Important for every bookbinder and bookbinder's spouse that wants to spare the other aggravation!
New [Wilhelm] Leo's Paste Clump Eliminator
Solid construction, won't rust, easy to use.
Turn the handle with knob and all the paste clumps will be eliminated and your paste will become beautifully smooth. Tested and recommended by professionals. No workshop should be without.
From the Allgemeiner Anzeiger für Buchbindereien, 1900.
Can't find one, get an applesauce mill.
Well, he done and did it. Fritz Otto started his own 'Insta' to take control of his own identity and manage his own 'reputation'... Thought there might have been some clause in his contract about social media..., but nope. So, here he is. Welcome Fritz Otto!
To see what he's up to, follow @fritzottobuchbinder.
To see more of his labours and personal projects at the Pressbengel Project, in addition to some silliness, click on the "Fritz Otto" label.
I was recently graced with a gift of two nice-sized steelhead trout skins by the fishmonger's wife. For a change they were a matched pair, i.e. they could have been both sides of the same fish, a nice bonus when thinking about binding designs.
Decided to tan these using green tea. I had seen wonderful examples by Janey Chang and Abigail Bainbridge in which much of the natural coloring had been preserved. It would have largely been lost had I used black tea, or made parchment.
Cleaning and other preparations the same as before, lots of changes of cold water with unscented/undyed dish detergent kept in the fridge. Next...
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| The skins in the first bath of 5 bags of tea. I used about 60 bags total of Tetley's Green Tea. It is important to start with a dilute tannin mixture to ensure the skin tans through to the center. |
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| The second bath had 10 bags of tea. This went on with changes every day and half in which the amount of bags increased each time. The last was about 25 bags for 2 days. I snipped into the skin during changes to make sure the center was getting tannins. |
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| "Making parchment from fish is nothing... This softening after tanning is brutal hard work. Working on oversized books was bad enough." As he felt them drying he added some olive oil to his hands to help lubricate the skins and finish them. |
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| Team-work and a good week's work. |
In the first step of the process, cleaning the fish, we decided to filter out the shinies (aka scales)... A few stubborn ones went through the tanning process and ended up yellowish. For kicks we threw them on the flatbed scanner (4800 dpi and downscaled for web).
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| A sampling... |
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| Untanned, note the growth rings, just like tree-rings said the dendrochronologist's daughter... |
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| This was one of the stubborn ones that wanted to be tanned... |
These skins will be used on Life-history and Habits of the Salmon, Sea-trout, Trout, and other Freshwater Fish (1910).
When Designer Bookbinders' latest issue of The New Bookbinder, volume 40 arrived, the one with my article "Fish Tales: Experiments with fish skin for bookbinding", Fritz Otto was blown away to find himself and the salmon parchment/shark leather box he made included in the "Lockdown" section of the issue. It's a fantastic issue, that carries the subtitle/theme of "Creative covering; the clothes on our books." Fish skin certainly fits that theme.
"Lockdown" was a two-page spread of images from each of the issue's contributors with a brief blurb about what they had been doing during the COVID-induced lockdown we have all lived with since March. Lots of different projects, most binding related, some not such as mask making, gardening, and painting. It was a wonderful recognition that the work we do does not exist in a vacuum.
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| Checking out the cover with Nadine Werner's fantastically photographed paper folding. |
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| Hey, look, that's me! How'd that happen? You can't see it, but that's the picture from when I made that box. The Meister shot it on b/w film, something he has been getting back into. |
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| Here's the description on the back. Even mentioned my guide, the Bone Folder. |
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| Hmmmm, a sign of the world of total information control we live in. Instagram added this when the image was uploaded. Better watch what I upload, or not! ✊ |
Megan Rosenbloom's Dark Archives is out! Read the review from the New York Times and elsewhere. Dark Archives is a wonderfully conversational dive into this subfield of bibliopegy. It also connects to topics here because of articles on the subject by Ernst Collin and Paul Kersten, the latter also the focus of part of one of the chapters.
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| Should Fritz Otto be worried? First fish, now this. The Meister knows about Paul Kersten and others, also Pergamena... Time to  . |
To learn more, listen to this great conversation. There are others online as well. Just check out #DarkArchives on Twitter.
Anthropodermic Biocodicology (HUMAN LEATHER BOOKS) with Megan Rosenbloom & Daniel Kirby
Listen on Ologies with Alie Ward
Anthropodermic bibliopegy is a long, fancy way of saying “HUMAN SKIN BOOKS” and the study of confirming or debunking them is … Anthropodermic Biocodicology. For this skin-crawling, history-trawling Spooktober episode, we chat with the absolutely wonderful and charming medical librarian and expert of books bound in human skin, Megan Rosenbloom. Also, on the line: analytical chemist Dr. Daniel Kirby, who discusses how books are tested to confirm if they are, in fact, human leather. Why would someone make these? What’s in between the covers? Whose skin is it? What do they smell like? And what can they tell us about our culture and our past? Rosenbloom has just released her book “Dark Archives” and gives us a peek into the world she’s come to know so well. Listen under a blanket or with a nightlight on, though. It’ll give you goosebumps.
In 1983 the Guild of Book Workers organized a small set book exhibition of sixteen fine bindings on Cutcliffe's The Art of Trout Fishing on the Rapid Streams published as a fine press book with illustrations by D. R. Wakefield. That fine press edition is no longer available, but the original is (scroll down).
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| The catalog cover. Print copies can still be found. It is also online via the Guild of Book Workers' website. |
H. C. Cutcliffe. The Art of Trout Fishing on the Rapid Streams. Revised and illustrated by D. R. Wakefield. Tiverton, Devon: The Chevington Press, 1982. Printed in Perpetua type on handmade Barcham Green. 10½ x 7 7/8 x 3/8 inches. Limited to fifty copies, signed and numbered by the illustrator.
Binders who participated were:
The catalog is illustrated in the style of the day with smallish black and white photographs. Still, it is a wonderful record of the exhibit representing some of the most active binders then. Some are still active, some not so much, and some have passed. Included in the catalog are the binders' education, prior and past positions, and a description of the binding. Mine also included the price list for those works that were for sale.
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| The price list in 1983 dollars. |
So, ordered a first from 1883 to bind. Paper ok, needs a bath, smells less like a damp lakeside camp than the last book, but otherwise in good condition. Still, going to pull, wash, and deacidify. The book is also available in print and digitally via the Internet Archive.
When engaging in piscatorial bibliopegy, I prefer to use skins that I have preserved, but when Janey Chang shared these oak gall tanned brook trout on her Insta I couldn't help but ask whether she would part with them. When making parchment the color largely disappears, and other tanning methods overpower the delicate coloring of the fish. These are just perfect. Now to work on a design that honors the fish, and book.
So, who's up for an exhibit on this book?
It is fairly uncommon to see coverage of the work of American binders and binderies in the German trade press. Below "a few words about slipcases" as they are made at the Lakeside Press of R.R. Donnelly in Chicago, at that time under the direction of Alfred de Sauty.
The article starts out by mentioning the efforts that go into a fine binding and that [as a consequence] bibliophiles take greater care to protect them, including the construction of enclosures. The slipcases illustrated in the following images are all custom-made (or as we now say "bespoke" 🤮).
– From Philobiblon, Nr.1, 1938. Philobiblon was a leading German bibliophilic journal.
For more about the work of the Lakeside Press see: Extra Binding at the Lakeside Press (1925), A Rod for the Back of the Binder (1929), All the King's horses ... (1954). See also The Training Department of the Lakeside Press; an historical sketch together with an illustrated description of its progress, aims and purposes, (1923). All titles linked to are in HathiTrust.
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| The article in German, main themes above. |
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| Captions clockwise starting top left: Cloth covered with pull ribbon and visible binding spine. Cloth covered with cloth dust jacket stamped with title. "Lockable" cloth covered sipcase/clam sheel with drop front. Cloth covered with 4 flap enclosure. |
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| Captions clockwise starting top left: Quarter leather slipcase/clam shell with or without raised "cords." Quarter leather with 2-flap wrapper. Full leather solander (top pulls off). Quarter leather solander. |
