Book #117

Sewn Board Binding

This is an example of the elegant and practical sewn board binding that I made in a workshop with Gary Frost a few years ago. Gary designed this particular structure himself and I saw a nice summary of its features on this blog, if you are interested in learning more about it.

Book #49

Cartonnage

Today's book is an example of a book made using the cartonnage technique, where the stiff cover is created by pasting several layers of paper (or papyrus, as it would have been originally). This is a model that I made in a class with Gary Frost a few years ago.

PBI 2014: Three Case Styles for Three Book­bind­ings

Over the past few years, I have been in the habit of posting here on my blog about the various classes offered at Paper and Book Intensive. Each participant at PBI takes three classes (out of 10). So I can report first-hand on the three classes that I took. I have asked a few other participants to be guest bloggers for me, so that they can share details about some of the classes that I didn't take. Since we are already into July, I really should get started with these reports. So, dear readers, you have all of this to look forward to over the summer!

One of the classes that I took was "Three Case Styles for Three Book­bind­ings" taught by Priscilla Spitler.

Three Bookbindings is a text, written by Gary Frost. It was originally written twenty years ago and at that time it was handbound in an edition at PBI, also in a class taught by Priscilla. So, twenty years later, the text was revised and a new edition was produced. In four days, we learned Priscilla's tips, tricks, and techniques for edition binding. We all made three books for ourselves, using three different case binding techniques: full cloth, quarter cloth, and half cloth with a rounded and backed spine. We also worked together to produce the edition of Gary's book, and honestly I have no idea how many books were made in total. Besides the books kepy by the students, I think there were 25 copies in each of the three binding styles - which would be 75. Added to that would be the personal copies made by each student (3 each and about 25 students), so that's another 75. So maybe there were 150 books produced in the end. I do know that we didn't finish them during class time and Priscilla finished them in her room in the evenings! Thank you Priscilla for all that work and for sharing so much knowledge with us.

Everyone in the class made their own three copies, but as time permitted we worked on the edition. Here's a small stack of sewn textblocks that I was working on. Sewn with the French link (and we did discuss how that isn't a very good name for this sewing as it doesn't seem to have any French connection really) and with endpapers attached.

Here's another stack that I was working on. Endbands attached and spines lined. We made our own false endbands, using coordinating bookcloth. A nice finishing touch on the textblocks before casing in. As Priscilla would say, you charge extra for that.

The official edition copies were all made with the same papers and cloths. These beautiful paste papers were made by Priscilla herself. Some of the students' personal copies were made with different papers, so you can see here a variety of decorative papers on some of the finished books.

So, here are the three books that I made for myself during this class. Starting on the left, my copy of the text in a quarter cloth binding, then the half cloth with a rounded spine, and the full cloth binding in dark blue.

Opening Action

I was introduced to the concept and importance of "opening action" in a class with Gary Frost at PBI this year. I had never thought much about it before, but it made me very happy to learn about it and to learn why it is good and how it happens and all that good stuff. It also answers some questions that I've been asking myself. The questions I've been asking myself are primarily concerned with exposed spine bindings like the chain stitch binding and some other similar sewings where the spine of the book is so often left unlined, but which historically would have been lined. I have made some of these chain stitch bindings (popularly termed "coptic") because they seemed to be very common and I thought I should keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. I was never happy with how the covers were just sewn on and just laid there, dead. I wondered if this was really alright, and how durable it would be, and wondered if I was missing something. To show you what I mean, I made this little video of an exposed-spine chain stitch binding with a very dead cover: It is dead because it has no relationship with the rest of the book; as if the cover and the book are entirely separate objects. In my class with Gary Frost, he talked at length about the "opening action" of books: the opening of the cover should facilitate the opening of the book. The cover and the text block should function together. In this class we made a book that demonstrated the opening action really well so I am beginning to understand what is happening. I decided to try infusing life into this chain stitch binding with the dead cover. This is the result, showing the same book with opening action: Achieving the opening action just requires a few extra steps and ultimately a covered spine. I prefer a covered spine anyway. The whole point of a book's covering is to protect the textblock, and an exposed spine isn't very well protected, is it? For those of you who are now thinking, "oh no! the book won't open flat anymore," do not worry, it will still lie flat. I made a couple of these chain stitch bindings with opening-action-improvements; however, I don't particularly like sewing the chain stitch binding so I started sewing onto raised cords instead, which, I think, is a more suitable binding for various reasons. And the raised cords look really cool. The book shown here with the really dark brown cover is made from wooden boards given to me by Simon over at Paper Curious when we swapped a while back and I'm keeping that one. The others are made with wooden covers that my Dad prepared for me, thanks Dad! He made them using a variety of hardwoods: teak, oak, cherry, and maple.

Structure and Action in Codex Binding

The third class I had at PBI was with Gary Frost and we covered a lot of material and worked on three different historic bookbinding models. We started with a simple struture called the Cartonnage and Free Leaf, which produced the smaller booklets shown above, which are not sewn. The second project was a sewn board structure, which is a wonderful style for edition binding - the one shown above bearing the label "Post-Digital Bookbinding".

The third book was a wooden board binding, which is based on a 16th Century struture. The textblock is sewn onto split alum tawd thongs. It is a drawn on board structure, so the thongs are laced into the wooden board covers.


The hardest part was drilling and chisling the slots in these hard oak boards. But it was worth the effort. The spine is lined with vellum and it is tucked under the boards on the sides and pasted to the inside of the covers - creating a wonderfully satisfying opening action!


The last thing we had time for, was pasting leather along the spine and wrapping it up with string like so,


This photo shows my book on the left, which I decided to cover only partially with the leather. I opted to leave the top third of the spine exposed so that I can always see the work that I did on the spine. The other book, by another member of the class, has a full spine covering. The strings were left on there for a day, then removed. So the raised bands across the spine are nicely emphasized as a result. I still have to turn in the leather at the end - it isn't meant to flap loose like this but we ran out of time at PBI. I'm back home now, so hopefully I'll get this finished soon.