Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

Front: 3,492 separately torn pieces of gampi, each gilded on the top edge. Each piece of gampi holds one hand-transcribed line of Romeo and Juliet. The play is color-coded by ink according to the “houses” –Montagues are blue-violet, Capulets are red-violet, Prince & his friends are cyan, Friar Laurence is Prussian blue, stage directions are black. Edges of each scroll are gold, except in the passages where someone dies which are deep red.

Back: Because the gampi and silk are translucent, the handwriting on the back of the scrolls is visible on the front –but it is wrong-reading from the front.
1. I have traced the handwriting of 100 (20 for each of the five acts) love letters that my husband Henry has written to me.
2. On the edge of the scroll I have traced the handwriting of a 1935 letter that my maternal grandfather wrote to my parents. When my parents married, both of their families strongly objected, but after some time my maternal grandfather wrote a long letter containing the line: “Whenever we meet it will be the beginning of a new book and on the front page I wish to have inscribed in big letters ‘Welcome Home.'”

Title: Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare 

Size: Five separate scrolls hung together at 31″ wide total, length variable
Materials: Gampi, gold paint, ink, mounted on silk
Date: 2018
Photographed by: Thomas Little and David Pace