The Box as Stage Set

Barbara Mauriello recently presented a fantastic workshop that transformed the act of box making into the creation of a stage for one’s imagination.

The idea of Box as Stage Set, as Barbara explained, came from a student in a workshop Barbara taught some years ago. The student had brought along a wooden box with a sliding door. The student had taken Barbara’s traditional box-making workshop with the desire to learn how to reproduce this unusual wooden box.

The wooden box had a history and the student related it to Barbara. Apparently, it was common for itinerants to wander the Indian country side with these boxes telling stories and putting on performances with dioramas inside wooden boxes like this one. Barbara was intrigued with recreating the box and the concept that it was a small stage in which treasures could be displayed or the imagination could stage a story. After some trial and error she managed to come up with a box made mostly of binders board covered in Asian decorative papers with a sliding panel, feet, and a stepped decorative top.

That initial interest Barbara experienced—that this box could transform into a stage for the imagination—fueled the students in the GBW Potomac Chapter Workshop. As the class began the steps were very basic, adhering walls to the sides of a base and building upon those initial steps to begin to form a box. As the day progressed students began choosing different papers and decorative elements until each finished with a unique box.

It was a great workshop and fun. Sometimes letting one’s imagination run wild is its own reward!

Barbara Mauriello is an artist and conservator who has a bookbinding studio in Hoboken, NJ. She is on the faculty at the International Center of Photography and The Center for Book Arts, and conducts workshops at art centers across the country, including Penland School of Crafts and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.