Strejan, John, 1932-2003.
                             pronounced STREE-jen
                             nickname Silverblade

 
John Strejan, Wizard of the Pop-Up Book, Dies at 70
By EDEN ROSS LIPSON
New York Times, April 17, 2003
 

John Strejan, who earned the nickname Silverblade for his mastery of paper engineering in designing complicated and fanciful pop-up books for children and adults, died in Los Angeles on March 26. He was 70.

The cause was cancer, said his daughter Stephanie Strejan-Schwartz.

Mr. Strejan (the name is pronounced STREE-jen) was an artist from childhood, who discovered that he could figure out how things worked and then draw them with a knife. His nickname referred to his dazzling speed and skill with an X-Acto blade.

There are only a few dozen paper engineers in the world, all self-taught. It is hard not to marvel when a flat book opens and out comes a fully rigged galleon, a half-dozen dinosaurs or a breathing coral reef with eels swimming through the lacy boughs; pulling tabs can make shells open or tentacles wave. But the exacting mechanics of how it is done are hard to explain.

"I took paper, smashed it in a book and saw how it folded," he once said of his early experiments.

Complex constructions like Mr. Strejan's, which must be assembled, slotted in, and glued by hand, contain hundreds of individual pieces of paper, each precisely cut to fit and fold exactly, and hundreds of glue points.

Books with moveable parts can be traced to the 1300's, but the 19th-century Germans Ernest Nister and Lothar Meggendorfer are credited with the modern form, which then languished until the 1960's.

Robert Sabuda, an author and illustrator of recent pop-up titles like "The 12 Days of Christmas: A Pop-Up Celebration," called Mr. Strejan "a grand master of the generation when pop-up books entered their second golden age." Mr. Sabuda said Mr. Strejan's work "is so good that today I still can't figure out how to do some of it."

Mr. Strejan was born in Detroit and grew up in Portland, Ore. He moved to Los Angeles, where he worked for advertising agencies and was also art director for Teen magazine and Bullocks department store.

His first three-dimensional projects were done for the Elgin Davis Art Studio. Mr. Davis was a founder of Graphics International, designers and producers of a new line of pop-books in the late 1960's, which required hand assembly. It later became Intervisual Books, one of the leaders in the field today.

Among the titles that established Mr. Strejan's international reputation were the large-format collection "The Sailing Ships" (1984) and "The Facts of Life" (also 1984), by Dr. Jonathan Miller, an educational book for adults and children that was memorable for its inclusion of anatomically complete human genitalia; both were published by Viking. From 1987 to 1989 Mr. Strejan engineered a National Geographic series on animals, including "Strange Animals of the Sea."

Mr. Strejan was married four times, most recently two days before he died to his companion of 17 years, Patricia Kroon. He is survived by four daughters from previous marriages, Ms. Strejan-Schwartz, Sabrina Sciacca, Heather Romano and Shannon Praytchl; two stepdaughters, Diane Umberger and Stacey Palmisano; a brother, Gene; and five grandchildren.

In addition to creating more than 50 books, Mr. Strejan, who reveled in the freelance life, continued to do paper engineering for advertising displays like a pop-up version of the Magic Castle for Disney, a pop-up of the Getty Museum and posters for the movie "Toy Story."

Mr. Strejan's last project for Intervisual Books, which sold about 500,000 copies in 13 countries, was "Choo-Choo Charlie: The Littletown Train" (1998; distributed in the United States by PiggyToes Press), a cardboard book and play set with a pop-up village and a wind-up train. And, it whistles.