Movable Books by Ann Montanaro.
