{"product_id":"an-almanac-of-birds-100-divinations-for-uncertain-days","title":"An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom Maria Popova, the writer behind \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/\" title=\"The Marginalian\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eThe Marginalian\u003c\/a\u003e, comes a beautiful, contemplative deck of one hundred “divinations” for daily life—pieces suspended somewhere between poem and koan, woven from the words and images of nineteenth-century ornithological books.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow do we make a life alongside uncertainty? How do we come to know ourselves and trust the quiet wisdom within? During a difficult season, as Popova longed for guidance, an unexpected idea took shape: a project joining her new found interest in birds merged with her love of language and her tenderness toward the human wish to find a way through.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIncluded with the 100 cards is a small pamphlet, set in the nineteenth-century typeface \u003cem\u003eCormorant\u003c\/em\u003e, featuring Maria Popova’s essay on the inspiration and story behind her creative process- it's fascinating! Here's an excerpt:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"I turned to my favorite nineteenth-century ornithological books, digitized by the wonderful Biodiversity Heritage Library — the many volumes of John James Audubon’s Birds of America, illustrated by Audubon himself, and John Gould’s Birds of Europe and Birds of Australia, illustrated by his gifted wife Elizabeth and by Edward Lear, who helped cultivate Elizabeth’s talent; a couple of volumes of Henry Leonard Meyer’s Colored Illustrations of British Birds and Their Eggs; and the ornithological portions of Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, the specimens from which Elizabeth Gould illustrated.\"\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"Each night before going to sleep, I would let a painted bird call out to me from the yellowed pages, then read the ornithological description of the species, taking down a handful of words and phrases speaking to something on my mind that day. Then, with the slanted reckoning of REM, the unconscious would do its mysterious work in the night. Upon waking, I would reread the ornithological text and a kind of message would come to enflesh the skeleton of the noted words — a divination from the bird, partway between koan and poem. I would spend the rest of the day cutting the words and rearranging them onto the illustration, digitally correcting only lightly for the corruptions of the centuries, but mostly embracing the blurry and uneven scans, the stains and smudges, the faded colors — embracing the price of time.\"\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis deck of oversized cards is housed in a “book safe,” inspired by the Victorian tradition of hiding valuables and love letters in a book-shaped box designed to blend in on a library shelf.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e6.22 x 4.21 x 2.36 inches (h x w x d)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e100 cards + pamphlet\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePublished by McNally Jackson Books\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"McNally Jackson","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67938125218046,"sku":"9781961341432","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0534\/9831\/4948\/files\/Almanac_Birds_16.png?v=1793565587","url":"https:\/\/twohandspaperie.com\/products\/an-almanac-of-birds-100-divinations-for-uncertain-days","provider":"Two Hands Paperie","version":"1.0","type":"link"}