Olivia Piepmeier

Books for Arcadia

← Art / Bookmaking

Two books side by side with similar covers, both red with a gold lightening bolt in the center. The one on the left is older and the one on the right is newer, based on brightness of the red covers. The one on the left has a name in gold that's hard to read, but the one on the right clearly says "Couch of Eros."
A hand holding up the spine of a purple book with orange thread holding it together. One that looks similar to it is on the table below.
The study book lays open to the first page. On the back of the cover of the book is a square of decorative paper holding a ribbon down that stretches out to tie the book together. On the first page reads "MATHEMATICS" with other title-page looking stuff below but it's unreadable.
A hand opening the pages of what looks like a math study book. "Lesson 8" is readable at top. There are a lot of graphs and writing in it.

I created three books for props for BarnArts 2023 production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia.

  1. A “new” copy of the Couch of Eros based on the book being used as the “old” copy. The innards were made up of some Byron poems, horribly printed/stitched together in terms of margin alignment etc. IT’S A PROP. THE THOUGHT COUNTS.
  2. Thomasina’s math work book, both new/unused and old/used. Canva graphics helped immensely with the nonsense math content of that.
  3. Noake’s garden book, complete with before and after leaflets a-la-Repton’s Red Books except the future plans are the ones in the special cut outs, over the current state of the garden.