The Pile of Stone Books

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The Pile of Stone Books (Dutch: Boekenstapel) was created by the German duo Wolfgang Kubach and Anna Kubach-Wilmsen. They both studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where Wolfgang focused on painting and Anna focused on sculpting. The duo started creating stone books in 1976, and four years later they started stacking them into towers. For them, the stone material shows the evolution of the earth as each stone has its own story. Giving the stones a book shape allows the viewers to ‘read’ the story by hand. The Pile of Stone Books was placed in the Hof van Tilly courtyard of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University (50°51‘00.3”N, 5°41‘07.7”E) in 2004. The goal of placing the sculpture there was to improve the study and work environment for the students and staff. The sculpture is made of twelve stones from five different continents. The 3D model was made by Dang, Sharon and Nikolic, Emilija, students from University College Maastricht.