Chaekkori at The Cleveland Museum of Art

Last month, I went to the Cleveland Museum of Art and toured the various collections rather single-mindedly. We were looking for books. Or book-related things.

There were a few actual books on display. Of course, they were on display for the purpose of showing the illuminated pages inside so the books were enclosed in glass cabinets. No consideration at all for the bookbinders who might be visiting! So we examined them as much as possible looking at things like clasps and headbands and discussing which ones appeared to be repaired, rebound, or with original binding features.

Books are also a very common prop in paintings through the ages, apparently. So we played a little game of "name that binding" as we found various styles represented in paintings...

... and sculptures throughout the museum.

Of course, the history of the book began long before the codex format. We found carved stone (1200 BC) and papyrus scrolls (1000 BC) from Egypt...

...as well as Chinese handscrolls on silk, porcelain plaques from Korea, and paper documents from India.

Finally this is Chaekkori, Korean for books and things. A ten panel folding screen from Korea (late 1800s) featuring bookcases filled with books and other scholarly items meant to represent a Confucian study.

Apparently the Cleveland Museum of Art also has a lot of non-book-related items too! Next time I'll try to see some of them. It is a VERY large place, though, and I didn't even come close to seeing all the collections. Next time!

Guest Blogger Fran Kovac, tells us about her PBI class with Pam Spitzmueller

Fran Kovac is a bookbinder in Columbus, Ohio, and teaches basic bookbinding techniques at the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio. Apparently she is still camera-shy, so rather than having a headshot of her here, I am using this picture of her fingers sewing a link-stitch endband, again. At PBI this year, Fran was one of the lucky students in Pam Spitzmueller's class. Of course, Pam's expertise in historic bookbinding techniques is exceptional and this class produced exceptional work! The class was called "An Historical, Personal Almanac with a nod to Individual Calendar Books & Wood Leaf Books" where each participant created a replica of an incredible little book.

In this class, we made a model of a lovely little 1581 Elizabethan pocket almanac that includes erasable writing pages with a brass stylus tucked into the back board. The book was fully leather bound, on thin wood boards. There are two fore-edge brass clasps and blind stamping of a Renaissance flourished design of a central diamond shaped panel and corner pieces.

William Shakespeare was only 17 years old when the book we recreated in this class was printed and bound in 1581 A.D.. It was, for businessmen in the 16th century, a Blackberry of sorts...a combination of an almanac, a diary, a calendar and notepad. While it didn't send or receive messages, it served as a personal organizer for the merchants of the times, and was printed and reprinted in different formats for several decades.

This is a photograph of a photocopied picture (!) of the
original book that the class would be replicating.

It is a small book, measuring only 3 1/8" x 4 3/8" (7.9 x 11.3 cm) (spine dimension given first). It consists of four signatures (sections) of paper, and five bi-folios of the erasable pages. In the original, the erasable pages were made of animal parchment, and coated with a gesso-like mixture that would take an impression, then wipe away. The nine signatures were arranged with one paper signature in front, five bifolios of erasable pages, and three signatures in back. There are two single endsheets, with the stubs next to, but not pasted down on, the boards. With the thin [1/8" (3 mm)] basswood boards, the spine is 3/4” ( 1.8 cm) thick.

In the original, the first signature consisted of the title page, rules for the changes of the moon, a 24 year almanac and calendar, and a monthly calendar. There was a blank page after the five erasable pages (we used cardstock, although I made one bifolio from parchment), and then followed "A prayer for the forgiveness of our sins," a section on weights and measures, a history of England, several pages of descriptions of the various coins of the realm, and other helpful information for the business traveler of the times.

Fran's finished replica.

After arranging the signatures, the book was sewn on three thin cords; that is, three sewing stations and 2 kettle stations. We started with 8 ply cord, but removed three strands to be left with a five ply cord. It is slightly recessed into the signatures, and the sewing is straightforward, around the cords in the paper signatures, but not looped around, merely over the cords in the parchment signatures. The spine was then pasted up with PVA, rounded, and lined with Mohawk Superfine paper.

The boards were shaped with a slight round on the outside spine edge, and beveled on the inside fore-edge, head and tail, to accommodate the leather turn ins. The boards were aligned on the textblock, and the cords frayed and pasted down on the boards. We were using a beautiful calf leather prepared by Pergamena, which required only modest edge paring and some paring at the spine head and tail. The first step was dampening the spine and using PVA to glue up the spine, boning down around the cords. Then, using wheat paste, we pasted out the leather and finished the covering of the book. Pam had designed a large die to create the debossed diamond effect on both front and back covers. This was accomplished by dampening the leather, placing the die, and pressing in a nipping press for at least 6 minutes. The lines surrounding the stamp are cold tooled with a bone folder. The brass stylus, which was formed from 1/16" brass rod, fits into a groove in the back board, and protrudes slightly at the fore edge.

Close-up of the clasps that Fran made for her book.

The final step was creating the brass clasps which hold the book closed. The clasps grasp on the back board, in the English style. We used shears and nibblers to rough out the clasps, files to shape and smooth them, and riveted or pinned them onto the covers using brass escutcheon pins. Although two clasps might not seem necessary on such a small book, the parchment leaves, being hygroscopic, would tend to curl with changes in the humidity. It was a wonderful class, and many thanks to Pam Spitzmueller!

- Fran Kovac

Book Review: Beautiful Bookbindings

Beautiful Bookbindings: A Thousand Years of the Bookbinder's Art
PJM Marks
The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2011

This is, as the title indicates, a collection of beautiful books from a very long tradition of bookbinding. The earliest book included is from the seventh century, and from there the collection continues along an ambitious timeline, finally reaching the early days of the twenty-first century in the last few pages.

The early books displayed in the first chapter, span about ten centuries so the result is a very brief snapshot of a very long period of history (exhibited over a mere 11 pages). The selections from this period are, indeed, beautiful and show primarily those books which fall into the Western tradition of bookbinding. There are some exceptions to this, with an example of a concertina from Korea (14th C) and an Indian pothi (15th C), like a palm-leaf structure.

The early books are my personal favourites, so I would prefer to see more in this chapter. The next five centuries each get their own chapter, starting with the Sixteenth Century and ending with the Twentieth Century. Each of these chapters has about 30 pages, thus permitting a better overall view of each period compared to the first chapter. Of course, there are far more books surviving from these recent centuries so it is understandable that they would be represented here in greater numbers.

Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder and it must have been very difficult to choose which bindings to include in this book; but, I think the selections are very well made and illustrate the various bookbinding traditions (albeit primarily Western traditions) very nicely. It would be even better to see more books from outside the Western tradition, but I do understand that any collection like this must have boundaries and cannot include everything. The collection is mostly codex format bindings in the English and German traditions with a sprinkle of Asian here and little American there. The collection focuses on the cover decorations used by bookbinders, not the actual binding structures. There is lots of tooling and painting and embroidering and inlaying. As it mentions in the text, the artists (i.e. the bookbinders) behind these amazing works of art, are mostly unknown and individual bookbinders were rarely credited.

The photographs in this book are flawless and there are many close-ups showing amazing details of painting and tooling and texture that can be very difficult to convey on smooth glossy paper. Wonderful detail is shown in a photo of a fabric-covered book (p. 53) where the weave of worn velvet can be seen, almost felt, beautifully intact on the face of the cover, slightly frayed in the hinge area by the spine - complete with a little stain here and there - and embellished with ornate clasps and painted metalwork.

Attention is also given to certain details such as clasps and fore-edge decoration. Various books with exceptional fore-edge decoration are examined in almost every chapter. This is a lovely detail to highlight in a book like this and it is fascinating to see it evolve over the centuries. Chapter 3 (Seventeenth Century), has several stunning examples of fore-edge clasps - another lovely detail on which to focus. Most of the examples are metal clasps, but there is also one example of an embroidered binding made for James II, which has fabric ties rather than metal clasps. As the collection moves forward in time, it is delightful to see how all these ornate bindings influence the trade bindings of the nineteenth century. There are several gorgeous examples of trade bindings in this book, mostly from London, showing the very pretty, colourful covers of the popular literature at the time.

I have enjoyed browsing and reading this book and admiring all the fabulous tomes presented therein. The selections in this collection are all beautiful, certainly, and I suspect that this is a good representation of the entire collection available at the British Library. The final chapter on Twentieth Century bindings showcases a few of the best design bindings of the past hundred years, all very traditional in spite of the experimentation that has been happening in the book arts in recent times; however, another hundred years (or so) must pass before someone can choose the bindings that best represent the current century.

Reviewed by Rhonda Miller, Feb 2013.

Guest Blogger Ann Frellsen, Italian Paper Bindings

Ann Frellsen is the Collections Conservator for the Emory University Libraries in Atlanta, Georgia. She has attended several PBI’s and she never gets tired of them. Last year she was an instructor - teaching the book repair class that I took. Ann has kindly agreed to share with us, one of the classes she took this year, taught by Maria Fredericks.

Maria Fredericks, book conservator at the Morgan Library and Museum taught the PBI class on Italian Paper Bindings from 1500-1800. Maria has done extensive research in this area, and has looked at these bindings in collections in the US, UK, and Italy. In this class we looked at a range of covering methodologies, variations in endsheet structures and sewing patterns via the samples Maria brought, her slides, and the numerous binding models that she had made during her investigation of this genre.

During this time period books had to get from printers to the binders in larger and larger editions and out to the booksellers in shorter and shorter time frames. The need to produce books faster to meet the increased demand resulted in an evolution from elaborate binding structures to the simpler, faster sewing and bindings that were the focus of our class.

Stacks of books created by the participants in this class.
Photo by Fran Kovac.

The earliest historic examples of sewing we made were long-stitched through the thick paper (cartonnage) covers. Our models of the 17th C. styles were sewn all-along on alum-tawed thongs – a supported sewing. Models from the early 18th C. show a variety of abbreviated sewing patterns. No supports were used. Skipping sewing stations or jumping from one signature to the next without using kettle stitches seemed sacrilegious, but many examples of these bindings survive today, so they must be fairly strong. The sewing patterns were fun to learn and really did speed up production. In the class most of us completed at least five different books, and some completed many more.

Our cases were made of very heavy papers; we used the wonderful Iowa Case Paper from the University of Iowa’s Center for the Book and an exquisite piece of Moulin du Verger, a case paper developed to replicate the historic Italian case papers. We also created stiffer laminated covers by layering on slightly thinner Khadi paper. Sometimes the endpapers were pasted to the covers—attaching the textblock to the case – other times we laced on the cases with the alum-tawed thongs we had sewn onto – a reference to the limp vellum binding style that had been popular but was more expensive for the 16th C. bookbinder to make.

Paper case, laced on. Photo by Fran Kovac.

For the laced-on cases we also created small tackets of either vellum or thin strips of the case paper twisted into cords and threaded through the covers. These simple tackets added strength to the case and its attachment to the textblock.

All the while we learned the different binding and sewing structures we also made paste papers using cooked flour colored with watercolors and stamped onto thin text weight Barcham Green papers with beautifully carved blocks. These paste papers became simple wrappers around the thick paper covers (also secured with tackets), adding color and lovely historically reminiscent pattern to the later models we had created.

Ann's Paste Papers. Photo by Fran Kovac.

Maria was a great teacher. She provided extensive information discussing Italian paper bindings and meticulous drawings of the abbreviated sewing variations she had encountered in her research. She kept us historically accurate, discussed conservation concerns, and at the same time allowed us freedom to be creative with our models. It was another wonderful and memorable PBI class.

Girdle Books

Another project that I was working on in the last few months, was making a few more Girdle Book journals. I have made some before and each time, I tweak the process a bit. As always with the girdle books that I make, I'm not technically binding these like they would have been done historically - I'm playing the 'artistic license card' with a lot of the details. You can read a bit more about this structure in an earlier post. This time I sewed my own endbands which, I think, is a nice touch. This is how it looks after the text blocks are ready with endbands completed.


Some of them looked better than others in the end, here are a couple of the better ones up close.


I wanted to use my own marbled papers for the endpapers too so the endbands were made to coordinated with them.



I used leather for the coverings and added either metal corners or raised bands and each one has a clasp.

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.

My own stash of Nag Hammadi codices

Here is the most common photo of the Nag Hammadi books; I have linked this back to Wikipedia since its copyright is in dispute so anyone who is interested can go there to read about it. The books were just discovered in 1945, so the photograph is not so old. The books, though, are very old, dating from the 3rd or 4th century.


There aren't many photos of these books, because they were dismantled for preservation, I believe. The content of the books is the primary point of interest for most historians... I, on the other hand, just get annoyed when I google this topic and all I can find is the content! Nothing about the structure!


Ah, but I was very fortunate to attend a great workshop where I learned how they were made and have since created my own nice stash.

My Girdle Books

The Girdle Book was the last item on my original list of historical-bindings-to-do, and now they are finally finished. I have experimented with the Girdle Book a few times before, but these are certainly the most refined. This is also the first time that I have used any embellishments. The dark brown book is made with deerskin, a very thin suede split. The white book is lambskin, also a thin suede split.

These are not technically "bound" like Medieval girdle books. I just tried to make books that look like Medieval girdle books.


In The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding, Szirmai dedicates a few pages to the girdle book. It is a late medieval book structure, most originating during the 15th century, and it was represented widely in paintings - there being over 800 documented visual depictions of the girdle book. In the artwork, it is usually being carried by biblical figures, clergy, monks, nuns, etc. There are just 23 extant girdle books now and all but four of these are religious texts (Szirmai 236-7).


Generally, the girdle book was a small book, covered in leather with a long extension of leather at the bottom of the book. Sometimes the extension was left loose and just carried in the hand, or it was knotted so that the knot could be tucked under the belt (i.e. the girdle). So the book would be hanging upside-down. So if the carrier wanted to use the book, he could just reach down and bring the book up and it would be upside-right, and it never has to be detached from his belt. It seems like an efficient model. Imagine how easy it would be to read while traveling. If he was on the back of a mule (or whatever he would have been using), he could just read and not worry about dropping the book. As long as his mode of transportation has eyes, this would be ideal.

Some of the girdle books were very plain, but there are some examples of highly decorated girlde books with brass corner pieces, engraving, tooling, ornate fastenings and clasps, and maybe even a coat of arms or other adornment in the center of the cover. I kept my books embellished with the basics: corner pieces and one fastening. Medieval books typically had two fastenings - but I just play the "artistic license card" whenever necessary.

Crossed Structure Binding

I included the Crossed Structure Binding on my list of historical bindings to do; however, I am not sure that it really qualifies as an historical structure. I actually make a lot of these books, using the Crossed Structure Binding Basic (CSB Basic) technique as described by Carmencho Arregui on her website. This structure works really well with a leather cover so it has become one of the styles I use often when making journals (see first pic).

Based on the information on Arregui's website, the CSB is her own invention, the idea for which came to her when she was doing her restoration work with historical longstitch bindings. So, the CSB isn't really an historical binding; rather, it is inspired by some historical bindings. Good enough.

I will have to explore some of the other techniques she has outlined on her website. The only other technique that I have done is the CSB Solo structure, which works well with a paper cover (see second pic) but not with a leather cover. Arregui suggests that leather could be used if it were pared very thin and also laminated with Japanese paper. But I haven't tried that.

Arregui also has details on her website for the CSB Protective, Linked, Expander, Marcopolo, and Hidden models and I have tried none of those.

My list of historical bindings to do, has only one more item and that is the girlde book. I have two started and hope to get them finished soon but they are taking longer than a lot of these other bindings. Then I'll have to start on a new list of bookbindings I haven't tried yet, and do some of these other CSBs.

Three more single quire Coptic books

About a month ago I participated in a workshop about the single quire Coptic books that were discovered in 1945. There were 13 of these books stashed in a jar in Egypt since the 3rd or 4th Century! These books are often called the Nag Hammadi codices. There is a previous blog entry about the workshop.

So this was the next project on my list of historical bindings to do, and I just finished making three of them.

I used leather splits to make these books so they actually have suede covers. The two dark brown books are made with a deerskin split. The white one is a sheepskin split. A leather split is a layer taken off the hide so it is suede on both sides and these ones are quite thin so it worked well for these books.

The covers on the original books were lined with papyrus to stiffen the covers. I didn't have any papyrus, so these are stiffened with just heavy paper. And I used some great Japanese papers as end papers pasted down on the inside of the covers. The best thing about these, is the single quire. The text block is just one thick stack of paper folded in half. These each have 40 sheets of paper (compared to 8 that I normally have per section). I pressed these for a week to get them to stay folded satisfactorily.

I have just two more bindings left on my list of historical bindings to do...

Secret Belgian Binding

The Secret Belgian Binding was my next project on the list of historical bindings to do. I wish I knew more about the history of this binding; there is very little information available online and none of my books have any details.

I learned this in a class with Susan Mills. I believe the binding was unearthed by Hedi Kyle, and it has been dated between the 14th and 16th centuries. Story is, this type of binding had been long lost and forgotten until Hedi came upon it and she figured out how it was done. It is thought that it was a special binding method of a particular binder so it was never widely known. If you have any more authoritative information about this, please let me know. Don't bother sending me the Wikipedia link because I wrote that myself.

Now I remember why it has been so long since I did it. It's too tedious! But, nonetheless, I persevered and completed these two black and whites this week. I cheated a little bit. The covers are covered with self-adhesive papers - so I didn't have to wait for any glue or paste to dry. But they turned out fine, the proportions are nice, at 480 pages thick, and nice to hold. I still don't want to start making them very often, though.

Medieval Limp Binding

Next on my list of historic book structures to do, was a typical Medieval limp binding. This is described by Szirmai in his text: "the covering is largely of coarse parchment, sometimes of two pieces pasted together...cut off flush with the bookblock; limp leather coverings or leather edging are exceptional. The lower cover usually extends to a rectangular front-edge flap, with one or two cords to tie them around flat buttons of horn, leather or metal on the back" (p. 299, The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding). This type of book dates from 1375 to 1500.

So here are my books, but certainly they aren't exact replicas. I have used thin limp leather, not parchment. One is black sheepskin, and the other is white suede lambskin. The pages are 50lb Canson paper...not readily available in the 1400s. The spines are reinforced with thicker leather strips although I believe originally wood may have been more common for the spine piece. The buttons are plastic...not very authentic.

The binding is really very basic, though. It is the shape and style of the covering that makes this representative of the Medieval books. The sewing is a standard longstitch and chain stitch, directly through the cover and spine reinforcement.

Although I haven't been making many books like this recently, I used to make a lot of them. I had one of these up for auction on Ebay and I was contacted by a university lecturer in medieval manuscripts and binding structures in Norway, who had seen the book and he wrote, "I should say this is the first one of items advertised as Medieval that is convincing and even impressive."

There was also a frantic session of making these books when I got my first large book order. I had to make 14 of them shown in the photo here, half off-white and half dark brown. They were for somebody who wanted to give them to all the attendants in their wedding. (Actually, oh ya, there are just 13 in the photo because one had been sent previously as a sample.)

Next on my list is the secret Belgian binding, or the girdle book maybe.

16th Century Ledger Bindings

I decided that I would make some books using historic book structures that I don't use very often. So I started by making three blank journals based on the 16th Century ledger binding that I learned in a bookbinding class with Susan Mills, and as described by Szirmai in his text The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding.

These ledgers were typically made with limp covers that were attached to the textblock with tackets and/or leather lacing through overbands on the outside of the cover. Hmmm, there are a lot of reasons why my books are nothing like the ledgers from the 16th Century, but I did try to use the same basic techniques for the book construction.

I sewed the signatures onto leather strips. Then I attached the leather covers by weaving the leather strips through a couple slits on either side of the spine. I cut out the overbands and pasted them in place, covering the leather strips that were woven into the cover. The overbands are stitched at each end and there are tackets on the spine for additional reinforcement.

The dark burgundy book has some X and line stitching on the overbands that is kinda like some of the stitching I've seen in photos of these old books. The others have just plain X stitches. The dark burgundy and the brown books both have tackets on the spine which provide additional security to the binding and cover attachment. I cut the grey overbands a little fancy smancy and decided that I wouldn't put tackets on the spine, just because I think it looks better this way.

The grey one is up for auction on Ebay already and the others might just end up in my Etsy shop. So, moving on, I am going to do some other historic structures over the next few days...medieval limp binding and maybe some secret Belgian binding...

A Workshop on 3rd Century codices

I just spent the weekend at a bookbinding workshop with Susan Mills, offered through the continuing education program at NSCAD (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design). This is quite exciting for two reasons: first, because there are very few bookbinding-related activities in this area so any chance to do stuff with other bookbinders is great; and second, because it was about a fabulous historical binding that I'd never seen or heard of before.

So we learned how to make Coptic Single-Quire bindings. There were 13 of these books discovered in 1945, buried in a jar in Egypt, dating back to the 3rd or 4th Century - often referred to as the Nag Hammadi codices. These would have been account books or other stationery books, where the textblock could be easily replaced whenever necessary. They were all papyrus and most were single quires.


That is the best part. These books have just one stack of pages, all folded together, up to 40 sheets. The text block needs to be pressed for a long time to get it to fold happily. The leather covers were lined with papyrus to make them stiffer. And they have ties at the top and bottom and a wrap-around strap or tie on the fore edge. The original books were quite large so they probably needed all these ties to keep the books closed properly.


I was able to finish three of these books, one is leather and the others have paper covers. They are each made a bit differently. The brown paper book was done entirely non-adhesive. The leather book is the only one with papyrus in the covers. I also added the pretty paper flyleaf to these books. And the dark red paper cover is the only one with pasted endpapers, but no flyleaf.

The binding itself consists of tackets through the quire and cover. I have tried to make tackets before and was never successful, but I mastered it today. All of the books have several tiny tackets in the corners for reinforcement so I got lots of practice.