Ten Bindings for ‘Stone’, an exhibition of books by Faith Shannon inspired by the poetry of George Mackay Brown, is currently open at the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh.

‘Stone’ was a book of poems by George Mackay Brown (1921-1996) published in 1987 in a limited edition of 125, and Faith was commissioned to bind ten copies, resulting in a sequence of highly expressive bindings that respond to the imagery of George Mackay Brown’s poems.

Faith moved to Scotland in 1987 and has always been fascinated with the stones and rocks, growing collections around her workshops and home.  She is attracted by their tactile nature and the visual textural qualities and started the habit of collecting pebbles, stones and rocks when she was a child.

She writes ‘The physical aspects of a book can be said to have parallels with rock formations – layers of matter of huge variety and complexity, compressed and moved into captivating forms, colours, textures; into hard tactile shapes exciting one to pick them up and turn them and respond to their varied surfaces; wondering at the secrets of their inner petrified lives. 

‘The contents of a book are comprised of layers too, of mankind’s mind – information, inspiration and interpretation of life held together with protective covers: these can be as plainly functional as a building block of featureless stone or as evocative as the most contorted history-revealing rockface’.

Ten Bindings for ‘Stone’ is on at the Dean Gallery, 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh EH4 3DS from 15 July to 8 October 2006.  Open daily 10am to 5pm.  Admission free.

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