Dragon Scale Bookbinding: Resurrecting More Than 1,000 Years Ancient Chinese Art By Zhang Xiaodong

Zhang Xiaodong revived the forgotten art of dragon scale bookbinding, and has created dragon scale style concertina bookbinding and multi-dimensional paper art, combining ancient folding and cutting techniques with modern technology.

Resurrecting the arts of China’s Dragon Scale Bookbinding

This is a scroll nearly 100 meters long. When it is pulled open, the secrets inside also poured out, staggered rows of pages will flip regularly, like the long tail of a phoenix, and like a real dragon covered with scales in a leisurely swim, the dense text will appear with the flying pages. Yep, it is also a book.

This magical form of scroll is the ancient Chinese bookbinding process, which has been lost for thousands of years – dragon scale bookbinding. In the vast volume of books, the dragon scale bookbinding has been handed down in kind, only one is left in the Palace Museum is currently treasured in the《刊谬补缺切韵》, so precious that Pu Yi did not forget to take it with him when he fled at the end of the Qing Dynasty.

Fortunately, someone persevered and “searched” for more than ten years from the traces of history, and finally let this dusty craft reappear in the light of day. This person is Zhang Xiaodong, a non-genetic inheritor of dragon scale bookbinding.

做书背后它既感性又理性，因为它是一个看上去感性的东面，实际上背后所有的东西一个理性的运算。一 张晓栋

Behind the bookbinding, there are both sensibility and rationality, because it looks like something sensible, actually it relies on rational calculation.
一 zhang Xiaodong

Zhang Xiaodong, a post-80s book designer, has been engaging in Dragon Scale Binding, an unknown binding technique, for 13 years. He is now the only person who masters the technique around the world and is recognized officially as the only inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage. He has patented over 20 inventions in China, and has been invited to major international exhibitions such as Venice Art Biennial and Hong Kong Art Week. His works show great vitality of Chinese culture, amazing people across the globe and attracting lots of post-00s into the world of paper books.