THIS WEEK
Feature An Atlas of Es Devlin
Devlin’s imaginative staging brought to book form in landmark Atlas
Thames & Hudson took on the challenge of publishing a book about artist and stage designer Es Devlin in collaboration with her and her studio team; the publisher’s production controller Julie Bosser explains the road to publication
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Julie Bosser Production controller, Tames & Hudson
escribed in a recent Sunday Times interview as “Modern Britain’s answer to Leonardo da Vinci”, Es Devlin is the genre-defying artist and set designer behind the most innovative and original theatrical and artistic events of the past 30 years. The go-to designer for the world’s biggest music stars—think Beyoncé, U2, Adele and The Weeknd—and the creator of award-winning sets for opera and theatre productions such as “The Crucible” and “The Lehman Trilogy,” she is also a visionary artist whose sculptural works of art include Tate Modern’s “Come Home Again” and the AI-influenced “Please Feed the Lion” installation in Trafalgar Square. Her first monographic museum exhibition will open at Cooper Hewit, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York this November.
Es is a voracious reader with books central to her
Andrew Sanigar, the book’s commissioning editor, called the atlas “the most complex book production” he has ever seen in 28 years at Thames & Hudson
visionary work and ideas, so it may be surprising that An Atlas of Es Devlin, published by Thames & Hudson last week, is her first trade book. What is no surprise is that it’s unlike any book you have ever seen—and perhaps ever will. Andrew Sanigar, the book’s commissioning editor, called the atlas “the most complex book production” he has ever seen in 28 years at Thames & Hudson and “a tour de force of bookmaking”. So how did we do it? In all Es does, the audience is an active participant, so the reader’s experience was central to her vision for the book. She wanted to push boundaries and engage the reader physically and mentally. At my first meeting with Es, I found myself in front of a printed flatplan measuring roughly three metres long. She had myriad ideas about the materials she wanted to use, with colours and bindings inspired by complex book samples—most of which were limited editions printed in Europe. She wanted a book that was alive and playful. A book that no one had seen before. The biggest challenge was that we were not making a
limited edition, but thousands of copies; we were also on a very tight schedule. Although the book was a skeleton at the end of 2022, we needed it in the warehouse nine months later, so we had to be strategic. The layout and
10 3rd November 2023
THE PRODUCTION OF THE BOOK IN CHINA
BOSSER OVERSAW
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