At
Paper and Book Intensive this year, one of the classes I took was taught by Bonnie Stahlecker who showed us creative ways to emboss leather for bookbinding. Bonnie is an amazing artist who incorporates book elements into her work and you can see some of her work and learn more about her on her website at
www.bonnie-stahlecker.com
Books that I made in Bonnie's class.
In this class, we embossed leather using an etching press. A design on a printing plate is impressed into dampened leather when they are passed through the press. We started by trying various methods of creating plates and doing test prints to see how the different techniques would look. Here are some of the test prints that I did:
A crocheted square.
A snake lino cut.
Modelling paste.
And drawing with puff-paint (unpuffed).
Other people in the class tried different techniques as well, using a variety of found objects, cardboard cutouts, string, leaves and ferns, etc. Once we had a chance to play with the various techniques, we created a printing plate for our first book. I did this lino cut, shown here, followed by the embossed leather.
Bonnie also had us try some different ways of embellishing the leather after it was printed using paints and polishes. Here is the same embossed leather after applying some dark blue shoe polish.
And the finished book.
I also made a puff-paint printing plate for another book. I'm not entirely sure what puff-paint is supposed to be used for, but we just used it to draw on fabric. Once the paint was entirely dry, it could be put through the press. It was more durable than expected, and could withstand multiple printings. This photo shows the fabric plate along with the brown printed leather, which was printed with too much pressure and damaged the leather. I printed it again with less pressure onto the red leather, with more success.
The binding technique that we used in this class, is one that Bonnie has developed and it combines different techniques. The covers are semi-stiff, there is no bookboard, just a paper lining in the covers. The primary binding of the textblock is a French link stitch. The textblock is attached to the cover with a secondary sewing using tackets. The result is a nice lightweight leather book. She also showed us a lovely little headband that is quick but also very effective. We used leather to make a false endbands and stuck them on with pva. Then with just a simple oversewing, it creates a really nice endband.
Thanks, Bonnie, for sharing all these great ideas and techniques with us!
And I used it on the cover of these notebooks. I found some fun single section sewings in Keith Smith's book "1, 2, & 3 Section Bindings" and these notebooks are made using a modified version of a sewing he describes.
I've also used some of my other linocuts for making notebook covers too. I used another sewing from Smith's book for the bright orange & pink notebooks and the brown & black ones. The little pink notebooks have a simple 3-hole pamphlet binding.
My picnic table and wooden swing lino prints. The peach and green covers are some of the paper I made a couple months ago. Images are printed in brown ink. These notebooks are bound with a simple 2-section sewing.
And some simple pink and white notebooks with flowers printed in gold-coloured ink.
So, rubber stamps weren't the only thing we did in our printmaking course. Oh no, not at all. In fact, we covered so many things, I could barely take notes fast enough. The scope of the course included: lino prints, reduction printing, dark field monotype printing, trace-style monotypes, pressure prints, painted monotypes, a bit of colophon printing, and of course, screen printing. Then we covered some fun folding book structures at the end, which is a great way to visualize the process in the realm of book arts. This first picture shows Matt demonstrating the silk screen printing process.
The greatest bonus with silk screen printing is the ability to create many many many prints - once the screen is prepared, making the actual prints is slick and quick. As a class, we created a screen for printing some two-sided origami paper. I think there were a million prints made...or maybe about 50...something like that. Everyone was able to take a few sheets anyway. Matt showed us how to use a dark room and light table for exposing the screens, and then also showed us how to do it just by exposing the screen in direct sunlight for a couple minutes. So it can be done without too much special gear...that's nice to know. Although I don't think I'll take up screen printing.
