ELENA, 10 POINT: This typeface- conceived of by independent typographer, Leopold Shunt, as the moon set on the final night of his wife's life- disintegrates over time. The more a word is used, the more it crumbles and fades- the harder it becomes to see. By the end of this book, utilitarian words like the, a and was would have been lost on the white page. Henry's recurrent joys and tortures- bathwater, collarbone, vulnerability, pillowcase, bridge- would have been ruins, unintentional monuments to bathwater, collarbone, vulnerability, pillowcase and bridge. And when the life of the book dwindled to a single page, as it now does, when you held your palm against the inside of the back cover, as if it were her damp forehead, as if you could will it to persevere past its end, God would have been nearly illegible, and I completely invisible. Had Elena been used, Henry's last words would have read:

Jonathan Safran Foer from his novel "Everything is Illuminated", published by Hamish Hamilton, 2002.

The text is largely illegible in this work, due to the dense overlapping layers of writing. In a way this echoes the idea of the text that "the more a word is used, -the harder it becomes to see". The 3-D aspect of the engraved writing rising outward, up to an inch from the background, is lost in reproduction. In real life, the engraving appears more subtle and fine than photographs can convey. This applies to all glass art on the Quill Skill site.