Radha Pandey
Anatomia Botanica: Botanical Anatomies of the Sacred Lotus, Red Hibiscus and Southern Magnolia
Anatomia Botanica: Botanical Anatomies of the Sacred Lotus, Red Hibiscus and Southern Magnolia is a hand-printed book which explores the relationship I have come to develop with my natural environment, and takes the reader through my understanding of three species of flowering plants that had a significant impact on my childhood and early adulthood.
The book draws its inspiration from a variety of sources. Botanicals (sixteenth-to eighteenth-century European and American herbals), Mughal Indian ornamentation and anatomical flap books (16th-century) are the three primary sources that were a direct influence for me during the conceptualizing of this book. The imagery executed using reduction linoleum cuts, draws mainly from sixteenth-to eighteenth-century European and American herbals, and Mughal Indian ornamentation. The construction of the illustrations in Anatomia Botanica is based on sixteenth-century anatomical flap books that reveal the inner workings of each plant.
The book reflects key elements from both these types of publications and presents itself as a hybrid illustrating three botanical anatomies of the Sacred Lotus, Red Hibiscus and Southern Magnolia.
Anatomia Botanica has been printed from hand-set metal Bembo type, reduction linoleum cuts, photopolymer plates and pochoir. Ten copies of the deluxe edition are printed on handmade paper and bound in a paper case binding. The fifteen copies of the standard edition are hardbound in a drum leaf structure.
Peeping Tom
Peeping Tom is a 3-panel, letterpress printed accordion-style book with pochoir. Measuring 5.5” x 16” when open, it forms a 5.5” square in its collapsed state. The folding for this book is based on Eric Gjerde’s Origamic tessellation.
Peeping Tom is made to resemble an apartment building anywhere in the world where the viewer looks through tiny windows and into the lives of the various inhabitants of the apartments.
Each of these squares or windows can be popped up into a 3-dimensional square. The book is entirely handmade, using letterpress print and pochoir techniques and then folded into its final shape.