Long before we relegated picture books to children and much longer still before coffee table books were “invented” in their modern form, books with beautiful pictures and intricate page borders were the main vehicle for imparting education-religious and secular. In Europe, the Victorian era seemed to have a particular taste for large-format illustrated books.

In Ethiopia, the Orthodox Church has one of the oldest continuous illustrated book cultures in the world. Long before printing, monks and scribes created hand-painted manuscripts on parchment, bound between wooden covers. The art was both devotional and didactic — bright, stylized images of Christ, the Virgin, angels, and saints made scripture accessible to largely illiterate congregations. These illuminated manuscripts, especially the Gospel books of Lalibela and Gunda Gunde, bridge word and image much like today’s coffee table books do — meant to be seen, contemplated, and shared within community rather than privately read. (Further pleasurable reading on the subject – Ethiopia Illustrated by Dorothee McEwan)

With Harar as its centre of production, Islam in Ethiopia also has a rich and venerable manuscript tradition that has been active for centuries, utilizing both Arabic and local languages (‘Ajamī). The Khalili manuscript (a single-volume Qur’ān of 290 folios) is regarded with its distinct Harari codices (known in Arabic as Mus’haf) and part of the 25 recorded collections produced in Harar is said to be one of the earliest documented texts from the city. The oldest datable manuscript containing text in Old Harari is said to date from 1460. Studies of Islamic art in Ethiopia are still an emerging field but interesting academic publications on the subject include those by Dr Sana Mirza and Alessandro Gori.

Outside the religious realm, illustrated books were particularly useful for documenting- ethnographic, botanic, geographic and other cultural education and encyclopaedic information. The travellers, “discoverers” and medicine men of the old days often accompanied and, in many ways, preserved their written description and explanation with drawings – some of which with near photographic details such as the pores and veins on a leaf.

The modern age coffee table books – large format, photography books with minimal or no text- are certainly not direct descendants of these rich world traditions. These appeared in the Western world the “post-war era” initially in the US and later spread to Europe. Coffee table books became markers of taste and cultural aspiration: oversized, image-heavy volumes meant less for reading cover-to-cover and more for signalling curiosity and leisure. With the rise of color printing, glossy paper, and consumer design culture they flourished. You will find them invariable stacked nicely on a large centre table on every interior design and architecture magazine, TV show and see them in any self-respecting house.

I have long been on a mission to find Ethiopia’s first coffee table book- as we know them today. First, you have to know that coffee table books are not cheap, they are not quick or easy to do either. It is why coffee table books are not commercial ventures but rather vanity or targeted projects- focusing on specific thematics such as an artist, an era, location or stylistic information. One might say that in this sense they are much like the manually illustrated religious and secular ancestors.

Even a humble estimation of a coffee table book project (100 pages, full colour, semi-gloss, A3 size and in copies not exceeding 2000 which is the usual number for such niche projects) would have its pre distribution cost, including staff fees, at USD 35, 000. Not to mention that designers, writers and photographers as well as printers also need to be coordinated and qualities of each guaranteed.

It is no surprise therefore that the first coffee table books in Ethiopia were government projects. While it was common, post monarchy era in particular, to print basic promotional material (flyers, booklets, posters) for some key products such as coffee and main tourist destinations, the earliest example of a coffee table book I found was among my father’s book collections.

Printed, ironically one might say, as an Italian Embassy project, it is dated 1984 and is titled “Ethiopia,-Footprint of Time”. Just like its title, both the over 140 pages its rich photographs of the country from the highlands of Eritrea to Omo valley and from Gambella to Harar and the minimal captions are steeped in nostalgia. The book was published in Italy, and its “Acknowledgements” section thanks Commissioner Fisseha Geda, who I believe was heading the Ethiopia Tourism Commission at the time, for taking “keen interest in the publication of this picture book” and “through the [Tourism Commission’s] good offices extended all the necessary support to Alberto Tessore and Tsegaye Guebremedhin to complete the work”.

Indeed, the late Laureate something akin to a long love poem in prose to his country in place of Introduction to the book- which we will take the liberty of making available online for historical records. The scant text that only partially explains the photography is equally lyrical in its lamentations of the paradoxical poverty of the country compared to the potential of its diversity and natural resources.

Three to four decades later, coffee table books remain mostly Embassy projects (sometimes collaborative) with the latest and particularly dense and fascinating example being “Ethiopia: The Living Churches of an Ancient Kingdom” (pictured) =a USAID funded publication now selling in Addis Ababa for over 20,000 birr. It also says something about the stagnant, if not deteriorating, quality and capacity of the printing in Ethiopia that all of these coffee table books continue to be printed outside the country.

It goes without saying that these selected examples of stand alone coffee table books on Ethiopia do not include the innumerable instances, some of them from six decades ago, where part of the natural or cultural heritage was included in other Africa wide or Africa related projects. A personal favourite is one in two volumes spanning the whole riverbanks and riparian countries of The White Nile and The Blue Nile that was published in London in 1960 by Alan Moorehead.

It is also hard to find a fully Ethiopian initiated and Ethiopian owned example of a coffee table book. Much as they were also sponsored or funded projects, perhaps can we count as Ethiopian-owned Wildlife of Ethiopia’s National Parks by photographer Aziz Ahmed and The City & its Architectural heritage: Addis Ababa 1886-1941 by architect Fasil Giorgis?

Let there be no doubt of our gratitude for these books which have preserved rich and enriching visual memories of the country and its heritage. I wish to mention the efforts of the Hamere Birhan collective which is reviving the old Orthodox church illustration tradition to the young generation through and the late Kenyan Mohammed “Mo” Amin whose Selamta editions remain timeless testaments of the country’s visual history.

It would be an interest mission to track and own each one of the Ethiopia-related coffee table books. But it is also precisely for this invaluable historical value that I, along with thousands others I am sure, appeal, even entreat, our publishers and photographers to discover and rediscover the enormous potential of coffee table books. The subject matters and thematics are too many to count: Maskel and the
many public celebrations, the rich diversity of coffee ceremonies, our artists and cultural greats, the theatres and literary history of the many cultures, artefacts and clothing … the list is literally endless.

We would also take them in whatever printing quality as long as the subject matter is adequately covered. Besides, a print on demand arrangement would be a good workaround the prohibitive printing costs.

Even with publisher and sponsor good will, the current state of affairs in Ethiopia may be perhaps the main obstacle. It might also be the reason for the urgency……..