Wooden Board Binding 13th-15th century, at PBI 2017

The thrid workshop that I had at PBI this year, was making a wooden board binding based on those made between the 13th to 15th centuries in Europe. The instructor was Renate Mesmer who is Head of Conservation at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. The workshop spanned four full days but as Renate warned us on the first day, four days is not enough time to make this book. And indeed, nobody finished it. At the end of the four days, the participants had books at various stages of completion, but none were done entirely or complete with clasps. We did produce a stunning white library shelf, though, in my opinion.

We bound the sections with a herringbone sewing on double raised cords. And headbands. We did a fancy headband with many cores. Not sure I could duplicate it today.

I have this complex headband finished on just the head of my book. Although I also did a quicker bead-on-the-front headband in matching colours, at the tail of the book.

Working on the boards alone, took quite a long time. It's hard, working with hardwood. This photo shows the book after the boards are laced on and you can see most of the work done on the boards (shaping the spine edge, the indents at head and tail and fore edge, as well as the holes for lacing, pegging, etc) the spine lining, headbands, etc.

We did a full covering with alum tawed calf. The covering and tying up were the last steps that I completed.

Ideally we would have made and attached two fore edge clasps and then finished the interior paste downs. I did start a bit on one of the clasps but the four days just were not long enough! Nonetheless, thank you Renate, for such a challenging class!

I have more photographs from this workshop on my Facebook page if you would like to see them.

Book #352

Herringbone

Today's binding is a basic (albeit awkward) herringbone stitch on double cords with a kettle stitch change-over, used as an exposed binding.

It was awkward because rather than using normal cords, I cut thin strips of leather for the cords which are not round. The herringbone effect would be more evident if the cords were actually cords.

Book #324

Raised Cords for Single Sheets

There are times when it is necessary to bind a stack of sheets, rather than signatures. Keith Smith wrote a book about that too - Sewing Single Sheets, which is Vol 4 in his series of books about non-adhesive bindings. That's where I learned this particular binding, which is sewn on raised cords. When I was making the cover, I knew this was going to be Book #324, so I let that fall on there just for fun.

Book #289

Double Rasied Cords with Kettle

This time I did an exposed binding with double raised cords, using a kettle stitch as the change-over. Not as pretty as the single packed cord, but quite functional.

Book #288

Double raised cords with packed cord change-over

This binding does not have a very concise name; the name is more like a short description. Sewing on double raised cords originated a long time ago, certainly as early as the 14th Century, I beleive, maybe earlier? It would have been a covered spine, though. Here I have tried to make it a bit more decorative and used it as an exposed spine binding using leather thongs. I incorporated single packed cords at the head and tail as change-over stations.

Book #271

Raised Cords & Endband

For today's binding, I did a raised cord binding with an integrated endband; so, the endbands are sewn as part of the primary binding unlike many endbands which are sewn after the primary sewing. This was my first attempt at this partcular combination, so the endbands are rather sloppy. I wish I had time to do another one right now, but this will have to suffice for today!

Book #252

Raised Cord X2

This binding is similar to the one I showed yesterday; but, the Xs on this binding are formed across the thickness of two sections. I also used triple cords so that I could do, what I call, the hen's foot board attachment. The covers on this book feature some of my own shibori dyed paper.

Book #251

Raised Cords X1

Today's binding is an exposed spine with raised cords. The stitching is one that Keith Smith describes in his book and he refers to as "1-section X" because each x is formed across the thickness of one section. This particular book features my own Suminagashi marbling on the covers, which was done with inks that I ground from jet and ocher.

Book #201

Icicle binding

For today, I made a book with the Icicle binding, which is from one of Smith's book (Vol 3). It feels like a stitch sampler. It has a kettle, a chain, a packed cord, and then also the elaborated packed cords with the extra dropped stitch and chain-like thing. With a good cover attachment, it feels very sturdy.

Book #183

Packed Raised Cords

With today's binding, I have officially reached the half-way point in my "365 bindings" adventure! As I showed yesterday, I made a French Door book with two different bindings. The French Door structure can be made with any binding really. So today I present another raised cord binding, but this time it is done with a packed sewing. (I should point out that neither of these techniques, packed and unpacked on raised cords, are used for exposed spine bindings normally; however, this book is quite small so the bindings and cover attachments are probably adequate to support the book blocks.)

Book #182

Raised Cords

Happy Canada Day! Today is a big day for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it is July 1st and that means it is Canada's birthday, whoop! In honour of the occasion, I made a book featuring our flag for today's post. Secondly, today and tomorrow mark the half-way point in my "365 bindings" adventure. Half of 365 is technically 182.5 but that is not really a day...so Day 182 and Day 183 share the half-way celebration. My Canada Day book, therefore, also serves another purpose because it features two different bindings. It is a French Door structure, and as such, there are two book blocks sewn on opposite sides of a shared back cover. Today's binding is a standard raised cord sewing, as shown in the closeup photo above. Tomorrow I'll show you the other side!

Opening Action

I was introduced to the concept and importance of "opening action" in a class with Gary Frost at PBI this year. I had never thought much about it before, but it made me very happy to learn about it and to learn why it is good and how it happens and all that good stuff. It also answers some questions that I've been asking myself. The questions I've been asking myself are primarily concerned with exposed spine bindings like the chain stitch binding and some other similar sewings where the spine of the book is so often left unlined, but which historically would have been lined. I have made some of these chain stitch bindings (popularly termed "coptic") because they seemed to be very common and I thought I should keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. I was never happy with how the covers were just sewn on and just laid there, dead. I wondered if this was really alright, and how durable it would be, and wondered if I was missing something. To show you what I mean, I made this little video of an exposed-spine chain stitch binding with a very dead cover: It is dead because it has no relationship with the rest of the book; as if the cover and the book are entirely separate objects. In my class with Gary Frost, he talked at length about the "opening action" of books: the opening of the cover should facilitate the opening of the book. The cover and the text block should function together. In this class we made a book that demonstrated the opening action really well so I am beginning to understand what is happening. I decided to try infusing life into this chain stitch binding with the dead cover. This is the result, showing the same book with opening action: Achieving the opening action just requires a few extra steps and ultimately a covered spine. I prefer a covered spine anyway. The whole point of a book's covering is to protect the textblock, and an exposed spine isn't very well protected, is it? For those of you who are now thinking, "oh no! the book won't open flat anymore," do not worry, it will still lie flat. I made a couple of these chain stitch bindings with opening-action-improvements; however, I don't particularly like sewing the chain stitch binding so I started sewing onto raised cords instead, which, I think, is a more suitable binding for various reasons. And the raised cords look really cool. The book shown here with the really dark brown cover is made from wooden boards given to me by Simon over at Paper Curious when we swapped a while back and I'm keeping that one. The others are made with wooden covers that my Dad prepared for me, thanks Dad! He made them using a variety of hardwoods: teak, oak, cherry, and maple.