Susan Bittker UK
Abbotsford
Original book title: Scott's Prose Works Vol XIX, Miscellaneous Prose Works
I had originally planned to make a pop-up of Sir Walter Scott's Abbotsford House and its adjacent garden. But after making a field trip to Abbotsford, I realised that much of the charm and power of the house has to do with its series of three walled gardens and its lawns running down to the Tweed, with a vista of the hills beyond, and I couldn't work out how to get these three walled gardens to fold down. I wasn't able to fit this all into the footprint of the book, but decided it was okay to extend the model beyond the parameters of the book, as Scott had built Abbotsford House and extended the surrounding land incrementally over time, so that Abbotsford itself exceeded its own original footprint.

As the sky over Abbotsford was going to obliterate the original brown-and-buff marbled paper on the inside cover of the, I decided to use marbled paper in colours which look like a turbulent Scottish sky, which would also serve as a reference to the original marbled paper underneath. And the brown-and-buff page edgings seemed to me to look like the strata of the earth beneath Abbotsford House, paralleling Scott's own sense of Abbotsford as forming the bedrock of his life and soul.

The blue marbled paper sky is used with the kind permission of Chaya Radin.

susan@spartanarts.co.uk