A 40-year-old woman from Botosani saves old books and transforms them into works of art using unique techniques. He learned the craft of refurbishing books, stemming from his love of reading, in Italy, where he spent more than two decades.
Each book has its own soul and deserves to be appreciated and cared for. At least that’s what I think Cristina Palaghia, a 40-year-old woman from Botošan, in love with reading but also with the book itself. After working for two decades in Italy, holding different jobs, Cristina devoted herself to a new passion, sculpting book pages. He took dozens of almost destroyed, trashed books and saved them, turning them into true works of art.
An unusual hobby learned over the phone
Cristina Palaghia left Botoșani for Italy 20 years ago, due to financial difficulties. This year he returned home, missing his homeland. “I left for Italy as soon as I finished high school because, like many others, I didn’t have the financial means to go further. For a while I lived with the hope of returning shortly to resume my studies. It was not so, unfortunately. I continued my studies a little later. Homesickness made me come back. The family in the country is gone, but here is my home. In Italy I had several jobs and this year I decided to return home for good”, says Cristina Apalaghiei. During the years of work in Italy, in her free time, Cristina Palaghia devoted herself to reading, her childhood hobby. She read on the subway, in all the means of transport that took her to work and back home. Her love for books materialized into another unusual hobby, which she discovered following an anniversary.
Cristina Palaghia PHOTO Cristina Palaghia
“It was a gift given to a little boy that I raised in Italy. It was a book that had our faces, mine and his, printed on the edges of the pages, so on the opposite side of the spine. When he saw this book, the seven-year-old boy started to cry and said that he had never seen anything like it before. So I was impressed and at the same time attracted by such a thing, especially because I loved books a lot, especially those with spectacular covers, pages of a certain kind.“, says the woman from Botosan.
He got interested and found out that it was book leaf carving, an art he had never heard of before. He found a group led by a Romanian woman settled in Italy and took phone classes in his spare time. “I didn’t have a tutorial, only by phone with Andreea Maurici who created this group. I only did this in my spare time. I’ve been doing this for a year and two months”adds Cristina Palaghia.
The savior of doomed books
Cristina Palaghia picked up the craft very quickly, as if she was made for it, confesses the woman from Botosani. And everything stems from the passion for the book. So it was decided to save the destroyed and abandoned books. Mostly found at antique fairs and flea markets. Regardless of the condition of the book, Cristina Palaghia restores its covers, cleans its pages and finally transforms it into a true work of art, carefully carving the edges of the pages to create amazing effects, including three-dimensional ones. And the book, in this way, says Cristina Palaghia, gets a new life and a double use. “I save the cards that are discarded, the cards that are destroyed. After certain patterns they come to life again. The books are repaired, especially the covers and then carved. The effect is visible when the book is closed, but it can be read as well as used as an ornament in the library. I’m not spoiling anything in the book, on the contrary, I’m beautifying it“, says Cristina Palaghia.
Botoșaneanca says that she managed to refurbish more than 70 books, either thrown away or found on the shelves. Moreover, since he returned to Romania, he would like to find a solution to get to those art classes in schools. She wants to teach children how to refurbish books and in this way get them to love reading. “I want to try to make this art known. I would like in those hours of manual work or plastic arts, to teach the children to restore the damaged volumes, to learn that a book is not thrown away. There are so many interesting things there. A whole universe. When I was in Italy, on the subway in the train, I was reading books. Digitally I don’t see the point. Everyone’s on the phone.”adds the Botošaneanca.
A technique that requires incredible patience and precision
Actually, on the sidelines, through a few techniques learned, but which require a lot of training, precision, patience and above all passion, the woman from Botosani manages to make faces, objects, numbers, whatever she wants. It’s real magic. “A book sculpture is the result of folding the sheets and gives rise to an image, a number, a portrait. There are several methods. The beginning, for those who want to learn, is folding. According to a pattern, each page is measured and then you start folding. There is also the “cut and fold” technique, meaning cut and folded. But also the “strip” technique. By “strip”, each page is measured, on a certain strip it comes folded and glued on each page of the book. It requires a lot of precision and patience. If I made a millimeter mistake, if I cut more or less, the end is not what I wanted. The final image of the book is on the edge of the book tabs. There are also three-dimensional images”, says Cristina Palaghia. An ordinary book using the “strip” method can be sculpted in five hours, and for voluminous ones, such as those of 400 pages, the process can take five days.
