The Most Beautiful Book of the Year
Erkka Filander
Siemenholvi
- Format 300 × 400 mm
- Pages 354
- Printing Printer Trento
- Paper Arena Rough Ivory
- Typefaces Poesia
- Published by Poesia
- Design Erkka Filander, Olli-Pekka Tennilä
Large books are often monuments of power. A large format can convey rulership, reinforce status or reach toward the divine. The Seed Vault, a doomsday collection of seeds located in Svalbard, safeguards the possibility of restoring something destroyed by preserving billions of fragments of hope.
The gaze travels across vast distances, the enormous book compels its reader to sit down. Choices must be made, fragments must be navigated through, posture must be occasionally adjusted. This book calms or challenges reading as a physical act, in which the whole body must take part. The form raises questions about how a book is read, carried, borrowed and stored. Its demand for stillness defies the time of fast and easy content.
Invented and designed by poet Erkka Filander and refined into its final form together with Olli-Pekka Tennilä, Siemenholvi is a monumental poetry book that tests the limits of form and marks the culmination of many years of work. It dives into the atmosphere of destruction, to the unsettling questions about humanity and preservation.
The book’s scale follows the classical codex and carries within the layered traditions of book design. Subtle material references lead thoughts towards the Renaissance – red Roman typeface on ash-black cloth, and a regal golden-yellow cover paper from Italy. The thick paper is pleasing to the touch, while the typography, scattered across the pages, possesses a humane beauty.
Siemenholvi asks: what should be cherished? It is an act of conservation carried out with thought and craft. At once classic, experimental and timeless – and thrillingly audacious.
