I took a book arts and letterpress class last fall (2008) at Mass Art. It was a ton of fun and I learned a lot, and realized I quite enjoy making blank books. Here's a few sampling of some of the books I've made in the past 6 months.
The first two I've made for myself as sketchbooks, the green one is about 5 x 4.5 inches with accordion style pages and I've bound it with ribbon on both ends, so either end can be untied, allowing access to both sides of the paper (Utretch brand printmaking paper). The larger book is made from the same paper, 8 signatures (each signature is just one page folded in half, I could have made multiple pages per signature but that would mean more folding and tearing of really large pieces of paper which I didn't have the patience to do at 1am). The covers are glued to the first and last page and the signatures are side bound...I think it's either Coptic binding or something similar, whatever the binding is, it allows the book to lay flat when open.
The next one was an experiment with gauze (i found some lying around my room...don't know where it came from). The gauze is glued to the bookboard, and wrapped around from one board to the other which makes the binding for the book. I threaded a piece of ribbon through to tie the book closed. The pages are accordion style using two different colored papers.
Purple Stars:
4 page accordion book, the cover is cloth with star-buttons stitched on.
This yellow one is actually pretty small, about 4 x 2 inches. Also accordion style. The binding is made from strips of ribbon and the covers are this pleathery/vinyl material on book board (awful material to work with in this situation, doesn't glue properly)
Two Japanese side-sewn binding. When open they lie sort of flat.
This green one is an ox-plough book. I don't really know how to go about explaining the book so just look it up online :D It's kind of like an accordion except it's not. If you lay it out flat, the cuts in the paper make the overall appearance look like a boxy "Z", if that makes any sense.
This one is small, accordion style. Cloth on bookboard covers, with a little cardboard puzzle piece (i think). I found this little piece on Tilghman field at Drew during ultimate practice back in 2004 or 2005, I hung onto it, figured I could use it somewhere!
And this last one is more of a portfolio than a book. It was an attempt at making a hardcover book but I messed up along the way and turned it into a portfolio that can accommodate about an inch of cardstock paper. I conveniently had the brown cardstock cut to the portfolio's size without even knowing it! I want to do some ink drawings on them, something similar in style to the yellow paper on the inside of the covers.
I was thinking I could make a bunch of sketchbooks and sell them on Etsy. Though in this economy I don't know if people will buy them.
3 comments:
Wow, these are absolutely beautiful. I love handmade books but don't really have a clue how to make them myself. I'd really like to take a bookmaking workshop one of these days...it's been on my to-do list for far too many years.
Great post Krishna!
Thanks Jason! My first formalish instruction on bookbinding was actually at a workshop held at Peter Reynolds' bookshop! Then I took a combined class of Vandercook Letterpress and Bookbinding at MassArt and totally fell in love with making my own book. Though the tiny ones seem kinda useless, they could make good cards!
Good 'ol Peter Reynolds. He's da man. I'd sure like to meet him face-to-face one day.
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