Bookbinding
Bookbinding has become my principal hobby. In terms of both learning new bookbinding techniques and developing book content, I have found the book arts to be endlessly facinating. Since moving to Michigan, I have been able to take classes at Hollander’s bookbinding shop and school in Ann Arbor. This, along with the little creativity monster that has been brusting from my chest, has transformed bookbinding from something I dabbled in during my free time to a full-fledged passion.
Here is my bookbinding toolbox. These tools, along with a cutting mat, ruler, hammer, brushes, and large tubs of glue are just about the only supplies I need to bind books by hand.
A loose-leaf book, bound in a portfolio case.
The bookboard flaps can be opened and the pages leafed through one by one.
A Japanese stab-bound book using a “leaf” stitch.
This was my first attempt at binding a thick roundback spine book. I am happy to report it turned out nicely. I am amazed at how flat this binding style can lay when opened, even with a large number of signatures.
Another roundback spine book.
I took a class in Paper Engineering at Hollander’s taught by Matt Shlian. In it, I learned the basic elements of pop-ups, which can be used in conjunction with each other to create some very nice effects. Now I have a whole new area to draw on for the content of my books. The techniques we learned were so simple and elegant too. For instance, I just loved the fact that rather than worrying about calculating the placement of each tab that glues down and positions the pop-up, one just has to decided one of them, place glue on the others and fold the page. The pop-up naturally positions itself. It was beautiful!
At the end of the class we had some time to tinker around with what we had learned. I made this winged turtle as an experiment in combining both the elements of a basic strut and a v-fold. This gives the pop-up motion in two directions when you open the card: the turtle pops up and the wings fold out.
I also made this fish pop-up using paper cutouts.
This was my first roundback spine book. While binding this book I learned how to sew and glue a book block. I also learned how to use many new elements in bookbinding, such as attaching headbands and using “super” fabric for attaching the book block to the casing.
In terms of both beauty and practicality, one of my favorite book forms is the coptic stitch bound book. The exposed spine with the chain-like coptic stitch is very interesting looking and also practical because it allows the book to be opened and lay completely flat. This fact is apprecaited by journal-writers like myself.
A simple brown and green journal with a botanical theme.
A geologic map was used as the cover paper for this journal. I was also excited when Hollander’s offered me more choices in binding thread colors than just black and natural linen. Not surpising, bright green was my first choice.
Fishing inspired me to bind a series of fish-themed journals using posters of Thai fish I had purchased at a shop in Chiang Mai. I like to have some sort of decoration on the inside pages of the books and cutting out fish from the posters helped me create the feeling of fish swimming from the covers throught the pages of the book. Here is one completed book and the components of one before it was sewn.
Boxes constructed by hand using bookboard and bookcloth are an off-shoot of bookbinding that I have also been enjoying. I made many boxes this year that escaped my grasp as gifts before being photographed, but here are a couple I made for my Thai friends before I visited them in March.
Beetle-themed, of course.
The same principles used in box contruction lend themselves nicely to the creation of small assemblages or “shrines” that can be folded up and stored on a bookshelf. I have been wanting to explore building these for some time now. It took tinkering around and lots of trail and error to get it right, but I managed to modify a basic box construction to produce a layout I was happy with. This particular assemblage will be a “shrine to goats” that I plan to fill with three-dimensional images using the pop-up construction techniques I am learning.
Here is what the box looks like closed.
A coptic stitch journal made using a Thai sea life poster and images from an thrift store purchased children’s wildlife book.
A coptic stitch journal with a hand-carved stamp on each page.
A knitting journal to keep track of all my projects in, done in an album-style with japanese stab-binding.
A handy place record yarn, pattern, gauge and make notes.
My first hardcover, single-signature book with a hard spine.
A couple simple japanese stab-binding books.
This journal is made with vintage wrapping paper that Kristen and I found at a San Jose thrift store.
Detail of inside cover.
I made pages with details to match the wrapping paper on my computer, of all places.
A book to keep entomology class notes in.
The paper for this portfolio was printed using a carved potato stamp. The tie is twine Krishna made from tree bark in Costa Rica.
It can hold a lot of papers and has come in handy on plane trips.
©2006 S. A. Dole
