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From early days in the 19th Century, novelty publishers such as Dean & Son produced books that folded out to reveal miniature layered scenes - like tiny collapsible stage-sets.

These became very popular in Victorian times with publishers such as the Anglo-German Ernest Nister producing scores of lavish, chromolitho gift books that opened to display six or eight sumptuous set-piece scenes, often of prettily-dressed children at play or idyllic rural life.

More recently, a Czech designer - Vojtch Kubašta - virtually re-invented the concept, producing similar layered effects (often incorporating movements, too) by simpler means. The example shown is 'Moureninska Pohadka' (a child's guide to the monuments of Prague) published by Orbis, Czechoslovakia, 1973.

Kubašta also designed scores of fairy-tale layered scenic tableaux books for the world market, many initially appearing in Europe and America under the Bancroft/Westminster imprint during the 1960s and early 1970s.

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