Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Scottish Library Mystery

I posted a link today on Facebook about a mystery that is surrounding Scotland's libraries and festivals. Someone is creating elaborate and beautiful paper sculptures and leaving them in various libraries and at various book festivals as celebrations of books and the places that hold them. The sculptures started in March and so far there have been seven of them that have been dropped off. All of them are incredibly beautiful and very poignant for the location they are left in. Each is accompanied with a gift tag that makes me giddy. Here are some of the tags.

"For Central Library @ Edinburgh_CC 'A gift'--This is for you in support of Libraries, Books, Words, Ideas-- Libraries are Expeansive (It's hard to see the E crossed off. I'll just show this one).


"For @filmhouse--A Gift in support of libraries, books, words, ideas... and all things 'magic'."

This one left at the Poetry Library leaves me speechless "It Started with your name @by leaveswelive and became a tree... We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books...a book is so much more than pages full of words... This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas...a gesture (poetic maybe?)


I found the story in a link from Neatorama from a community forum called This Is Central Station (read this, they cover this mystery, and the artists incredible words far better than I could). They cover all of the finds. The sculptures appear unnoticed and are left in random spots throughout the libraries. Often times they are not noticed for several days. The first location was the Scottish Poetry Library, then the National Library of Scotland, the Filmhouse, the Scottish Storytelling Centre, the Edinburgh Book Festival (two were left there), and the most recent is the Central Lending Library. Each are beautiful.

The cup reads Nothing beats a cup of tea or coffee and a really good book. 
The cupcake reads Except a piece of cake. 
The teabag reads By Leaves We Live

It really is a mystery but one of the best kinds possible. I hope that this person who is creating and leaving them knows how extraordinary these are. How inspiring these little miracles are. How incredible this kind of support is. I hope that these wonderful art pieces bring some notoriety to the libraries and festivals. I hope the artist understands how appreciated his or her gestures are. These made me giddy and made me cry with happiness.


3 comments:

Keith said...

Obviously someone has strong feelings about the recent library funding kerfuffle over there.

These remind me of the Coraline boxes that were sent out.

Bleufleur said...

Wow. Those are amazing. Really neat.

Cat B said...

Keith,

First I have to say that I love the use of the word "kerfluffle". Great word.

I know that they are seeing some cuts and I'm sure that these are in direct correlation. I hope they bring some notoriety (and funding) to the libraries. Where would we be without libraries?

I can see how they'd remind you of the Coraline boxes. What a great marketing idea that was. I wish I had gotten one.

DogLikeCynic,

Aren't they incredible? I'm always amazed that people can create things that beautiful just with a bit of paper. And these are even better since they also have such a great message.