Books have never been static objects, even though contemporary mass production steers us to see them as uniform vessels for text rather than dynamic, material objects shaped by the environments they inhabit and interact with. My midterm examination of the 1578 A Nievve Herball, or Historie of Plantes, located at San Diego State Universities Special Collections, revealed how the book’s physical condition holds a narrative just as compelling as its printed words. In fact, a narrative which would be incomplete by only looking at the words. I found the pages of Dodoens’ herbal discolored around the edges and spotted brown, with a trail of holes book worms have left behind. Before the creation of wood-pulp paper, most commonly used today, book makers used rag paper made from linen and cotton fibers. This material is both resilient, able to preserve itself from 1578 to 2025, but also vulnerable to light exposure, oxidation, and humidity. However, I discovered the “damage” to this copy is what made its story unique, transforming it from one of many identical copies into a rare artifact with its own biography. The narrative of a book is more than just the words inside, but can be found in the physical materiality of the container itself. In our contemporary moment, we are easily disconnected from the material history of the book. It has become easy to think of books as static containers of text, rather than organic artifacts. In order for me to truly read A Nievve Herball, or, Historie of Plantes, I had to look beyond the words, and unto the pages that hold them. This prompted me to explore further beyond the page, to go back in time before the existence of the white, thin, paper page itself. Despite the absence of the “page” we know today, reading and writing still flourished, however, the physical form it took remained closely tied to the natural world which interacted with it, making it easier to view as part of a broader, organic ecology. I have extended my original material investigation, a biography of a special collections book, by creating my own cuneiform inspired clay tablet. In doing so, placing the early modern codex into a broader history of book technology that stretches back to its predecessors in ancient Mesopotamia. This creative critical work demonstrates that the physicality of books, whether clay tablets or codex herbals, are organic, ecological artifacts whose meanings emerge through their material affordances and ongoing interactions with human and non-human forces.

Amaranth Borsuk reminds readers in her 2018 book, The Book, that “the story of the book’s changing form is bound up with that of its changing content” and that each book technology, from tablet to codex, offers its own “affordances” that shape how reading and writing occur (Borsuk, 1). When I examined the 1578 herbal, the bookworms’ holes and the browned rag paper revealed centuries of exchange with light, humidity, insects, and human touch. These marks formed their own ecological biography, evidence that the book has always been part of a larger system rather than a static, timeless container. However, these ideas directly echo the earliest history of writing, specifically the clay tablets of ancient Sumer and Mesopotamia, which were inseparable from their environmental origins. Borsuk explains that Sumerians turned to clay because it was “an abundant and renewable material” and because they already possessed “highly developed techniques for sifting and working with clay to create durable and lasting artifacts” (Borsuk, 4). Just like the rag paper of Dodoens’ herbal, clay was never neutral, it was chosen, shaped, and culturally meaningful because of its ecological availability. The clay had to be collected directly from the ground, worked by hand, and inscribed while still wet, making the material origins of writing almost impossible to ignore. Through this process, reading and writing remain closely connected to the environment, resources, and people from which they emerged, leaving far fewer gaps between the final product and the natural world which provided it. 

My clay tablet artwork emerged from this recognition. To create it, I shaped wet clay into a palm sized slab resembling early cuneiform tablets, then impressed the surface with a stylus, a modern rendition of the original stylus carved from a reed. This process mirrors the ancient method described by Borsuk: “a scribe impressed a corner of the reed into the clay at an oblique angle, using combinations of wedge shapes to make characters” (Borsuk, 6). Shaping the tablet required direct physical engagement with the clay material. The wet clay clung to my hands, refusing to be overlooked. Unlike woodpulp paper, which disappears from our touch the moment we turn the page, the clay insisted to be noticed, making its natural origins, and my own role in shaping it, impossible to forget. Using my clay tablet and the cuneiform writing technique, I inscribed letters and symbols inspired by Mesopotamian signs, however, this is not the focal point of my artwork. A reader able to see past the words will find intentional imperfections; impressions of various leaves and sticks, textures of rocks and dirt, cracks and holes, and even finger prints. These marks reinterpret ancient cuneiform tablets and the deterioration in Doden’s herbal, transforming what might be called “damage” into a representation of the ecological relationship between “book” and the environment. In Johanna Drucker’s “The Virtual Codex: From Page Space to E-Space”, she observes that “a book… is not an inert thing that exists in advance of interaction, rather it is produced new by the activity of each reading” (Drucker). My clay tablet materializes this. Its meaning and history does not rely on the text, but on the reader’s ability to interpret its material surface. It must be “read” like the herbal, by reading the marks, textures, and traces. Its history is entangled with the materials and human and non-human forces that created and shaped it. The leaf impressions, the stylus wedges, and the drying cracks each represent different condensed historical moments in it. In both cases of the herbal and my tablet, these imperfections act as inscriptions of time, environment, and exchange. Just as the herbal pages bear witness to centuries of life, the clay tablet contains a condensed record of its own formation and interaction with the natural world. 

This process of creating my critical artwork reveals that books have always been shaped by their physical materials and environments as much as by the text they contain. By moving back in time from the pages of Doden’s herbal to the cuneiform tablet, I came to understand reading and writing as an organic, ecological process with many participants rather than only a textual one. This art project demonstrates that the book has always been alive, evolving through interaction with the natural world. The clay tablet reveals what modern woodpulp paper can allow us to forget, that every book materializes from the natural world and is never finished with interaction or exchange. This project challenges our modern detachment from the materiality of the book, pushing us to see the “book” as part of a larger, organic ecology, as more than a vessel for information. Reading and writing is more than an encounter with text, but with matter, history, and environment; a process that does not start when you open a book, or stop when you put it down.

Works Citied:

Borsuk, Amaranth. The Book. The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series, 2018. 

“Cuneiform Tablets and Cuneiform Inscribed Other Items.” View Items, Arte Mission, www.artemission.com/viewitems.aspx?CategoryID=91. Accessed 14 Dec. 2025. 

“Cuneiform Tablet: List of Magical Stones.” Achaemenid or Seleucid – Achaemenid or Seleucid – The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Met Museum, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/321680. Accessed 14 Dec. 2025. 

Drucker, Johanna. “The Virtual Codex from Page Space to E-Space.” Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, companions.digitalhumanities.org/DLS/content/9781405148641_chapter_11.html. Accessed 14 Dec. 2003.