A seed is a miracle. It is neither alive nor dead, yet holds within itself the potential for life. When it meets the right conditions, it starts to unfurl, with a promise of plenty and the hope of regeneration.
The astonishing variety of traits that a seed holds can be looked at in terms of botany, but also through the lens of art, culture and history. But it is only by connecting these modes—bringing together science and imagination, knowing and relishing—that we can begin to grasp nature with the wonder that it deserves.
This gorgeous handcrafted book makes these connections in two unprecedented ways. The exquisite imagery it features has been created by artists from the Warli tribe in western India. The Warlis nurture a felt kinship with nature to this day, so their art embodies rich ecological knowledge systems in an intrinsic way.
The book also connects form and meaning. Linked by short concise essays, four distinct paper forms explore a diverse set of themes: each designed to capture a particular aspect of the cosmos contained in a seed.
Read a blog post by Gita Wolf—To Seed —to learn more about the book’s evolution from the germ of an idea into a richly connected narrative.
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RM
Handmade Books through the years
Reading for Pleasure
All of us in the publishing house who became readers in childhood did so because we enjoyed it, not because we were made to do it. In fact, we grew up in an era – say around fifty years ago – when parents discouraged ‘story books’ and urged us to concentrate on school work instead. It was perhaps easier then to discover the pleasure of reading as a way to wander imaginatively into another world – there were not many other options vying for our attention. So why is reading still – or even more – important? Because it is surprisingly active and creative, in what it asks of us – the words tell us a story, but the details of the world they conjure up is always filled in by the reader’s own imagination. The act of reading for pleasure is a form of play. No two people read the same book in the same way. A child reader is a reader for life – and it is this insight which gave us the impetus to start publishing books which would interest a child, without an obvious moral thrust on them. We would still stand by our early convictions today, maybe just add something for our current times, which is that reading slows us down. When we are absorbed in a book, it makes us focus for long periods of time – particularly vital in an era which is determined to capture our attention at all costs, and in the process, distract us continually.
