• Reinventing The Look (And Smell) Of A Book - Part 1

Reinventing The Look (And Smell) Of A Book - Part 2

<< Part 1

While working at the government printing office, Boom met Paul Fentener van Vlissingen, chief executive of the Dutch conglomerate SHV. When she left to open her own studio in 1991, he asked her to create a personal book for him to give to family and friends on his birthday. He also commissioned Boom, and the art historian Johan Pijnappel, to produce a book to commemorate SHV's centenary in 1996.

They had an unlimited budget, and an exceptionally indulgent patron. “All he said was, 'Make something unusual,” Boom said. “It started out as a dream project but became a nightmare, because of the time.” Having decided to compile the book from found text and images, she and Pijnappel scoured SHV's archives for material and traveled all over the world to find more. When Boom had to cancel the order for her first choice of paper (after being told by the Japanese producer that it would take 14 years to make) she invented her own paper.

The book emerged with 2,136 pages but no numbers - Boom wanted people to dip in and out, rather than to read it sequentially. Gorgeous to look at and rich in symbolism, it is laden with color-coding, mixes of type, and page edges that depict a tulip field when seen from left to right, and a Dutch poem from right to left. It won numerous design prizes but absorbed five years of Boom's life, broken only by an annual month of teaching at Yale, leaving her exhausted, more than 20 kilograms, or 45 pounds, heavier, and with agonizing backaches.

Slowly she recovered, and designed more books for Van Vlissingen (who died last year) as well as monographs for artists and architects, and a cookbook. Boom enjoys working on several projects at once and also trying out new challenges, from creating new stamps to designing the corporate identity of the Dutch ceramics company Royal Tichelaar Makkum.

So far the Hicks book is her favorite. “Such a struggle, but the best book I've done,” she said. Hicks herself praises the “strong design sense, very original use of typography, and sensitivity to paper and printing” that Boom brought to the book. Part of its appeal - and the challenge of creating it - for Boom is that such a complex object, with so many layers of meaning, was industrially produced, unlike the handmade books she dismisses as “macramé.”

“There are so many possibilities with books, and so much to explore,” she said. “At a time when the Internet is so powerful, making books is more and more important. Seeing Sheila's work in a book is completely different to seeing it on the Internet. That's why I'm always looking for new things to do with books.”

c.2007 Alice Rawsthorn. Originally published in the International Herald Tribune. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate