"Book Club" group show at Hermes Gallery

Hermes Gallery in Halifax is currently exhibiting a collection of book and text-themed works in a group show called "Book Club." Works on show are by several members of the gallery as well as a couple of special guests, including the Nova Scotia Book Arts Group. The Book Arts Group has contributed a wide range of handbound books including blank journals, a sculpural artist's book, and even a medieval wooden board binding. There are photos of all the books posted on the NSBAG website.

There are two books in this exhibit that I bound. One is my copy of Lock's Bookbinding Materials and Techniques 1700-1920 which is bound using a split board library binding in quarter leather. It also features my original marbling on the covers, as well as matching marbling on the edges of the textblock.


The second book bound by me is the NSBAG community art journal that was created in October 2023 during Halifax's annual Nocturne art-at-night festival. The public was invited to create the pages for this book following the prompt, "What is your favorite thing?" As the pages were finished, they were bound together into this book so the content and structure of the book were created concurrently. This is a photo of the book as it was being sewn during the event and then the finished book.


The finished book is currently on display at Hermes Gallery and members of the public are free to flip through the pages and see the artwork that was created by members of the community or find the work that they contributed at the event! There is more info about this project on the NSBAG website.

In conjunction with this show and on behalf of NSBAG, I conducted a little bookbinding workshop at the gallery last weekend. In this workshop, everyone bound their own miniature copy of The Raven. I created the textblock specifically for this workshop, formatting the text and preparing the colophon beforehand, so everyone had a tiny textblock ready to go at the beginning of the session. At the end of the workshop, we had produced this little edition of tiny books!



There are a few more photos of these miniature books on the NSBAG website.

The "Book Club" show also features a fabulous collection of letterpress posters made by Amos Paul Kennedy. They look amazing all displayed together like this.



There are also many other items to see at this show including art books, sculptural works, text-themed photography, prints, tiny text, a tunnel book, and a variety of printed matter. Well worth a visit! The exhibit continues until April 21, 2023. More info available on the Hermes Gallery website.

Workshop Roundup

In between the ordinary day-to-day bookbinding projects, I have also been teaching workshops quite regularly although I haven't shared the results here for a long time!

New spring and summer workshops are happening soon. Registration is underway at the Centre for Craft in Halifax NS as well as Honeybee Folk School in Fredericton NB and Atelier d'estampe Imago in Moncton NB and the Chester Art Centre in Chester NS.

In the meantime, here's a recap of that last few workshops taught at the NS Centre for Craft.

Dec 2023 - Students made these personalized monthly agendas using a hardcover pamphlet binding technique.

Jan 2024 - My students made these wonderful case bound journals.

Feb 2024 - We had a workshop to make these amazing clamshell boxes.

Mar 2024 - The box making class concluded with everyone making a round box with a lid and a small trinket box.

Sewn Board Binding Workshop

I don't have many opportunities to use the sewn board binding structure, so it was a lot of fun to teach this in a workshop recently. It allowed me to make a few examples, which was fun, and then introduce it to a very eager group of students. And as expected, everyone loves this book structure.

Look at all the beautiful books they made!

Bookbinding around the world

I really enjoyed teaching the most recent version of my "Bookbinding Around the World" course. I have taught a few variations of this course, including some different book structures each time. The course is typically just four sessions so there are obvious limitations to what can be done in that time. In past versions of this course I have included projects such as the Nag Hammadi structure, the Secret Belgian Binding aka Criss Cross Binding, also the Ethiopian chain stitch, as well as various Japanese styles.

This time around we started in China, of course, since books and paper were invented in China. In the second class, we made palm leaf books, a structure that probably originated in India. Next we did one of the many Italian longstitch techniques, and then we jumped to USA and made some books in the style of the Roycrofters.

Sunday Workshop Series

Anouncing a new Sunday Workshop Series starting this autumn! These are in-person workshops in Halifax, Nova Scotia. If you're looking for a quick fix of book and paper arts, then you might be interested in these upcoming workshops. Each is just two hours on a Sunday afternoon.


Box Accordion: This is a fun structure that can easily be expanded in length, incorporating more and more boxes. This type of accordion book can be used as an artist's book structure, as a display feature, etc.
Sold out.
Star Book: This structure is versatile and can be modified as a tunnel book or carousel book, which are both useful options for artist's books. This structure also works well as a unique photo album that can do double duty as an attractive photo display.
Sold out.
Christmas Book: Miniature book ornaments, incorporating beautiful Japanese papers and pages of Christmas music, bound using a modified drum leaf technique.
Sold out.



There will also be some more in-depth bookbinding workshops at the Centre for Craft this fall. Schedule to be announced soon.

Winter workshop results

Just a quick update with some photos taken during recent workshops. These classes were all in-person sessions at the Nova Scotia Centre for Craft.

Most recently I taught a workshop about making albums, for photos or other things. The students made books that used standard post or ribbon bindings and then we added some pizzazz with windows, fore-edge ties, and even some corner embellishments here and there.
Not long ago, I also taught another workshop where the students made bookcloth and then made a blank journal using the buttonhole binding technique. Everyone did a small practice journal with a paper cover, then used one of their prepared fabrics to make a hardcover journal. There was also a chain stitch workshop where everyone learned to make books with exposed chain stitch binding techniques. Different types of covers and cover attachments were explored.

Impressive work by everyone. I always seem to have the best students!
The spring session is coming soon now. Workshop links are in the right sidebar.

Recent Workshops

Seems like I should start every blog post apologizing for such long delays between posts! At the moment, I've just come to post a bit about some of the workshops I've been conducting recently. Last week, I taught a workshop called "Tricky Books and Boxes." We made a little video to demonstrate the tricky boxes.


For the tricky books, we started with a few little structures that involve mostly folding and a little bit of cutting. There was a one-sheet folded book, a non-cyclic tetra-hexa-flexagon, a little woven accordion that opens two different ways, and a panel book. For the panel book, we used a template created by Cathryn Miller of Byopia Press, which she has posted to her blog and she kindly permitted me to share it with everyone in my workshop.

After all that, we also made a Jacob's Ladder book.

And the last book we made was this, which I'd seen on Alisa Golden's blog, for which she includes the name "Flat-Style Australian Reverse Piano Hinge" binding. It is also basically the same as a technique I learned from Emma Fraser, who lives in Scotland, and we named her book the "Secret Scottish Rubbish Binding" since we were using repurposed papers at the time. So this structure has some international representation.

Last Year

Every year I start by apologizing that I have not been updating my blog. There were a few things last year that I had intended to share here on my blog, though.

Hedi Kyle Workshop
I had the pleasure of attending this workshop last June. Hedi Kyle was in the neighborhood and conducted a workshop at NSCAD. She introduced several techniques and structures and folds that she has come up with over the years. Some of the things we did are included in her book, Art of the Fold, but she also had us doing some newer things too that aren't in that book. So that was a good time. Here's a sample of some of the things I made in that workshop.

Centre for Craft Nova Scotia
As usual, I taught a number of workshops at the Centre for Craft Nova Scotia over the course of the year. This included bookbinding, box making, and marbling. So, here are a few pictures taken during those workshops, showing what the students accomplished.

'Know How' Instructor Exhibit, Morgan Conservatory
Last year, the various instructors teaching at the Morgan Conservatory were invited to submit work for a small exhibit called "Know How," which was on display there last summer. I made these two books for that exhibit. They are both full leather, split-board library bindings. The larger book is a classic 1980s detective novel by Teri White, called "Bleeding Hearts." The smaller book is a blank companion journal, made to match.

Cleveland Museum of Art
When I was in Cleveland to teach at the Morgan Conservatory, I had a chance to visit a Medieval Monsters display at the Museum of Art. Much of the exhibit consisted of illuminated manuscripts like these.

Every day projects
In between the workshops and such, I spent most of my time just doing the work, day to day. This included making journals to sell in a couple of shops, hand binding lots of theses for local university students, plenty of book repair (mostly cookbooks and bibles), a few small editions, custom boxes, etc., etc.

I've probably forgotten something interesting, but that's a little taste of 2019 and a few examples of stuff that I could have posted about here on my blog, if I had been more organized. Onward into 2020!

Reinventing the Slot and Tab binding

Back in July, I went to the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio to teach a workshop. The workshop was called "Reinventing the Slot and Tab Binding." I first encountered a slot and tab binding, many years ago, when I got Alisa Golden's book, Creating Handmade Books. I really liked how it came together. The idea is simple enough and once you get the hang of it, making a book with this technique is quite easy and great for folks who don't want to do a lot of sewing. It looks like it has signatures (sort of) and it opens up nice and flat.

However, I was never quite satisfied with the cover options and I didn't like how the spine tended to 'creep' as the textblock gets thicker. And since it was a fully exposed spine, this 'creeping' was, well, fully exposed. If you've ever made one of these, you probably know what I'm talking about.

So I decided to seriously look at the binding to see if I could make it more satisfying to me. In the end, I came up with a number of variations. I was most interested in finding new cover options. And because of the spine 'creep,' I also wondered if a little spine backing might give it a more traditional shape. I don't really care for exposed spines anyway, so it didn't bother me to cover it up.

So, in July I took all this to Cleveland and taught a keen group of students how to make some of these variations. We did a simple wrapped cover version that looks like a basic pamphlet. We did a thicker one, with the exposed spine, with soft paper covers. Then we did two hardcover versions, one with a flat spine and one with a forced round. Then we made a simple slipcase for our set of books. It was a lot to do in just a 2-day workshop, but most of the students got everything done.

It was a lovely weekend. The students were really enthusiastic and my time at the Morgan Conservatory was great fun, as usual! Here are some photos taken during the workshop.

Happy New Year

To kick off the new year, I have two weekend workshops coming soon at the Nova Scotia Centre for Craft.

First is Feb 9-10, when you can learn about the Early Coptic books, also known as the Nag Hammadi books. Second, is March 9-10, where you can spend the weekend immersed in the intricacies and elegance of Japanese bookbinding.

Visit the Nova Scotia Centre for Craft website for registration and for more information about these workshops and all the other workshops they are offering this winter.

Summer School

I taught two very different workshops in August. First, I went to Cleveland, OH to teach a workshop at The Morgan Conservatory. At this workshop, I taught the students a structure called the Library Binding. We did the books in quarter leather with marbled papers on the boards. The Library Binding is a very practical structure, and often overlooked (I think) as an option for binding. It was developed as a way of reducing costs and speeding up the traditional handbinding techniques used in the 1800s, while still producing a very sound and attractive binding for heavily used books. A few of the students in this workshop had never made a book before and this was not an easy binding for their first book! The books turned out great, though. Here are a few of the books made in the class:

Later in the month, I spent a few days at Sherbrooke Village in Nova Scotia where I conducted a rather comprehensive introduction to bookbinding over three days. The Sherbrook Village Writer's Guild had asked me to do this workshop for them, so I customized the various projects with them in mind. They were really immersed in the world of bookbinding over the three days and produced so many books! These are just some of the books they made. I definitely did not get photos of all their books, there were too many; but, this should give you an idea of how much they accomplished:

Converting an adhesive bound paperback to a sewn hardcover

I taught an interesting workshop this weekend. A few of my regular students had asked me about this technique in the past, so we decided to offer a workshop on it. The goal was to convert a glued paperback to a sewn binding with a hardcover. This technique is not meant for small pocket paperbacks but more for larger, heavier books like trade paperback editions, cookbooks, dictionaries and some textbooks where the softcover, adhesive binding has a tendency to crack and break. This is a typical example of what happens to these heavy glued bindings:

We started by taking our books apart and removing as much of the old glue as possible and the pages have to be grouped into sections for sewing. We sewed our textblocks onto flat linen sewing supports as per so many other binding methods. The main difference was the extra whip-stitching used to bind each section of pages. It is not a pretty sewing.

That was the hard stuff. Then it was just a matter of rounding and backing, constructing a case and casing-in like any other case binding. Most of the students in my class had some bookbinding experience but one of the students had never bound a book before and hers turned out beautifully, as did all the others! Most were quarter cloth with marbled paper, and one was bound in full cloth. The blue book in the next photo is the one made by the first-time binder. Pretty impressive. And she marbled that paper herself too!

These ones even got the titles on the spine, which is a nice touch.

And here's the full cloth version, and another of the quarter cloth with marbled paper.

Very impressed with all their finished books!