Week 19: The Gates Swing Open

   The book-of-the-week for Week 19 is a drop-sides box also known as an etui box.  The title of the book is The Gates Swing Open. A paper-cut gate is pasted to each of the four outer side walls. Under the gates, the bookboard side pieces are covered with vintage paper from an antique Japanese book about instructions to play the popular Japanese game GO. The lid is covered with black Japanese silk bookcloth, antique book paper, and a cube of laminated bookboard painted with black gesso. 

Inside the box the four side walls are lined with handmade Japanese paper which was letterpress printed with the lines of the poesy, The Gates Swing Open...

The Gates swing open

And the walls fall

DOWN

The Gates swing open

And the walls fall

DOWN

The Gates swing open

And the walls fall

DOWN

The Gates swing open

And the walls fall

DOWN

And they do! Lift the lid and the walls of the etui box fall down flat on the table. Inside the box is an old key... a material presence of the poesy words.

   The word poesy isn't used often these days.. George Gordon Noel Byron (Lord Byron), 1788–1824, used it in his poem The Prophecy of Dante...

"Many are poets but without the name,
For what is poesy but to create

From overfeeling good or ill; and aim

At an external life beyond our fate..."

It's definition states that poesy is 1) an archaic word for poetry, 2) the art of writing poetry, or 3) a poem or verse especially used as a motto. ...So isn't that what was done in this little 3-dimensional book, but create a motto to live by?