The lecture focuses on the properties of the handmade object and foregrounds the necessity of craft and embodied practice. with discussion of Olsen's recent book Fossil Fuel: a book of hours that is based on the form of a medieval girdle book. Her talk charts a speculative trajectory for this medieval book form, from medieval accessory, through 19th and 20th century urban poetics, to a new enframing of a contemporary girdle book as necessary super-real performance object, which, in Olsen's practice, counters and marks the end of our fossil fuel era.