If you’re familiar with the Tea Appreciation Society’s Manifesto you’ll be aware that item number 7 proclaims that “We want to visit museums and libraries, encourage philosophy.”

Imagine how intrigued and in awe we were of some extraordinary scenes unfolding in Scotland last year.

Sculptures carved from paper started appearing from March 2011 in Scottish libraries.

The first sculpture had a message attached that read “We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books… a book is so much more than pages full of words.… This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas….. a gesture (poetic maybe?)”

Nobody knew where it came from, nor was anyone forthcoming with information in person or online, despite a fair amount of local news coverage.

Sculptures continued to appear throughout the year and then in August 2011 one appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival that we at the Tea Appreciation Society really love, for obvious reasons…

The tag on this reads:

To @edbookfest (their twitter name) ‘A gift’ This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas…… & festivals xx

It includes a teabag filled with cut out letters, on the tag of which are the words “by leaves we live”. The cup on the top has a swirl of words which read ” Nothing beats a nice cup of tea (or coffee) and a really good BOOK”, and on the ‘tray’ next to the cupcake it says “except maybe a cake as well”.

We are indebted to Chris Scott who spends most of his time documenting the literary scene in Edinburgh and as a result found himself the accidental biographer of the paper sculptures. You can read his excellent blog and see all the sculptures here.