Skip for Joy
11.25 x 20 inches
2005
Medium: Inkjet on kozo sumi-e roll
Binding: Dragon scale
Edition: 5

Skip for Joy celebrates words by giving the reader extended sections of Roget's Thesaurus for selected concepts. This form of binding is sometimes called xuanfeng zhuang (“fluttering in the wind” or whirlwind binding). Although the exact date of the first dragon scale binding is not known, scholars suggest that it was probably during the late Tang dynasty (618-907 AD).1 In the evolution of Chinese books, this binding represented the transition from the scroll to thread bound books. An extant historical example of this binding is a copy of the Qieyun in the Palace Museum in Beijing.