The Accordion-Fold Book for The Umbrellas / Joint project for Japan and U.S.A.

Jeanne-Claude and Christo

An accordian style portfolio of images documenting Christo and Jean-Claude's "The Umbrellas" project, which spanned portions of the California, U.S.A, and Ibaraki, Japan inland valleys. The purpose was to highlight the similarites between the geological formations as well as the differences in climates and daily use of the land by local populations. The massive project took a total of eight years, eleven industrial manufacturers in Japan, U.S.A., Germany, and Canada, thirty miles of land, and twenty-six million dollars to execute.

During the project's installation, which began in December of 1990, the photographer Wolfgang Volz traveled throughout the two countries to document the process. The photographs and their corresponding topographical maps were then reworked by Christo using pencil, fabric, charcoal, wax crayon, and enamel paint. These images were then conceptualized for a book by Christo with Stephen Vincent of Bedford Arts, San Francisco. The layout was designed by Thomas Ingalls of Ingalls and Associates, and the binding was designed by master binder Fusaichi Sekine of Book Idea Center, Japan, and printed by Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd., Japan, in an edition of 400 in 1991.

Included in the book are the accordian-style fold-out images, which unfold to 9' long and feature the California project (yellow umbrealls) on one side and the Japanese project (blue umbrellas) on the other. The accordian is then bound to a signature of six pages that include a forward and interview by Masahiko Yanagi, the publisher and printer's info, and the signed and dated pages that feature two tipped-in pieces of the nylon umbrella fabric, one yellow, one blue. The book is enclosed in a clamshell box bound in choclate linen with an embossed title.