Book breaking is the practice of purposefully dismantling books in order to remove their pages. It is often viewed as a controversial practice, with the most notable case being the work of Otto Ege – an academic who in the early 20th century broke down 50 illuminated manuscripts and re-organised them to create what are known as the Otto Ege Portfolios. He argued that he was disseminating knowledge by allowing the average person to experience a piece of these rare and historically important works, although sadly the consequence of his actions is that the scattering of the manuscript pieces has made it incredibly difficult to gather and reconstruct them.
Although breaking of rare books is to be discouraged, there are a huge number of books which have sustained too much damage to be usable but are simply not valuable enough to be worth restoring. What is the fate of these books? Most of them will sadly end up in landfill. It is estimated that more than 300 million books are thrown away globally every year, with paper accounting for more than 26% of landfill waste.
Here at the bookshop it breaks our hearts to throw books away, so we will do whatever it takes to keep them out of the bin. Any damaged books we find are carefully deconstructed. Their pages are then sorted and compiled into variety packs which can be used for collage, scrapbooking, decoupage and many more creative activities. Sorting through the pages is a lot of fun – they contain everything from beautiful illustrations and old photographs to songs, poems, and strange scientific diagrams. Sometimes we find things left behind between the pages too – postcards, old bookmarks, notes scribbled on scraps of paper. Insights into the lives of the people to whom these books once belonged. You really never know what you might come across.
The list of things you can do with the pages of old books is nearly endless – some of our favourite things to do are: framing illustrations to create unique wall art, using them as a canvas for collage or paintings, making origami shapes such as stars or birds and attaching string to create hanging decorations, and folding them into small gift bags.
Although we must admit that it always feels a little wrong to break a book apart, there is a huge sense of satisfaction that comes with knowing that we are giving these old and damaged items a new lease of life. Any practice that not only keeps things out of landfill but also encourages creativity is a good one in our book!
If you’ve bought one of our packs we would love to see how you’ve used it! Please send us a picture or tag us on Instagram or Facebook.
Written by Isobelle Brogan Hadley, July 2025
