Mayflies of the Driftless Region

Working on Gaylord Shanilec's Mayflies of the Driftless Region for Designer Bookbinders' "Contemporary Bindings of Private Press Books" exhibition that will open in the UK and travel to venues in the US. Book is due in the UK early January, 2014.

Gaylord kindly included prospecti when he sent the textblock and I bound those in at the back along with tipping in an original print (for the standard edition cover) opposite the title page.

Textblock sewn on three vellum back salmon leather slips and backed towards 90 degrees at shoulder. Double-folio Johannot endpapers to go with textblock.

Graphite top edge (others left untrimmed), wrapped salmon leather endband to match slips. Spine stiffener covered with salmon leather turned in at head and tail with leather very thin and wide enough to go down shoulders and onto endpaper. Cave paper flyleaves glued on at base of shoulder and on leather and at foredge for greater flexibility.

Wrapped endbands, graphite top edge, and prospecti guarded in at rear of textblock...

Spine view

Illustration from text scanned and output via inkjet. Sealed with varnish to prevent bleeding. A different illustration will go on the back board. Slips will extend onto covers on top of vellum, amount TBD

Vellum laid on top of artwork. Will show through with more clarity when vellum is pasted to boards.

Next steps, attach artwork to boards, cover in vellum, stamp title on front board, attach boards to textblock via slips...

Structure is an open joint binding (in German, Franzband mit offenem Falz), a style that is attributed to Otto Dorfner, a contemporary of Ignatz Wiemeler who also taught at the Bauhaus and bound some of the Cranach Press works... It is also used heavily by Jean de Gonet in France [Site has some broken links, click on "reliures" for bindings]. De Gonet also had a fantastic retrospective at the BNF, amazing catalog available via amazon.fr. Sonya Sheats a binder working in the Boston area uses it beautifully as well. Erin Fletcher did a very nice multi-part interview with her on her blog. Toon Van Camp a binder in Belgium describes the structure as he learned in a workshop with Brother Edgar Claes. Anne Puls, a German binder creates beautiful designs using this technique, something I would love see her write up.

Watch the design evolve as I post updates  while working on the binding.

Edit 11/10/13: Read part 2 here.

Fancied-up Books 2

Another commission that involved rebinding a modern trade binding. I had rediscovered several sheets of beautiful birch veneer and used this binding as an excuse to try weathering the wood and seeing how it worked as a prelude to another binding. It's nice to be able to transfer skills and materials from my model railroad hobby, but the other binding had its problems - while the wood turned in fairly easily on these 40pt boards, it was a bit more challenging on the other book, cracking and separating from the paper backing... On the upside and while hard to see in the image, the wood took the gold stamping for the title well, too. Amy Borezo has used this with great effect, turning-in or trimming flush with board edges. Her binding on the Guild's 100th Anniversary Catalog is here. The salmon skin was much easier to work with. This one is not polished but suede-like.

On Søren Kierkegaard by Edward F. Mooney

Bound in salmon leather on spine with stained birch veneer covered boards; endpapers of handmade Roma paper; graphite top edge; leather endbands; title stamped in gold on front cover with goat leather onlays. Enclosed is cloth-covered slipcase. Bound 2013.

Concept:Simple and elegant with a weathered look.

Fancied-up Books

In his post from August 28th, Henry Hébert offers many great ideas for taking trade books (originally paperback or hardcover is irrelevant - they're the same once the covers are off) and rebinding them. It is well worth the read, especially his description of building a shoulder where there is none. Also important to note is that his example is tight-backed, but there is no reason the book couldn't be casebound as in my examples below...

I don't like rebinding trade books for any number of reasons - bad design, boring paper, signatures (if extant) too fat, perfect bound... However, it happens often enough and is an established part of the trade. In the past two years I've had several opportunities to (re)bind just those kinds of books as presentation bindings to their authors who were retiring as faculty. These are fun, if at times conceptually challenging. Design-wise something more than quarter-leather with decorated sides is desirable, but the price needs to be reasonably affordable. Below two examples done for the same department.

The Weakness of God by John D. Caputo.

Disbound original trade paperback; adhesive-bound in the round with pastepaper endpapers by the binder; handsewn silk endbands; graphite top-edge; covered in full black goatskin; title and design elements tooled in gold and blind; enclosed is cloth-covered slipcase. Bound 2011.

Concept: Lacking any illustrations to work from, a nebula on paperback edition wrapper provided starting off point. The questions relating to existence and nature of God radiate out from the center, akin to the cosmological Big Bang.

The Corporeal Imagination by Patricia Cox Miller.

Original trade hardcover removed from textblock; endpapers with Roma doublures and flyleaves; handsewn silk endbands; graphite top-edge; covered in veiney calf-vellum with onlay of fish leather; title stamped in graphite; enclosed is paper and cloth-covered slipcase. Bound 2012.

Concept: Thematically more visual, this book included discussion of the representation of the holy in art and other objects. After looking at details of early Christian art - icons, church decorations, ... I went with a trinity. Body of Christ, blood of Christ, and symbol of Christ at their most basic.