Pop-up book master John Strejan obit

Mr. Strejan (the name is pronounced STREE-jen) was an artist from childhood, who discovered that he could figure out how things worked and then draw them with a knife. His nickname [Silverblade] referred to his dazzling speed and skill with an X-Acto blade.

There are only a few dozen paper engineers in the world, all self-taught. It is hard not to marvel when a flat book opens and out comes a fully rigged galleon, a half-dozen dinosaurs or a breathing coral reef with eels swimming through the lacy boughs; pulling tabs can make shells open or tentacles wave. But the exacting mechanics of how it is done are hard to explain.

"I took paper, smashed it in a book and saw how it folded," he once said of his early experiments.

Complex constructions like Mr. Strejan's, which must be assembled, slotted in, and glued by hand, contain hundreds of individual pieces of paper, each precisely cut to fit and fold exactly, and hundreds of glue points.

Books with moveable parts can be traced to the 1300's, but the 19th-century Germans Ernest Nister and Lothar Meggendorfer are credited with the modern form, which then languished until the 1960's.

Robert Sabuda, an author and illustrator of recent pop-up titles like "The 12 Days of Christmas: A Pop-Up Celebration," called Mr. Strejan "a grand master of the generation when pop-up books entered their second golden age." Mr. Sabuda said Mr. Strejan's work "is so good that today I still can't figure out how to do some of it."

Posted by David on April 18, 2003 8:20 AM