Herman Stengal's 1902 hinge construction

My current project is a three-volume binding of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Each volume is fairly small in area, approximately A5 in size, but relatively thick at around 7cm. They’re a gift for my wife. Consequently, I’m looking for a robust but attractive method for constructing the end papers. While I was searching for information on a few different styles and methods, I was told about a very useful page by a member of the Book Arts Forum. It’s a good description of a variety of traditional and modern endpaper constructions, including figures.

The instruction page comes from the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, who maintain a wiki called the Collaborative Knowledge Base. It includes a section on book conservation lots of useful information about books and bindings (and many other things, in fact, even architecture, textiles, wood, and lots more).

The book section has the following information:

Section 2 – Examination and Documentation

   * Chapter 1. Examination
   * Chapter 2. Documentation

Section 3 – Structural Elements of the Book

   * Chapter 1. Endpapers
   * Chapter 2. Leaf Attachment/Sewing Repair
   * Chapter 3. Endbands
   * Chapter 4. Boards
   * Chapter 5. Board Attachment
   * Chapter 6. Decoration

Section 4 – Book Materials

   * Chapter 1. Animal Skin/Leather
   * Chapter 2. Parchment
   * Chapter 3. Paper
   * Chapter 4. Cloth

Section 5 – Conservation Treatment

   * Chapter 1. Washing
   * Chapter 2. Alkanization
   * Chapter 3. Leaf Attachment/Sewing Repair
   * Chapter 4. Board Reattachment

Section 6 – Preservation

  * Chapter 1. Selection for Preservation

Well, how time flies… Judging by the date of the last post, I’ve just noticed that it’s been three years since I’ve posted anything! Can that really be true?! Well, either way, I figure it’s about time to add something new.

I love reading about, and looking at, other people’s bookbinding projects, especially if they’re particularly ambitious. One that I’d come across some time ago now is the research, organisation, printing and binding of a limited run of the Pictorial Webster’s Encyclopaedia. This was undertaken by John Carrera of Quercus Press. He spent 10 years collating, identifying, labeling, cleaning and bringing to type high, tens of thousands of original printing blocks that had been gifted by Merriam-Webster (the original printing company) to Yale university. The project also include casting type on a linotype, printing by hand on a Vandercook letterpress and hand binding. You can see it all in an interesting video either on Quercus Press’ site, or in a larger view on Vimeo:

Pictorial Webster’s: Inspiration to Completion

Several different bindings were made, and you can see them all on the website. Unfortunately, I can only afford the ‘trade binding, which is the cheapest of the lot and, as the name suggests, it’s not hand-bound:

A quarter bound wedding album & guestbook in blue silk with silver, black and blue marbled cover.

Well, in actual fact, it’s my wedding album! I had the not-so-smart idea of binding a book for our wedding. The book was an album and guestbookbook in one; we supplied disposable cameras at the ceremony and reception for the guests to shoot what they liked. The idea was that we would have the guests sign the guest book one-per-page, and afterwards, we stick in all the photos that the guests had taken on the disposables. It worked out pretty well, actually! But getting back to the ‘not so smart’ statement in the first sentence… One of my favourite statements that really annoys my partner wife is “there’s plenty of time yet”. Yeah, well I was feeling slightly stressed when it was the night before my wedding and I was casing in the album. Anyway, it worked out fine in the end and we both love it.

The book is hard cover and it’s finished with pale blue silk dupion and blue, black and white on silver hand-marbled paper from Joan Ajala (whos papers I can very highly recommend – I think I’ll do my next blog post on her papers!). The page construction uses interleaved folded 120gsm Van Gelder Zonen laid papers to create, in effect, a ‘long page’ (the full length of the book) and a ‘short page’ (2.5cm/1″) in intervals. The short page is, of course, not a page but a page spacer to allow photos to be pasted without swelling the book. The pages are put together into 4-leaf signatures by putting one folded page forwards and the other inside it in a backwards orientation. The silk was paper backed using extra-thick starch paste before pasting onto pH buffered, laminated boards. The end-papers are japanese papers of some description, but I can’t remember where they came from or what they were called! They’re pale green with cover leaf patterns in teh paper fibre.

The "Handmade Books" Flickr group website.

This would have to be one of my favourite Flickr groups – Hand Bound Books. There’s so much good stuff there – it makes me want to bind a new project every time I browse through it.  Check it out!

A collection of book trade labels from the "Seven Roads Book Trade Labels" Flickr group (image from user Auntie P).

Today I came across a Flickr group called “Seven Roads Book Trade Labels“. Something I’ve always looked at and liked, but didn’t know anyone collected – those book trade labels you see in the backs of (mostly) old books. Printers, binders, publishers, retailers and so forth. Any of the folk that helped bring that particular book into your hands. These appeal to me as someone who likes bookish things, old things, and things that are a bit different. There’s some fantastic designs there from all around the world; from uninspiring “Price: $1.50″ type labels to intricate pieces of art in themselves. The group was started by the blogger The Exile Bibliophile and he has a post on his blog here.

A row of labells for the books I make, when they sell.

I finished designing some labels to paste in the back of the books that will be going on sale shortly. The image is a cut down and slightly modified version of a 1568 etching. The credit goes to the renowned Jost Amman who designed the woodcut for the book ‘A True Description of All Trades‘, published in 1568. The woodcut shows the bookbinder at work. In the original book, the figure is accompanied by the text:

“In binding books I have some skill
In boards or vellum at your will,
Devout or worldly, large or small,
I fit with clasps and bind them all,
Oft-times also design to gild,
Thus keep I well my coffer filled.”

Well, I’m not sure about the full coffers. Maybe at some stage down the track. Either way, I think the labels look OK, so I’ll start attaching them to my books as they’re finished.

They’re printed using in pigment ink using a Canon Pro9500 on a paper of which I can’t quite remember the name… it’s mould-made Van Gelder Zonen laid, anyway, probably around 180gsm. I used my dodgey DIY ‘deckled-edge’ tearer to separate them. I tried a few variations… Hahnemuhle inkjet paper (the coating comes off too easily and it doesn’t tear well), coated canvas (too thick and too ‘clean’), plain catridge paper (too thin), etc.

A few other media that didn't make the grade.

The VGZ paper seems to come out the best. It has the right combination of bleed and sharpness; it doesnt look too ‘clean’, but at the same time it doesnt look like a crap inkjet print. It looks a little bit like a woodcut print I wonder what Jost would have thought…

Well, I really like the deckled edges you get on mould-made paper. Unfortunately, you lose it, of course, when you cut the sheets down for binding (or whatever other purpose you have for it!). I have previously just used ‘torn’ edges, but they’re not nearly as nice. I saw advertised recently a ‘decal edge tearer’, which

I considered buying one of these things in Australia, but I figure ~AU$80 is a bit steep for a bit of plastic with a crooked edge! There’s also a few other places that sell them, and a Google search will find even more, but the same thing there seems to cost around ~US$25 without postage.

Being a bit of a cheapskate somtimes, I figured I could make my own for next-to-nix. I had a go, half expecting that I’d just throw my attempt in the bin and fork out for one of the above mentioned products… but it worked pretty well actually!

My DIY 'deckled edge' tearer (the ruler) and the leather-working tool I used to make it.

I just took a standard 40cm plastic ruler and cut chunks out of it randomly with a leather tool that I have (an adjustable leather gouge/groover – it’s probably very blunt now). It works best if you cut grooves at quite a shallow angle so you get grooves across the face of the ruler, rather than just cuts into the edge of the ruler. I guess it gives some space so that the paper that’s being torn can delaminate and leave a partial-thickness behind in the groove. The ungrooved parts help maintain a straight line.

My parner and I are hopelessly sentimental (this is why our house will soon be stacked high with junk that we can’t bear to throw away because it has some kind of memory attached to it!). I think traditions go hand in hand with sentiment; Part of our sentimentality caused us to start a tradition for our first Christmas together (one year ago!) whereby we’d make a decoration for our tree each year. She makes pretty cool little figures from Fimo and other types of modelling clay… I tried, and soon found out that my talent for making that stuff reached it’s peak at, well, I think about age 6. My attempts at making things like that still look like they were done by a 6year old. Consequently, I ditched that idea this year, and decided to make a little christmas-themed book to hang on the tree, which was big enough for a small message each year.

Small leather tight-back for the christmas tree!

It’s a simple leather-bound, tight-back, blank journal about 6cm (~2.5″) square. It has 8 signatures of 4 sheets each (8 sides) made of my favourite paper for binding – 120gsm Zerkall laid paper. The cover is made of a small segment of christmas wrapping paper.

Maybe I’ll make some to sell next year… hopefully I’ll have more time for it than I do this time around!

A hand-sewn headband.

Here’s an article on something I’ve been searching for for some time now – hand-sewn headbands. I am yet to have a go at it, but I like the idea of doing the headband myself rather than just gluing on a strip of machine made stuff! Plus, the hand sewn bands look so much better, I think – They’re a lot thicker, and a lot less ‘fake’ looking! Anyway, thankfully,’Pied Crow Press‘ has written up a nice tutorial with lots of pics to show how it’s done.

The stack of chiyogami up for grabs from The Paper Place!

Here’s a great competition from the people over at The Paper Place. (If you don’t know them, go check out their site. They have a great range of stock). They’re offering a 8.5 x 11″ sample sheet of every paper pattern they stock. So that’s a nice stack of over 600 papers worth about $2300!

EDIT: Unfortunately, I didn’t win. Oh, well. It was worth a try! This person did win it though, so I hope they enjoy their big stack of papers!