The Breakfast Journals

Volume Ten

The Breakfast Journals is a collaborative bookmaking project between Hattie Eshleman and Ashley Roth. Since 2016, we have been making small handmade books in pairs and then filling them with drawings and collages. Different volumes have different themes and parameters, and the rules we set help us to discover new and interesting things. For each volume, the books are worked on simultaneously (with one of us in possession of one at a time). Books are traded back and forth between the two of us, so that volumes usually have about 50% Hattie's content and 50% Ashley's content. We hope you have as much fun looking at these as we did making them.

Vol. 10 (481)

Vol. 10 (R)

Vol. 10 was made in collaboration with the Companion Plants Collective.

Volume Nine

1/1

Slightly different than the rest of the collection, Vol. 9 is a Zine! The book has illustrations by both artists and is available to purchase for $4 plus shipping

Buy One!

Volume Eight

Vol. 8 (yellow stitch)

Vol. 8 was inspired by an earlier volume (Vol. 6). In both volumes, Hattie and Ash collaborated by both working on the same pages with one person starting a page and the next finishing the page. As a result, all pages have content from both artists. For this specific book (Vol 8. yellow stitch) Ashley started the pages with drawing or collage elements and Hattie finished the compositions.

Vol. 8 (red stitch)

For the red stitch Vol. 8 Hattie started the pages by adding only words. Ashley responded to the various quotes, phrases, magazine clippings, song lyrics, etc. with images (and sometimes additional words).

Volume Seven

Vol. 7 (Proof)

Vol. 7 (Air Mail)

Shortly after graduation, Ashley worked for the Chicago History Museum Research Center where her job involved making a lot of photocopies. Through out the process there were of course extra copies or copies that didn't print right. She was allowed to keep these and we used them to make Volume 7. The covers are designed solely using material from these copies and all of base pages were cut from these copies which we then drew/collaged/painted on top of.

Volume Six

Vol. 6 (Blue)

Vol. 6 (Spots)

Vol. 6 (Blue)

Vol. 6 was the first volume that was completed long-distance (after graduation). Wanting to keep the conversational nature of our work without having to do a lot of shipping back and forth, we decided to make each page collaborative. Instead of finishing a spread, each artist did half a composition, giving the other artist the job of completing the page. The Spots book was started by Hattie and completed by Ashley. For the Blue book Ashley surprised Hattie by giving her only words and phrases to prompt the compositions.