What constitutes a gate? Sometimes the gate is unexpected, unprecedented, or unusual. In the book-of-the-week for Week 42, An Open Gate?, the gate is one of those. Constructed as a swinging panel book, An Open Gate? is a poem which describes a series of six vintage photographs of a baby boy.
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| the cover |
The cover of the book is painted with hand-ground earth pigments and natural dyes... cochineal, osage orange, and walnut ink. These colors reference the aged, pink hue of the photographs, as well as the creamy pink skin of the baby. The accordion-fold pages are made with gold cover-weight French Paper® which has been cut out to facilitate the swinging panels. The text was printed on Arches® paper with the Pearl letterpress using 18-point Crayonette font. The Crayonette font was designed by Henry Brehmer and released by the Keystone Type Foundry of Philadelphia in 1889. The ink is a shade of baby blue... mixed to resemble the little shorts worn by the baby in two of the photographs.
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| poem pages facing forward... |
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| poem or photos facing forward... |
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| Kodak Brownie Camera |
If there's space, the whole book can be stretched out like a sort of picket fence.
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| stretched out... |
The poem goes like this:
An Open Gate?
Remember?
Coming home late
to an open gate-
The song from the spoon
and a paper exploded room
His marvel of a ball
and a ball bearing wheel
Racing down the hall to
a cotton covered feel.
Seeing the hunger
from being held
and hearing the squeal
from having fell
Still we present ourselves
to history
and wonder at
the packaged mystery.
Stockings hung by a nail
hugged by that picket rail.
I remember, still,
coming home late
to that old open gate.
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| the first page... |
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| moments in time... |
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| the baby... |
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| the unexpected gate... |
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| colophon |
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| an open gate... |
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| shadows behind the gates |
Even the littlest can sometimes become a gate.
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