Please contact Special Collections at risdspecial@risd.edu. For information about appointments please see our appointments page. We are open by appointment to the RISD community and outside researchers.
Movable books are interactive experiences in the book format. Either by turning a page or a reader's hand these books move and pop to life. Movable books date back to the 1200s with volvelles or movable paper circles that were used to determine calendars. Later in the 1700s there were Harlequinades or turn-up books and tunnel books or peep shows. This trend continued and took off in the 1800s with instructional manuals and teaching tools using lift-the-flaps techniques and entertainment for children in dissolving pictures by Ernest Nister. Lothar Meggendorfer from the 1880s into the early 1900s used pull-tabs and panoramas to bring new innovations to children's books. Blow books or magic books and books that opened up into houses were very popular during this time period as well. In the 1930s Blue Ribbon Books in New York City trademarked "pop-ups" for their children's movable books. Intervisual Communications in 1979 ushered in a new golden age of pop-up books with Jan Pieńkowski's Haunted House.
The movable book collection spans Special Collections, Artists Books and the Circulating collection. Joyce & Jerry Hirsch Pop-up book collection is a large part of the collection. In 2020 Joyce and Jerry donated their over 1,000 pop-up books that they had been collecting since the 1970s. Much of the collection can be seen in Special Collections and part of the collection can be checked out on the first floor of the library - RISD Circulating Pop-Up Books Collection. The movable book collection also includes 55 books from the Stanley F. Moss Pop-Up Book Collection, Gift of Eugene B. Navias.
Books about how to make pop-ups and the history of movable books can be found here.
A common way to search for movable books in the online catalog is the subject search "Toy and movable books". Limit to "RISD Special Collections" to see books that are located in Special Collections.
For more volvelles, search here.
For more tunnel books or peepshows, search here.
For more harlinquindates, turn-ups, and exquisite corpses, search here.
For more carousels, search here.
For more flaps + lift-the-flaps, search here.
For more pull-tabs, search here.
For more pop-ups, search here. The list below is arranged chronologically.
Lothar Meggendorfer 1847-1925
Meggendorfer was an illustrator who got started in movable books by making a book for his son. He excelled at using metal rivets to connect pieces of paper and pull tabs to create action scenes. He was also accomplished with making panorama books, the most well known title is the International Circus in 1887,
Ernest Nister 1842-1909
Nister was a printer who invented “revolving pictures”. He created books for the German and English markets.
Blue Ribbon Books + Harold B. Lentz active in the 1930s
Blue Ribbon secured a trademark for "pop-up" and Lentz, an artist, designed the mechanicals for 10 books for them. Blue Ribbon published "pop-ups" books for only a few years, PInocchio was their first title.
Dean & Son 1847-1990
Dean & Son created all kinds of movable books and used chromolithography to print their books.
S. Louis Giraud 1879-1950
Giraud is the self described wizard behind the Bookano series. Bookano was inventive and yet affordable. Giraund patented some of his mechanicals.
Julian Wehr 1898-1970
Wehr, a sculptor, used levers and wheels to create "animations". He patented his "moving illustrations" in 1938.
Geraldine Clyne 1899-1979
Clyne changed her name from Goldie J. Klein and was assisted by her husband in creating pop-ups using one sheet of paper. Clyne's books were opened horizontally instead of vertically so the pop ups could stand up when opened. Jolly-Jump-Ups was their popular series published by McLoughlin Bros.
El PIntor - Jacob Kloot 1916-1943 + Galinka Ehrenfest 1910-1979
Kloot and Ehrenfest published children's books in Amsterdam in the 1930s and 1940s. The Jewish couple helped to fund resistance efforts during World War II. Kloot died in a concentration camp in 1943.
Vojtěch Kubašta 1914-1992
Kubašta was an illustrator who created pop-ups for advertisements and children's books. He lived in Czechoslovakia and his books were published by the state run publisher Artia.
Jan Pieńkowski 1936-2022 + Intervisual Communications (later Intervisual Books) founded 1975
Pieńkowski was an illustrator and writer whose book Haunted House published by Intervisual Communications ushered in the second golden age of pop-up books. Waldo Henley Hunt founded Intervisual Communications and went on to publish pop-ups books from the 1970s to the early 2000s with some of the most well known paper engineers.
IB Penick 1931-1998
A paper engineer whose name does not always appear in the pop-up books he created. He made pop-up books for Random House, Hallmark, and Intervisual Communications.
Movable Book Society founded in 1993
"The Movable Book Society, a nonprofit organization, provides a forum for artists, book sellers, book producers, collectors, curators, and others to share enthusiasm and exchange information about pop-up and movable books." from movablebooksociety.org
Via Digital Commons @ RISD there are short films of a select group of movable books from Special Collections.
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