Eccentric Library

For all of you who dream of being able to buy all the beautiful books you ever wanted, Wired recently featured a private library of a guy named Jay Walker who made his money in technology, then started collecting rare and beautiful books.




Here, you can leaf through a Kelmscott Press edition of Chaucer's works, reading by the light of a chandelier formerly used in a James Bond film, or browse the stacks as a Sputnik satellite and other shiny items dangle overhead. Would LOVE to see this place....

The Alcuin Society

Just wanted to give a little shout out (in the parlance of our times) to the Alcuin Society. Based in Vancouver, BC, this society, according to their website, is for people who "care about the past, present and future of fine books."

I joined the Alcuin Society last year, and they sent me beautifully printed materials about the society, which has a really interesting history, and about book arts in general. I always look forward to the journal, Amphora, because each issue comes with an original letterpress print (which is worth the price of subscribing by itself). I have one of the letterpress prints hanging in my dining room, and here is a photo of another that arrived recently (it looks crooked in the photo, but isn't in real life):


This print has a picture of a book, surrounded by illustrations of all the things that are bad news for books (rain, bugs, floods, and fire), and the words "tuere me" (take care of me). I will be hanging this one in my bookbinding studio.

This print was designed and created by Gary Sim of Entropy Press. You can find more of his artwork on his website http://www.sim-publishing.com/.

Medieval Help Desk

I recently saw a comedy skit, first shown on Norwegian television, that really made me laugh. It's set in the days when the book, not the computer, was the new technology.

You can find the video here on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ

Pictorial Bookbindings

Oh, dear, my blog has been sadly neglected lately. I have been spending the last few weeks working out new designs for journals, and also for some artist books I have in mind to make. Now I just have to find the time to make it all.... I have a couple of Christmas craft shows looming on the horizon, so the journals and other things I sell at shows will take priority right now.

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...

Beautiful Books

Went on a quick trip to the coast this past weekend, and in Bellingham, Washington (one of my very favorite cities) at Village Books (one of my very favorite independent bookstores) I picked up a copy of 500 Handmade Books, published by Lark Books.

Loads of inspiration here--I spent a happy evening just drinking tea and leafing through the pages, looking at all the beautiful work by other bookmakers.

Award Season

What riches! Dana, over at Calico Cat Press has awarded me the Arte Y Pico award. Since I recently recieved this award from Judith Heartsong, I won't pass it along again, but many thanks, Dana! This award is much appreciated.

Love Those Rigid German Spines

Well, the bookbinding workshop I attended in Seattle was just fabulous! Elsi, the instructor, was really great, and so very knowledgeable.

Wish I had taken a photo of the class, but I was too working out stitch patterns!

We focused on making northern European medieval-style bindings, which have more rigid supports on the spine area than the medieval Italian-style bindings I have been making. Elsi gave us about ten patterns to choose from for the decorative stitching on the spine. I made this book in class, which is based on a 14th century German account binding:

I used a heavyweight paper for the cover, and made the spine more rigid by adding a piece of thin wood. Traditionally, bookbinders would use leather, wood, or horn for the rigid spine supports. To get the spine design to work out, you have to sew the signitures (groups of pages) to the spine in the proper order, or else you end up with quite a mess.

After I got home, I made a second book, shown here:

A while back I picked up some gorgeous heavyweight Canal paper (made right here in Canada, in Montreal, Quebec). I didn't know what I would use it for at the time, but couldn't resist it. Turned out to be just the thing for this style of book. This time, for the spine I used the same basic stitch, but instead of tying together groups of stitches, I wove groups of stitches together.

Here is another view:

Just to compare, here is a photo of some actual medieval books:

Not the best photo, but if you look carefully at the book on the left, you can see where the stitches have been woven together. It actually took a fearfully long time to do all that weaving, so I think I'll keep my woven book to use for demonstrations (sometimes I get asked to do a little bookbinding "show & tell" for various groups/classes). I am, however, beavering away on my own particular variation of these books, which will appear soon in my Etsy store.