Useful Things

Here are a few little items that make bookbinding easier:

One day I was browsing through the local craft shop, and in the quilting section found these grid thingies. They have turned out to be incredibly useful in all sorts of ways--I use them for measuring patterns for book covers, the edges for tearing handmade paper to size, for measuring where to put the holes for sewing leather, and on and on. I'm really crappy at math, so these little tools make life much easier!

This is an antique flat iron that I use as a weight. I picked it up at a neighbour's yard sale a few years back, and at some point realized how handy it was for keeping things like leather from scootching around while I am cutting it. I always liked my flat iron's curvy shape, and recently discovered a new good use for it--I use it as a pattern for cutting a nice, rounded edge on leather book covers. You can still find these around at antique shops, but they are getting more expensive, sadly, as people like to use them for decorating. Also, some of them have had a hard life, so are a bit rusty and in need of a bit of buffing and polishing (but then again, aren't we all?).

Finally, here's one of my very most favourite items in my bookbinding studio: my kitschy red pincushion! My aunt made this for me back in the 1970s, from a can lid, some red felt, rick-rack spray-painted gold, and beads. Divine! As you can see in the picture, it is just the right place to keep bookbinding needles :)

Moopf at Work

I love making my books, and often wonder what happens to them after they've gone off to new homes. The books are finished when I sell them, but, in a way, they aren't complete until the pages are filled in.

Our Etsy friend moopf recently bought a water hyacinth book from my Etsy store to use for sketching, so I asked him if he would share some pictures of himself with his book, and here they are. I have to say, I'm very excited to see the book with his great designs in it!

I also asked him if he would tell us a little bit about himself and his work:

"My name is Gareth Lancaster and I've been creative in one way or another for as long as I can remember. I enjoy abstract and cartoon work and these days most of my work is sketched first using pen/pencil and paper and then I re-create the designs using Adobe Illustrator to ensure crisp lines and perfect reproduction. I started selling on Etsy, at http://moopf.etsy.com/, in October 2007 and sell a range of badges, magnets, gift cards, notecards and prints. I'll soon be adding original acrylic paintings as well."

Thanks, mooph!
Hope you will check out his store--he has excellent stuff, and I do believe he is giving away free stickers right now....

P.S.: If you have one of my books and would like to post some pictures of it on this blog, I'd love to see them! Just leave me a note at my Etsy store http://moonbindery.etsy.com/.

Pictures of Old Bindings

I was recently noodling around on the Internet, looking at pictures of old bookbinding styles for inspiration in making my books, when I ran across a University of Iowa website that has pictures of reproductions of old books, including early codex bindings, stationer's account bindings, and medieval monastic bindings. Here is an example of an account book that uses a binding style that was common in the 9th-14th centuries.

Being a bit of a book junkie, I was immediately interested. I like how they include information about the time period of the binding style. Also, original books are often in pretty bad condition, so it's interesting to see modern versions of old bindings, to see how they might have looked when they were new.

Here is a picture of three books I just finished that have medieval-style bindings (the same ones I have pictured in my previous post) . They are all limp leather bindings. For the books on the left and the right, I used a longstitch/linkstitch binding, and the middle one is a different variation on a longstitch binding. If you look carefully at both pictures, you can see that the one above (from the University of Iowa site) is also a longstitch binding. There are many variations on the longstitch binding, which, for me, is what makes them so interesting to do.

Update: here is a link to the U of Iowa site, which I forgot to include :/

http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/conservation/models/models.htm

New Longstitch Journals

Dipped into my Keith Smith book again, and made the three longstitch journals you see here to put in my Etsy shop. I have a shameful confession to make--I find Keith Smith a little hard to follow :/ Maybe it's just me, but I find the directions and the diagrams don't always work together.

So I did what I usually do, which is find two or three sets of directions for a particular binding style, and between looking at all of them, I can usually get my questions answered and come out with a good binding. And sometimes I come up with my own, slightly different variation on a binding style.

I think that's a good thing, actually. I've found that most binders have their own ways of doing things, so each binder's books have a certain "signiture" character that reflects the materials they choose to use, and their own their particular style. That's one reason why handmade books aren't boring!

Losing Craft

The latest Three-Minute Egg from Crown Point Press has an interesting and thought-provoking theme. Apparently several schools and museums dedicated to teaching or exhibiting crafts have lately dropped the word "crafts" from their names (for example, in New York the former American Craft Museum is now called the Museum of Arts and Design).

Kathan Brown, who presents the Three-Minute Egg, suggests that the word "craft" is being dropped not because it is unimportant, but because it is just "a given" in the art world these days, and that craft and art are all part of one work, meaning that embroidery and prints and paintings should all be shown together and not separated out. She uses the example of artist Laura Owens, who does printmaking, and also does embroidery pieces that she has skilled craftspeople execute for her, following her designs (this rooster print is an example of her work).

If you would like to watch this Three-Minute Egg, here is the link: http://www.magical-secrets.com/egg

New Banner

Amy Blandford did the new banner for my shop and blog that you can see above. I'm really happy with it--it has an Arts & Crafts design, which I love, and even a little moon :)



In case you aren't familiar with the Arts & Crafts movement, it was started by a group of artists and thinkers of the mid-19th century, including William Morris and John Ruskin. They were reacting against the increasing industrialization of England, and the way that true craftsmanship was being replaced by cheap, mass-produced junk (sound familiar?). They promoted crafts, and the highest standards of craftsmanship. Here you can see an example of a wallpaper pattern William Morris designed. They were also a bunch of free-thinkers, and got involved in all sorts of juicy scandals, which I confess I also love to read about (hee, hee).


You can check out more of Amy's great designs at her Etsy store: http://www.etsy.com/profile.php?user_id=5084799

and her website at http://www.amyblandford.com/index.html

Medieval Bookbinding

I've been reading a great book called The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding, by J. A. Szirmai. He writes about a variety of bindings that were used in the middle ages, but the chapter that I was most interested in is the one on limp leather bindings. Not a lot has been written about the history of this style of binding, so it was good to be able to learn more about it.

For those of you who aren't familiar with them, limp leather bindings are basically soft cover leather books (here is an example of one that I made), with decorative stitching on the spine that looks pretty, and also attaches the paper to the leather. I love limp leather bindings, because they are strong and elegant, and also have a wonderful history. It's cool to be able to write in a book that is made basically the same way that one would have been made 700 years ago!