07 / 17Artwork 7 of 17Virtual exhibition
Kobzar
Mykola Syadristy1960
A 0.6 mm², 12-page book you can actually leaf through, with Taras Shevchenko's poems and portrait, its pages bound together with spider silk.
What to look for under the microscope
In numbers
- Size0.6 mm²
- Pages12
- Letter heightAbout 0.003 mm
- BindingSpider silk; cover: an immortelle petal
- 1960Year created
The story
Kobzar is the first poetry collection of Taras Shevchenko, the greatest figure in Ukrainian literature; it was published in St Petersburg in 1840. The visible page carries lines from his “Testament”, which Shevchenko wrote, gravely ill, in Pereiaslav at Christmas 1845. It has since been translated into hundreds of languages.
How it was made
He cut the pages from exceptionally thin paper and scratched the poems and the portrait onto them with a diamond-tipped needle. He bound the pages with a thread of spider silk. The cover is made from the petal of an immortelle (strawflower), which keeps its colour and shape even after it is picked – hence its name.
Did you know?
- The little book really can be leafed through: its pages are turned with a hair cut to a point. A film recorded in 1970, shown at the Szentendre exhibition, bears witness to this.
- The world's largest handmade book is also in Hungary, in Szinpetri: it measures 4.18 × 3.77 metres, weighs 1,420 kg and has 346 pages.
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