I've also been reading more books on bookbinding. The one I'm reading right now is Pictorial Bookbindings, by Mirjam Foot. It's an interesting little book. It briefly covers a variety of bindings that have (as you might guess) pictures on the covers. Has lots of photos of different bindings, which is good, and illustrations of a variety of ways bookbinders have decorated bindings--pen and ink drawings, paintings, leather inlays, carved ivory, and hammered metal, to name a few. One of my favourite sections is on embroidered bindings--here you can see an example on the front cover of an embroidered book cover created in 1633:
The spine is even embroidered with flowers and bees, and the book had its own storage bag, which was also lavishly embroidered. Wish I had time to make such wonderfully intricate covers, but not in this lifetime, alas... however, I am working on a design for an artist's book that involves embroidery, although not in quite the same way. But more on that later...
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3 comments:
Hi,
I came across a beautiful example of an embroidered book cover recently in a library/museum. It was a Walter Crane book embroidered by his wife Mary.The book you feature looks good, like you I sometimes think I need another five lifetimes.Good luck with your artist book!
I have an old embroidered book cover (no book) that was in our house when we moved in. I have it put away carefully and have been thinking up all sorts of things to do with it. One of these days...
what a treasure that would be..
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