Everything Fades is a tiny scroll of barely visible typewritten text on handmade indigo sunn hemp paper housed in a vintage pocket watch case, housed in a metal leaf decorated wrapper tied with navy silk ribbon, housed in a slipcase that also features those barely visible lines that repeat on the scroll: "everything fades. so soon. not soon enough." - The scroll actually has more text between those repeating lines, but let's let those beautiful things fade away in peace.

This artists’ book is my entry for the #AreYouBookEnough Instagram bookbinding challenge. The challenge has a changing monthly theme, and the March theme was ‘time’. This month the theme is 'nature walk', and the challenge is open to bookbinders of all levels - more details here. I have a busy, busy, busy month ahead of me, so I'll probably have to skip the challenge this time. Do check out the hashtag to see what everyone else made for the March challenge, and there'll soon be progress photos of the new work other people are creating around the April theme, too!

What I found interesting browsing through the books made for this theme 'time' was that there was so much blue and/or round books (also some wonderfully nerdy time travel books!). Perhaps it's the blue of a night sky that reminds us of the things that are eternal from the human point of view, and while doing so reminds us of the brevity of our time on Earth. And there are no corners in time, no place to stay put just for a moment before moving on with your life. The hands of a watch go round and round, and even when we do something like turn the clocks for daylight savings, it's just a minor hiccup - the watch hands never stray from their track. And of course, time keeps passing, no matter what happens to the fragile instruments we use to tell time. Repeatedly I find myself thinking of a human life as an arc of a circle, or a spiral, so large we can never find ourselves where we began. What else could it be?

If you want to take a closer look at the night sky blue and the repeating round shapes of my artists' book: more photos and details below.

Everything Fades – an artists’ book by Kaija Rantakari, 2017

(vintage watch case, handmade indigo Sunn hemp paper, board, leaf metal, silk ribbon, typewritten text)

4,6×5,2x1 cm / 1.8″x2"x0.4"