Susan Mills exhibit "Field Books: birds, buoys, seeding, rain"

Currently at Hermes Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia is an exhibit of work by Susan Mills. Susan is a book artist, poet, and bookbinder from Nova Scotia and who also has lived and worked in Saskatchewan and New York. Her work is largely inspired by the space and materials around her and the contrasting environments where she works are evident in the exhibit. This exhibit is curated by Barbara Louder. This exhibit runs from Aug 10 to Sept 1, 2024 at Hermes Gallery in Halifax. Hours and location details are available on the gallery's website: www.hermeshfx.com.

Detail of Susan's piece, The Fourth Driest in 115 Years Field Notes at Hermes Gallery. See more on her Instagram account.

CSB Solo

Finally I've made a couple of the Crossed Structure Binding Solo books. I couldn't use leather for these since the covers need to be folded double - and the kind of leather I use won't work well like that. So these books have handmade paper for the covers.

I first did the CSB Solo in 2004 in a class with Susan Mills at the Dawson Print Shop. These two books are made using my notes from that class. I compared this to Arregui's CSB Solo instructions and there are some differences so I will have to do another session on the CSB Solo and actually follow her instructions next time.

The main difference between the CSB Solo and all the other CSBs is that the cover is made with one long piece of paper (or vellum or whatever you're using) and the front and back covers are never cut apart. The sewing strips are cut from one end and stuck though where the spine will be - then the text block is sewn onto the strips.


Then the other cover is folded into place and all the strips are waving around at the back.


At that point, the strips are crossed over the spine then stuck through little slits in the front and back covers. I like these little books with the handmade paper covers. I spend so much time working with leather that it is fun to get away from it occassionally. And now that I've looked back at Arregui's instructions I do want to try this again to see how it differs.

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.

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.