pop-ups

Featuring a title from the Libraries' pop-up book collection and current exhibition, Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn.

Featuring a title from the Libraries' pop-up book collection and current exhibition, Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn.

Recent lecture by "Pop-Up Lady" Ellen Rubin is now available.

Featuring a title from the Libraries' pop-up book collection and current exhibition, Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn.

Featuring a title from the Libraries' pop-up book collection and current exhibition, Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn.

A bigger than life three-dimensional form of a bee emerges from this small 5 ½-inch book when the carousel mechanism is unfolded. David Hawcock, a paper-engineer for more than 30 titles, has crafted an intricate, colorful, and anatomically accurate representation of the insect.—Stephen Van Dyk

Featuring a title from the Libraries' pop-up book collection and current exhibition, Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn.

Featuring a title from the Libraries' pop-up book collection and current exhibition, Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn.

Featuring a title from the Libraries' pop-up book collection and current exhibition, Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn.

Featuring a title from the Libraries' pop-up book collection and current exhibition, Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn. A perfect entry for Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).

Featuring a title from the Libraries' pop-up book collection and current exhibition, Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn.

Featuring a title from the Libraries' pop-up book collection and current exhibition, Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn.

Featuring a title from the Libraries' pop-up book collection and current exhibition, Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn.

The fascinating art of paper engineering is the focus of a new exhibit that is on display in the Libraries’ gallery at the National Museum of American History. Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop, and Turn includes 44 books that range in date from the mid-16th to the early 21st centuries, creating a fascinating retrospective of volumes, which were designed and constructed with parts that move.

Pop-up mechanisms—which allow certain elements to pop up from the surface of a book page—are just some of the paper construction types highlighted in the Libraries’ exhibit, Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn, on view in the Libraries’ gallery at the National Museum of American History

The pop-up craze has hit the gift shop at the National Museum of American History!

The fascinating art of paper engineering is the focus of a new exhibit that is on display in the Libraries’ gallery at the National Museum of American History. Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop, and Turn includes 44 books that range in date from the mid-16th to the early 21st centuries, creating a fascinating retrospective of volumes, which were designed and constructed with parts that move.

Here are some of the creations that came out of last Sunday’s Family Activity at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. More can be viewed on the Libraries' Flickr page.

The Libraries has quite a series of titles from across its collections featuring the King of Rock 'n' Roll. There is also an interesting link on the National Postal Museum website with the backstory of the Elvis stamp issued in 1993.

This double-page pop-up illustrating the Christmas nativity scene was created by Vojtěch Kubašta (1914-1992), a Czech artist and book illustrator. Born in Vienna and raised in Prague, Kubašta began his career as an artist and book illustrator in the early 1940s after studying architecture at the Polytech University in Prague.