When a book isn't.

In the elegant second floor gallery of Manhattan’s Grolier Club, a haven for serious-minded rare book collectors, Mindell Dubansky presents something novel: her collection of blooks.

You read that right. Blooks is an abbreviation of “book-look”, what she further describes as “a thing that looks like a book, but isn’t one”. From book-shaped biscuit tins to books made of stone, her exhibit, Blooks: The Art of Books That Aren’t, is the first major survey of the decidedly quirky – but utterly delightful – topic.

Dubansky, a preservation librarian at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has been collecting blooks for about 20 years. The discovery, at a flea market, of a late 19th-century blook made out of coal to commemorate the death of a Pennsylvania miner, prompted her to collect fake books in earnest. Since then she’s been rummaging junk shops and trawling eBay in search of her treasure, paying as little as $5 and as much as $1,200. “I am actively collecting and can’t imagine ever stopping,” she said. “I look everywhere.” She also writes a blog called About Blooks.

h/t The Guardian: full story here.