Pinhole camera from an old hardcover

Etsy seller Engrained has hollowed out a 1920 copy of Zane Grey's The Man of the Forest and turned it into a pinhole camera: "This unique camera has a magnetic shutter crafted from wood and leather and is finished off with beautiful ebony and pearl knobs. This book is full of character with the fabric cover torn and tattered to perfection."

Zane Grey - Hardback Book Pinhole Camera (via IZ Reloaded)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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MadMolecule

Pinhole photography FTMFW.
Cefeida

Love the camera.

Can’t stand the Etsy seller spiel. Can anyone on that site write a description that DOESN’T try to make it sound like the product was spun from dreamglitter by magical endangered pixies?
marquis.montrose

Creativity = yay!

However, whenever I see old books get destroyed, it makes me very sad.
- kmoser
  
  I, too, mourn for the book this once was.
Donald Petersen

Valueless and unsellable? Hardly. If all the pages were present, I’d pay several bucks for this volume. I haven’t read much Zane Grey, but I liked what I read, and this particular edition looks especially comfy.

But still, the only unforgivable sin I see here is the usage of “torn and tattered to perfection.” Puts me in mind of those dipsticks who buy their jeans with holes already in them.

Or the guys with much more money than sense who plunk down four grand for this.
Anonymous

LOL cefeida. Also, did the term “upcycled” really need to be invented?
Anonymous

As someone who works at an antiquarian book business, I can assure you marquis.montrose that that book is valueless and basically un-sellable due to its condition, and that this art project does not represent the death of some rare and unrecoverable information. That book’s most likely destination at this point would be the recycling bin. I would argue that craft projects like these keep interest in books as physical objects active and so are a good thing for bibliophilia in general.
- marquis.montrose
  
  “As someone who works at an antiquarian book business, I can assure you marquis.montrose that that book is valueless and basically un-sellable due to its condition”
  
  As someone who also dabbles in the antiquarian book business myself, I can also assure you that I’ve yet to meet a book that can’t find a buyer ;)
  
  It might not be worth much, but I have more than a few customers who’d be willing to purchase the above book . . . albeit at 1/20th of the camera’s asking price!