Route 66. Peter Thomas, Bobby Troup. Santa Cruz, California, Peter and Donna Thomas (2023) 1.875 x 2.875 inches. One scrolling page 21 x 2.125 inches. 33 copies. $99

Binding: Scroll; folded paper cover, affixed to wooden framework at one end, digitally printed on Peters handmade paper using art from a 1950s Route 66 postcard. Text block: Scroll wound over wooden dowels passed through holes drilled in a painted wood framework. Toy Hot Wheel tires as knobs, affixed to dowel, to assist turning scroll. Paper: White, handmade by Peter. Printing: Letterpress. Typography: Various wood type fonts, Futura Bold.

Artists' statement follows images:

Peter made this book to celebrate Donna’s 66th birthday, choosing Route 66 as a subject that could conceptionally encompass the wild ride they have had together. That ride includes forty-five years as a couple, their work together making artists’ books, their 2006 walk across California in the footsteps of John Muir, and their ten years traveling the country as the Wandering Book Artists. On that road trip they drove Route 66 into Albuquerque, New Mexico to give a talk at the Special Collections Library at the University. The current exhibit was about Route 66: how as “The Main Street of America” it linked a remote and under-populated Midwest with two vital modern metropolises, Chicago and Los Angeles, and symbolized the unprecedented freedom and mobility for anyone who owned or could hitch a ride in a car. Just having driven the modern Route 66 that no longer follows the route, they saw only a memory and a nostalgia of that vital past, and that show planted a seed from which this book sprouted.

Over the past 40 years Peter has made more than a dozen editioned books as surprise birthday gifts for Donna. Her 66th birthday presented the perfect opportunity to create an artists’ book about Route 66. As they had been “rolling down the road” it seemed most appropriate to make it a scrolling book that looked a bit like a car. Since he had made scrolling books before, Peter knew the mechanics involved; it needed knobs to grasp and turn, while at the same time restraining the scroll from unwinding randomly. What better to use for those knobs than toy Hot Wheel car tires. The text is letterpress printed on Peter’s handmade paper, using lyrics from the famous song about Route 66 modified so they allude to Donna’s birthday. The wooden scroll structure is casebound with a paper cover, which Peter printed using art from a 1950s Route 66 postcard. As a nod to the fact that Route 66 is only half there today, Peter limited the edition to 33 copies.