A sculptor has recycled five tonnes of old telephone directories by turning them into art.

Lewes artist Hamish Black has carved and moulded 5,000 Yellow Pages phone books into a variety of shapes.

The seven unusual creations have gone on display in Reading, the base of Yell, which publishes the directories.

But the familiar phone books have their origins a little closer to home - the first Yellow Pages was issued in Brighton in 1966.

Mr Black, of Novington Lane, East Chiltington, found he could create sculptures with different shaped and serrated edges by cutting profiles into books.

He chose to use Yellow Pages directories because the yellow and black colours fitted in with a series of drawings he was working on.

He twisted, cut, stacked and shaped the directories to make different forms including a lighthouse, a landscape and a bottle.

He also created a "torus" similar to his 10ft-high bronze sculpture Afloat - nicknamed the "doughnut" - erected on Brighton seafront in 1998.

Mr Black, 54, said: "Everybody has handled a directory, everyone knows how heavy and floppy they are, so there is an accessible relationship to the artwork.

"Each layer of the torus is from a different area of the UK. The notion of taking something which is terribly familiar and transforming it into another form is very engaging."

Mr Black got hold of the old directories simply by phoning up Yellow Pages and asking for them.

He said: "The person I spoke to was curious why I wanted them, but was happy to provide them.

"They have a stock of them in York, and I was probably helping out a little by finding a use for them."

Mr Black also enjoys creating sculptures using other coloured paper materials, including maps.

Richard Duggleby, head of external relations at Yell, said: "It is incredible to see Yellow Pages being reinvented to produce such stunning sculptures."

Yell is sponsoring the exhibition at the Museum of Reading, which runs until March 2.