Michael Hampton UK
Unleaded 0-19-817308-3
Book selected: Sebastiano del Piombo by Michael Hirst (OUP 1981)

From the outset there were surprises and difficulties.

Despite being clearly addressed the postman pressed the wrong buzzer, as the book sent out for alteration was oversized and wouldn't
fit through the letterbox. This meant a trip to the local sorting office, Form P739 “Sorry, you were out” and passport in hand.

The package weighed some, so when the time came to cut open the cardboard wrapper with an old Swiss army knife a sense of anticipation
had set in, even though curator Sarah Bodman had already informed me via email that a first pick from the Regenerator II discard list, This Beautiful Britain had been snapped up.

Second prize was better: Michael Hirst's Sebastiano del Piombo (OUP 1981).

An initial impulse to flick through the text for colour plates, maybe to razor out, proved disappointing. Entitled Sebastiano del Piombo, the
book flattered to deceive. A glossy technicolour jacket, but b & W throughout, little wonder no one was prepared to shell out £1 for this
withdrawn item. And yet, published in 1981, its original sale price of £35 put this illustrated monograph into the quite pricey bracket (using
the Retail Price Index as the main indicator of worth, this amount was the equivalent of £100.52 in 2008).

Note to self: an angle to exploit, i.e. bibliographic depreciation, and how to makeover and re-boot a book's value?

Leastways the painter himself was pretty obscure, despite having impeccable credentials. Renowned for being a very slow worker, Sebastiano Luciano as he was born, lacked the sexiness of Giorgione or the awe inspiring beauty of Michelangelo; Signore del Piombo (c1485-1547), literally “the leaden one”, keeper of seals, a Vatican endorsement.

Leaden history, to be unleaded.

Having set aside the book, the next step was to remove the dust jacket, and then divide it by pulling off the old sellotape from a paper liner or petticoat. This LIBREX inner sleeve was slightly nicked and scruffy along its edges. Better tidy that up.

One strategy might be to reattach the sleeve as a dust-jacket adding a contents list, biography, ISBN etc on the outside, and then completely seal the text/book block, so any new 'reader' would at least have a potted version of its original contents, thereby adding Piombo to a micro-catalogue of forgotten and neglected artists. Incidentally such a ploy would also reference the invention of printing, and the 15th century
practice of adding a title-label page to the outside of an unbound book, to act as identification and proto cover while the gathers awaited
binding, an advert for the printer's business too.

4 pieces of dried up offset sellotape remained stuck fast though and didn't respond to a fingernail. Perhaps it would be best to either paint the covers or strengthen them with recycled cardboard. Such work is never wasted. The object must be enhanced, given added value. Otherwise
why bother?

2 khaki fabric army surplus straps bought for £1 at a boot sale; 14/2/10.

In the end I get off the bus in Tottenham Court Road one day, on the spur of the moment, and pop into Paperchase and buy a sheet of thick
red crinkled paper, that tries to imitate goat skin, and accurately cut out a couple of pieces to stick on top of the original boards: a red book inside red heavy gauge Homebase plastic, originally used to wrap the bole of a living xmas tree, one now planted out in the back garden and doing quite nicely.

Ultimately a satchel effect.

I decide that the title page should be overprinted or cancelled with various bespoke Fluxus style rubber stamps; (see image). An attractive Channel Islands stamp is added in a nod towards the renowned book artist Hans Peter Feldman. The page has turned into a veritable palimpsest of ownership marks and appropriations; the tome's history.

This will be the extent of the alteration, i.e. one potentially still allowing the book to remain in circulation if requested, but with its outward appearance heavily disguised; a hidden object, faceless as the Bank of England, a suspect package, its 'simple' formal outcome underpinned by many rapid and fatal decisions.

Flat surfaces conceal many cryptic folds; (no that isn't a koan).

Lastly, what remains of the LIBREX paper is set aside as it may be useful for another purpose.

So, back to the Post office again.

Michael Hampton Spring 2010

hamp_09@yahoo.co.uk
www.measuringworth.com