Visitors to The Papercut Haggadah have tended to ask at some point during their visit some variation on a simple question: “How does he do that?!?”
As viewers let themselves be drawn deeper into artist Archie Granot’s compositions, they begin to marvel at the great intricacy with which the various layers of paper are assembled. Paper cut with painstaking precision is layered in ways that resemble latticework. Here layers are cut away to expose a color from several layers down, there Hebrew calligraphy is nestled in a geometric archipelago.
Recently we compiled the questions most frequently asked by visitors, along with others solicited from our Facebook and Twitter followers, and posed them to Archie Granot. Here is what he had to say:
MOCRA:
Please tell us about your preparation for the pages of the Papercut Haggadah. How much advance planning do you do and how much does a piece evolve during its creation? Do you do any sketching as part of the process, or do you create templates of any sort?
AG:
I sketch the work before I begin. This sketch is only used in the initial stages as most of the cutting is done intuitively and freehand.
I plan my papercuts in advance and, when I complete my preliminary sketch, I can, in my mind’s eye, visualize the finished papercut. In reality, however, as I cut a work that may take me more than a month to complete, my mind is never at rest and intuitive changes may, and will, occur.
I often think that the finished paper cut is perhaps a cousin of the original sketch–work that is similar, yet different, to the original concept.
MOCRA:
We’ve had numerous inquiries about how the works are cut and assembled. For instance:
- Do you build the layers from the top down or the bottom up?
- Do you stack several sheets of paper on top of each other and then cut through them, or is each layer cut individually?
- How are the layers attached? What sort of adhesive do you use?
AG:
I build the layers top downwards or bottom upwards depending on the effect that I wish to achieve. The papers are not stacked before cutting. Rather, each layer is cut individually using a surgical scalpel and a cutting board. The layers are attached using a unique adhesive. [Granot declined to give details about his proprietary formula.]
MOCRA:
What happened if you made a mistake?
AG:
This is not something that I really like to think about! Luckily this has happened only a few times in the more than 3 decades in which I have been cutting paper. However, if a mistake is made, I’m sometimes able to correct the mistake or even turn it into a design element. It is equally possible that nothing can be done and I need to start all over again.
Archie Granot
MOCRA:
How many different “fonts” of Hebrew do you use? What are the challenges and creative opportunities inherent in having to keep the letters attached to the paper, and creating negative space?
AG:
The Hebrew letters that I use are the results of years of experimentation. The use of negative space adds an additional dimension to the letters. The main challenge for me in cutting the Hebrew letters is the effort required to keep a calligraphic balance when my “scribal quill” is really a surgical scalpel.
MOCRA:
Most of the pages in the Papercut Haggadah employ abstract, geometric designs, but a few pages incorporate recognizable objects or symbols. What led you to use references to actual objects (matzoh, feather, cup, pyramid) in some pages?
AG:
The design of every work is a coalition of different thoughts coalescing in different ways. In the Haggadah, the feather is shown abstractly; the cup shown in the page with the blessing over the wine was a given while the pyramid was really an abstract triangle that lends itself to the subject matter.
MOCRA:
Did you create one piece from start to finish or do you have a number going at once?
AG:
Both when working on the Haggadah, or when creating work to be shown in my gallery in the center of Jerusalem, I tend to work on one papercut at the time.
MOCRA:
Did you ever conceive of these as being bound in a book? Is there, or will there be a catalogue or individual reproductions available?
AG:
I do not think that the Papercut Haggadah will ever be bound as a book. Certainly, that was not my intention in preparing for this project.
It is my hope that that a facsimile will be published sometime in the future, when the techniques to capture the three-dimensional modality of my work are available.
Establishing context for The Papercut Haggadah
I came into preparations for The Papercut Haggadah with a passing familiarity with Passover and the elements of the Seder, but no idea of the richness of the tradition of the Haggadah or its development both as a body of texts and rituals, and as a written or printed artifact.
One of the benefits of being a university museum is having access to varied and valuable resources on campus. Here at Saint Louis University, one of our great treasures is the SLU Libraries Department of Special Collections, and in particular the Vatican Film Library, a research collection for the study of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and the texts they contain. It is formed around a core collection of more than 37,000 microfilmed manuscripts from the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, ranging in date from the fourth century AD through the seventeenth century and covering a broad spectrum of subjects. In addition to the microfilm, the collection includes many actual manuscripts as well as reproductions and reference materials.
We turned to the friendly and helpful staff of the Special Collections division to see if they had any historical examples of Haggadot that we could look at for reference. The response was exceptional. Not only were we able to see samples of pages from illuminated and printed Haggadot, we were able to make arrangements to borrow a number of volumes to include in the exhibition, so that all of our visitors could see these historical antecedents as well. We selected items that relate to aspects of Archie Granot’s project, such as the textual passages illuminated, or similar design elements.
Reproductions of historical Haggadot on display at MOCRA. Pages from Archie Granot's "Papercut Haggdah" are visible in the background.
For instance, we had noticed in Granot’s papercuts that certain Hebrew letters were frequently elongated or otherwise distorted. It soon became evident that this was not an arbitrary artistic choice, but a practice rooted in centuries of handwritten Torah scrolls, allowing scribes to create perfectly justified columns of text.
The most notable object we have on loan is a magnificent facsimile of a 15th-century illuminated manuscript called the Rothschild Miscellany.
A facsimile of the Rothschild Miscellany on display at MOCRA. Courtesy of Saint Louis University Libraries Special Collections.
The original volume was commissioned by Moses ben Yekuthiel Hakohen during a period when Italian Jews experienced exceptional scholarly and artistic activity as well as social mobility. The most elegantly and lavishly executed Hebrew manuscript of that era, it is comprised of more than 37 religious and secular works. Among the religious books are Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, and a yearly prayer book including the Passover Haggadah, while the secular books include philosophical, moralistic, and scientific treatises. The text throughout the manuscript is accompanied by marginal notes and commentaries. Of 948 pages, 816 are decorated in vibrant colors, gold and silver.
This painstakingly produced facsimile is open to the beginning section of the Haggadah. It is common in historical Haggadot to find depictions of the actions or rituals prescribed in the text. The illustrations on the righthand page depict preparations preceding Passover, including brushing up crumbs of leaven with a feather, burning the leftover leaven, and baking matzah. Granot references this practice in one of the pages of The Papercut Haggadah.
We are grateful to the staff of Saint Louis University Libraries Special Collections for their kind assistance and enriching the experience of our visitors.
– David Brinker, Assistant Director