Class Assignment: Explain a piece of modern day technology to someone who lived and died before 1900.
“I chose to explain the Kindle to Charles Dickens because I thought it could’ve been a helpful piece of technology to have,” Rachel Walsh, a second year Illustration student studying at Cardiff School of Art & Design, explains. “He must’ve lugged a lot of heavy books around with him in his day!”
Walsh came up with the novel solution (pun intended) of making 40 little books and placing them inside another book.
“I made the book start to finish over five days, and it took about 35 hours to make I reckon. It was pretty painstaking cutting out all the gaps in the book itself, and making the books to go inside. They’re all bound like actual books, so as I waited for them to glue and dry I would design the covers for them. All the covers are copies of real book covers. They include many of Dickens’s novels, his favorite childhood books, and some of my own.”
Although Walsh hasn’t received her grade yet, the Internet is sending her lots of love for her project. One post with photos of the books-in-book has 756 shares on Tumblr.
I doubt she does requests, but I’d like to see Rachel take on explaining the iPhone to Alexander Graham Bell for her next project.