IB I had come from an art school which was totally crazy so it was good for me to see another world. I was given loads of freedom there, I immediately became a designer – not a junior designer – I was a designer. What she does not, for instance, want to discuss is the fundamental and ancient role of weaving in human society, its function as a metaphor, its place in myth. She thought about all that many years ago when she was travelling round Latin America on a Fulbright scholarship in the late 1950s, studying pre-Columbian textiles. She had been inspired in that line of study by her Yale art history professor, the hugely influential George Kubler, author of The Shape of Time, who not only showed his students a lot of slides of Andean mummy bundles but “looked like a walking mummy bundle … a fascinating man, he presided over his classes in such a powerful way”.

IB It’s what, for me, is really important. To be able look at these books and try to understand why people did things, it's interesting to see what happened to the book through these times and how the book got commercialised. Because it wasn’t initially a commodity, it was for sharing information. And the book became something way more democratic. That’s absolutely for sure. It’s very exciting to realise. IB Yeah, it’s true! I’m going to Paris for a project soon and I don’t have copies! I often have to buy them. I buy my own books! IB Yes. That’s also why for me it is so nice to study at the Vatican Library. All these things which are important for me really have been around already for 500 years. Making books is the most stable medium ever, it’s proved its ability to share information. I think that making a book is a controlled act like a painting or video work, it’s an integral cultural part of our society. And therefore I think that books should also be treated like that. The book is a part of our knowledge and so the book needs attention. Depending on what the content of the book is, it has to have a specific size or it has a weight, or it has volume or there's a specific structure. That's all very important.INT As a designer, you’ve built up a reputation for creating beautifully tactile books. Have you always been interested in objects?

Danto, Joan Simon, and Nina Stritzler-Levine as well as illustrations of the artist's working tools, related drawings, photographs, and chronology. Published in association with the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture IB There needs to be some challenge in it. For example, last year I spent five months in Rome as a resident at the Vatican Library – it’s something I’ll continue next year. When I was invited it seemed like such a good moment to be able to study books, to look at what happened to the book. For me, there were two things going on. I’m the producer, the maker of the book but I’m also the researcher of the book so that's a parallel path. I will also make a publication at some point on my Vatican studies. It’s such a good source also to be able to see where I am as a book designer. The volume, designed by Irma Boom and named "the most beautiful book in the world" at the 2007 Leipzig Book Fair, includes essays by Arthur C. IB We were given great jobs there. But because I didn’t know that much I took on the jobs nobody else wanted. I realised if I did those jobs, nobody was going to be looking at me and realising I didn’t know anything! Intuitively or instinctively, that was a good decision because I could experiment. I could do what I wanted because really no one looked at anything I did. It was like, “Oh, you've done it? OK, it’s fine.”IB Yeah. I thought it was so horrible! I told my teacher, and the teacher said, “They didn’t hire you? Unbelievable! Come to the place where I work instead.” So I became an intern at the Printing and Publishing Office, before interning at Studio Dumbar. In those days, it was incredibly famous but it was also tiny, and very artistic. And I loved the way they worked. IB While I was at the Printing and Publishing Office, I was mainly doing work for the Ministry of Culture. And as I mentioned before, I always took on the books nobody wanted to do. It meant I was slightly under the radar – nobody looked at what I was making and I did some crazy things – there was one series of adverts I made where things were upside down and all over the place. And then Ootje Oxenaar [a designer of Dutch banknotes], actually Julius’ former boss, who published, together with the Government Printing and Publishing Office, the stamp annuals, saw these ads and he loved them. He said, “I don’t know who made these, but whoever did should get to do the next stamp annual.”

IBWell, when he saw my work, he said: “You belong to the fine art department.” So I didn’t go to the Arnhem Art School, I went to the AKI Academy of Art and Design which was a totally radical and crazy school, famous for art but also applied arts. IB No, no! Actually, when I was applying to art school, I wanted to become a painter. Books were not the first love at all. My parents weren’t really keen on me becoming a painter though and so my mother directed me towards the applied arts and I applied to Arnhem School of Art, a random art school, where actually Julius’ [Vermeulen, Irma’s partner] father Jan Vermeulen was working. And he was the one to interview me! It’s the only time I ever met him in my life because he died. Rawsthorn, Alice (March 18, 2007). "Reinventing the look (even smell) of a book". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved March 4, 2018. In retrospect, it was the best thing for me that I was put in this whole group of people but I could work there and be almost totally invisible. I was so shy, I also had long hair and I was always lurking behind it.So I don’t think about it. I only do the projects I think I should do and I can really work on and people should give me freedom. I always do my best to make something good but you never know. There are so many reasons why things come together to make a project work and there are even more reasons why something becomes a failure. It's difficult. Since 1964, she has lived and worked in Paris, France. [3] Prior to that, she lived and worked in Guerrero, Mexico from 1959 to 1963. Gaze, Delia; Mihajlovic, Maja; Shrimpton, Leanda (1997). Dictionary of Women Artists: Introductory surveys; Artists, A-I. Taylor & Francis. p.683. ISBN 978-1-884964-21-3. INT Materiality is a massive part of what you do – scale, weight, paper choices. How do these things help you communicate concepts, and why is this important to you?

IB Well, after art school I started to work in The Hague at the Government Publishing and Printing Office, in the design department, and in one of the last years I was there, Julius was too. I immediately fell in love with him – he was this very cute, nice boy. His surname is Vermeulen, which is sort of a common name, so I didn’t think anything of it. At some point, I asked, after I’d already fallen in love with him, “Are you related to Jan Vermeulen?” And he said, “That’s my father!” From that moment on, I thought, “OK, I have to keep this guy!” La Biennale di Venezia - Artists". www.LaBiennale.org. Archived from the original on June 29, 2017 . Retrieved February 22, 2017. So I was conflicted about what to do next. I asked a lot of people for advice and everybody told me I had to go to the Publishing Office because it’s big and I would learn a lot – and I did learn a lot.There are few designers working today who can claim to have the legacy that Irma Boom has. Born in the Netherlands, and still based in Amsterdam today, Boom has practiced for over 30 years under the moniker Irma Boom Office, producing hundreds of books – over 300, in fact.