Into the Dark Woods

Into the Dark Woods beckons us into the fantastic realms of Su Blackwell’s artistic imagination. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2003, Blackwell has become widely known for her fragile and beguiling book sculptures that play on traditions of origami and shadow puppet theatre. Over time, she has perfected a form of rewriting through cutting to conjure a series of enchantments in paper.

In her book, Into the Dark Woods, Blackwell delves into the more unsettling moments and spaces of our most cherished tales. Here, she retells seven classic fairy tales, Vasilisa the Brave, Aschenputtel, Beauty and the Beast, Donkeyskin, The Six Swans, The Red Shoes and Bluebeard, imbuing them with her revolutionary vision.

As an accompaniment to the lavishly-bound illustrated storybook, Blackwell also provides a generous compendium in the form of, ‘The Making of the Talismans‘, a booklet containing seven paper-cut-out templates with photographic instructions, showing you how to make your own paper objects that feature in the tales. Blackwell designed these objects to suit a range of paper-sculpting skills from beginner to advanced. They include a shoe, a rose, a doll, a shirt, a bird, a ring, and a key.