Tara Books: Books for passion
di // pubblicato il 24 Ottobre, 2011
Books are usually all around us…take them, open and leaf them through is something we do everyday , but I just wondered myself: how a book is made? At first sight it is quite obvious it is made of paper, glue and thread, but all these element can’t merge by themselves and so…how is possible?
Probably, what I’m going to describe doesn’t stick to every book we have in the library, on a desk or just on the ground, but I hope can provoke a sort of curiosity as it happened to me.
Follow me and move to India, exactly to Chennai. The Indian car factory capital welcomed Tara, an independent publishing house composed by writers, designers and artisans that make the homemade books his main peculiarity. Lots of collaborations are essential to create a varied genres “portfolio” able to encounter different tastes.
Ideally a good book is able to unearth readers everywhere and in an perfect world Tara’s catalogue should be something setted and organized but, unfortunatel,y despite thousands kilometers small publishing houses has to compares themselves to an editorial market even more narrow and focused on specific categorizations.
Past time wasn’t easy and future isn’t still defined, but I wouldn’t distract attention from Tara, because an ugly caterpillar needs a while to become a beautiful butterfly.
The relationship between Tara and traditional Indian art dated back to few years ago. On 1996 we can find the volume “The Hungry Lion” a child book realized in Warli style typical of West India (paintings belonging to this style are almost all murales painted on mud, coal and cow dung; rice powder merged to resin and water is used as paint and a little branch works as paintbrush. Paintings have dark bottoms animated by trees, plants and traditional tribal huts where a great number of people are concentrated on their daily routine composed by hunting, dancing and cultivation) and the first one totally handmade. From that year, lots of different artists born in isolated community and with variegated backgrounds began to collaborate with Tara on already written story or totally new ones. The aim is still the same: every artists has to become an “author” and the only creator of his own book; from that point of view every single story is not just a specific artistic style representation but, above all, a starting point from which tell a story and tell about himself as well.
Tara’s greatest quality is the artisans team that represents its vital lymph.
C. Arumugam is the lab manager and the first team teacher: he trained them into expert screen printers, binders and bookmakers; they use handmade paper, made from a mixture of cotton cloth waste and tree bark, rice husk or grass. The team work is an important part of the artisans co-habitation and a sort of the same intentions manifesto.
The production numbers has to be told: they have created over 180.000 books, which required 11 million impressions, or individual “pulls” for each colour. The whole process allows artisans to express their fantasy in shape and colours and their variety become an integral part of the project.
Et voilà! Books for children and adults, photographic and narrative volume rich of illustrations and full of beautiful details. Few imperfections are something that make every book, every single pages and every story unique and a little bit magic.