Scissors, My Solitude

Scissors, My Solitude

By Nancee Wipperfurth Killoran

I was a kid who found sanctuary in a long, narrow closet in my room where I cut out paper dolls and gave them lives. The scissors were mine and I had to hide them from my older sisters. To this day I am a scissors hoarder. There are scissors in every room of my house. And in my studio, where these days I am making books, Fiskars scissors are at my fingertips. I even have student sized scissors for when I teach book making classes to kids. I have gifted Lefty Fiskar Scissors to all my left-handed friends. When I give scissors as a present, people look at me funny, and then I say, “You can never have too many scissors.”

I am working on a series of small Recipe Story Books. They are only 2”x 2” in size, in editions of 2 or 3. There will be 12 “chapters” in the series; one for each month of the year. I have eight completed. It all started when members of the Book Arts group, the Bone Folders’ Guild, decided to exchange 2”x 2” books at the 2008 year-end celebration party. It went over so big we’ve been doing it every year since. We even did a Zoom version during Covid.

Making these tiny books is zen like for me. The process includes everything from snipping off linen binding thread to making intricate paper cuts to tip-in to the book. The first 2x2 book I made was about a lost recipe for the Waldorf Astoria’s Red Velvet Cake. As the story went, in the 1950s, my Aunt June convinced the Hotel’s Bakery Chef to give her the recipe-- but only if she swore she would never give it to anyone else. She made that cake for years; and while her cakes were routinely lopsided, their taste was a slice of heaven. We never did find the recipe after June passed; so I started experimenting with my own Red Cake recipe.

I was designing, writing, and creating art that told my story. That piece was to become the December Chapter of the Recipe Story Books. Ninnie’s Red Cake is a book that looks like a cake with paper candles that have red, glass beads as the flame. At the ends of the accordion folded text block, I cut and sewed, using a pamphlet stitch, a booklet on each end--one with the recipe for the cake, and at the other end the recipe for the frosting.

I was so happy with that first little book, I was inspired to make another. The November Chapter, Nannies Butterscotch Pie, revolves around the story of how I got my Grandfathers’ Butterscotch Pie recipe. I had gotten up early one Thanksgiving and gone over to his house to watch him put the pie together. He was in his eighties at the time; and when I’d ask him how much of an ingredient he was using, he’d say things like, “put a walnut sized chunk of butter in next.” This 2”x 2” book has pages with pockets that hold triangle “booklets” that are hand cut and sewn to look like slices of pie. The recipe ingredients appear on the inside of the pieces of pie.

After those two books, I found that I had other recipes that had been handed down, shared or developed by people I knew. And it was then that I decided I was going to make The Recipe Story Books a series. Each one would have a connection to a month. For example, Chop Suey Supper is the February Chapter because my mom’s birthday was that month.

It tells the story of how she would make Chop Suey for supper when we were kids. It was a tribute to my dad’s time in China during WWII.

Chop Suey Supper’s text block is made from a map of China that is folded and cut to show the town, Kunming, where my dad was stationed. The recipe appears on the cut-out “kimonos” which are stitched to one of the mountain folds of the book with a crystal bead. The story appears on the cut-out hearts that are sewn to the valley fold of the book. As kids, when we ate Chop Suey, we had to use chopsticks just like dad had done during the war. So my book’s front and back covers are embedded with chopsticks that I cut down using heavy-duty scissors. The front of the book has a purple heart cut out of one of my mom’s WAC sweaters--she was in the Army during WWII too. The back cover of my book has one of the buttons from the sweater sewn onto it. Truth here: years ago I washed the wool sweater and it shrunk to a doll size. I kept it because it was my mom’s and I knew I’d use it some day in my book art.

The most recent Chapter in the series is Kitchen Cooking. The form is a dos a ͑ dos (two books in one) flag book - the “flags” spell the words each of the titles. There are two stories in this book: one for Brown Rice & Butter, and one recipe and story for Shrimp Mousse with Celery. It is the October Chapter because both recipes come from family members born in that month.

Other books in this series include: Uday’s Fruity Surprise with colorful,circle pages that suggest the form of a bowl of fruit , The Coffee Cake Disaster’s form shows two figures that pass along the wrong ingredient; Ling’s PB & Mayo covers are pieces of paper cut-out to look like a slice of bread; and Stormy Pie tells a story about the cottage on the lake that we went to as kids. The structure of separate “rooms” tells the story of the salt dough we made when it was stormy on the lake and we couldn’t go outside.

The development of the books takes months. From writing the narrative to making a mock-up; it ends up on the bench in my studio for a long time. The process is what brings delight. I am still that kid, hiding, cutting, creating; but you don’t need tiny hands to construct tiny books, you just need the right tools.

The remaining four Chapters, which are in various stages of completion, will be forthcoming.