Fabolous Formats:
The Leporello
One of the interesting things about silent books is the great variation in book formats. Maybe it is because of the lack of words, that the illustrator uses all tools available to tell the story, including the format of the book itself. In this series, we will present various formats, starting with a dear favourite: The leporello.
Leporellos are the books that are shaped like a concertina, with zig-zag pages, the kind you get if you fold a very long sheet of paper back and forth on itself. There is a fun story as to why they are called Leporellos, involving Mozard and sex. If you want to know it, just click your way through the pictures below:
The leporello challenges the reader to both interact with and physically manipulate the book. Most leporellos can be read as an "ordinary" book, but also offers so many other options: To be folded out like a river of pictures, to stand like a statue, to be hung like a looong poster...there are so many possibilities. If you let the book stand or fold it out on the floor, you can, unlike other book formats, read all the pictures simultaneously. No wonder the format is so popular!
According to Breede & Jason, leporellos first appeared in China and Japan centuries ago. The possibility the format gives the artist to create fluid movement, almost like a film, and all the other playful and aestethic qualoities the offer, is still attractive to many great authors. It was very hard to pick out just a few to present here:
Warja Lavater
Kveta Pacovska
Juan Gedovious
Concerto per alberi
Enzo Mari