Francisca Prieto’s Between Folds series creates origami windows into the past

Folding the pages of centuries’ old illustrated books and periodicals to reveal fragments of the pictures while obscuring the words is bound to infuriate some bibliophiles. But what you lose in legibility, you gain in visual preservation. In her ongoing series Between Folds, Francisca Prieto transforms rare books into patterned origami structures. The pages are folded back to create tantalising windows into the past: glimpses into the streets of nineteenth century Paris, showcases of early twentieth century surgical appliances and etched and hand-coloured birds half-caged within the paper folds. Delicate revitalisations of dusty tomes.