Quodlibet

Inspired by the late, great Georges Perec, who is famous for writing a book whose sole subject was the letter ‘E’, illustrator Katja Spitzer and freelance writer Sebastian Gievert have teamed up to tackle that most quandarous of letters, the letter Q.

When asked about her motivations for Quodlibet, Katja explains that in the German language, as in English, Q is a rather peculiar letter. One of the rarest in the German language, Q is only given a fleeting position in the Brockhaus Lexicon (an equivalent to our Encyclopaedia Britanica), a mere 45 pages of ‘Q’ words falling somewhere within a volume entitled PES and RAC, in spite of granting an individual volume to every other letter in the alphabet. Feeling that the letter was given undue negligence, Katja took it upon herself to create the missing ‘Q’ volume of the Lexicon and thus ‘Quodlibet’ was born. Translated from the German, with several additional passages for Q letters in the original text that don’t have direct English language counterparts, Quodlibet covers everything from famous Grindhouse movie directors, to obscure 18th century dances, to nature’s marvels and ancient chinese mythological beasts, each illustrated with mastery in four unique spot colours.