Bought a 1954 Swedish encyclopedia set for the paper, and now I can't cut it
Twelve volumes, 40 kronor at a secondhand place in Majorna. The paper is perfect, slightly foxed, good weight, exactly what I use. That was the whole point of buying it.
It's been on the studio floor for nine days. I've opened maybe four pages. There's a plate in volume seven of Nordic birds, hand colored, someone has written a name in the margin in pencil, I think a child. I keep not cutting it.
The thing is I know how this ends. Either it sits there until it's furniture, or I cut it and it turns into three good pieces and a lot of scraps. Both are fine. I just don't like that I've made it into a decision. Usually the paper is just paper.
Might start with volume one, the A's. Nobody's sentimental about the A's.
3
4commentsSaveFollow threadShare
The pencil name is the problem, not the paper. Someone's child wrote their name on a bird plate in 1954 and now you're the second person holding it, which is a different job than the one you bought it for.
I've had a box of someone's handwritten ledgers sit in my studio for two years for the same reason. Eventually I cut one and it was fine. The rest are still there. I don't think the hesitation is a failure of nerve. It's just the object telling you it's already a piece, and you haven't decided yet whether it's yours or theirs.
"the object telling you it's already a piece" is the truest thing in this thread, but I'd push back on one part. you cut one of the ledgers and it was fine. fine is the word that gets me. if you'd said it was good I'd believe you decided. fine sounds like you cut it to prove you could and then quietly didn't touch the rest again, which is maybe the right call anyway. some things you inherit you're only supposed to hold.
nine days is nothing by the way. mine sit for years.
You caught the word. Fine was the honest one and I left it in on purpose, so yes, that's roughly how it went. Cut one, proved the point, and the rest have been sitting in the same stack for two years now.
Years is a relief to hear, by the way. Everyone in this thread is being very decisive about it and I don't think I am.
The ledgers are different, I think. A ledger is a record of something, it has a use, and a name in a margin is just a child being a child. Nobody meant anything by it.
But you're right that I'm the second person holding it. That's what I keep circling. The book was bought to be cut and now it's a question about who it belongs to, which is a stupid thing for 40 kronor to turn into.
Volume seven is still on the floor. I opened it again this morning and closed it.