Limp bindings from Tallinn

I recently received Limp bindings from Tallinn by Monica Langwe Berg. Oh my goodness, what a wonderful book. She has examined a set of limp leather bindings at the Tallinn City Archives in Estonia and in this book she reveals them to us with photos, diagrams, and terrific descriptions. In addition, she juxtaposes a series of contemporary interpretive bindings by professional bookbinders from Sweden and Estonia. The book itself is lovely too, with medieval style illustrations, offset print, gorgeous paper... and I just found out that there was a limited edition of 100 bound using a limp leather structure - how perfect!

Check out the last issue of The Bonefolder to read her teaser article about this book.

Monica Langwe's website: www.langwe.se

More headbands

After I saw PiedCrow's tutorial for sewing headbands, I decided I could not delay any longer. I learned to sew headbands way back, like 5 years ago. At that time I did a few, but stopped and eventually decided I would never remember how to make them. Iris's instructions were great - it all came back to me. Just like riding a bike. So thanks for doing that Iris! These are all full leather bindings. With two of them I decided to make the covers a bit more three dimensional by adding raised letters and a crane.

Virtual Trunk Show - Trans Canada Etsy Team

Everyone is invited to the TCET first Virtual Trunk Show! This is part of the "Around the World" Trunk Show that is being hosted by Etsy. Teams from different regions around the globe will be participating. Thursday, Nov 13th, at 10:00pm Eastern in the Etsy Virtual Lab. These team members will be presenting their work:

• MyHandboundBooks
• Enthral
• RikRak
• DesignbyRJ
• PaisleyBaby
• PinkfireDesigns
• iHeartThatDance
• StringmeAlong
• Intuibead
• TanisAlexis

Blog A Day Giveaway

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am participating in the Blog A Day Giveway extravaganza over at the Sweet Figments blog. There are 30 prizes to be won from 30 different Etsy sellers. All you have to do, is pick one of the Etsy sellers represented and post about them on your own blog, or your MySpace page, or anywhere else that you can link to. Then go back to the Sweet Figments blog and put your link in the comments there. Easy! And it is called "Blog a Day" because you can write up a new blog post every day and enter your name every day for multiple chances to win!! Definitely check out all the cool stuff and get your name in, you might even get a leather journal from MyHandboundBooks!

MuseACDonline

I'd like to feature one of the other Etsy sellers right now! If you like unique and beautiful jewelry, check out MuseACDonline on Etsy, a design house with a mission. Their shop profile states that "we create fabulous ornaments and clothing that make a person feel good to wear them. We want our piece to be your favorite piece. There are many other clothiers out there. There are also a lot of jewelers, but we want to be your MUSE... we want you to wear one of our accessories, or items of clothing and feel inspired." Shown here are a pair of earrings by MuseACD.

Newest issue of The Bonefolder

The Fall issue of The Bonefolder was published last week. I was looking forward to this particular issue because of the Bind-O-Rama component. The past four years, they have hosted this online exhibit, with a different theme each time:

2004 Springback
2005 Millimeter binding
2006 Flag book
2007 GBW Anniversary Catalog

For the 2008 Bind-O-Rama, submissions were accepted for books made using any of the binding styles previously featured in The Bonefolder. So quite a mixture, including: the springback binding, drum leaf binding, the tunnel book, the millimeter binding, the flag book, the limp vellum binding, a twined binding, and some others. You can download the PDF to see all the books, including a springback binding that I made.

Giving, in different ways

Check out the covers on these books. The pictures are from a calendar full of Japanese scenery, and so pretty! The pictures were sent to me by Jay, of Loopy4Ewe, an Etsy friend. Are those "stepping stumps" on the first one?! Jay saved the pictures for me, thinking that I could put them to good use so here they are! Two of them, anyway, I still have more to work with. Thanks Jay! Jay is participating in the Weekend to End Breast Cancer event, so I am giving this book with the red umbrella and cherry blossoms, to her fund raising efforts. I have the book for sale in my Etsy shop and will make a donation when it sells. Changing the subject a little bit, I am giving away this leather journal as part of the Sweet Figments Blog-a-Day holiday fun! There are 30 items being given away, and it is easy to get your name in the draw.

More about Coptic Sewings

I had a few people ask me about the Coptic endbands after my previous post. I answered a couple of emails, responded to an inquiry through Flickr and just now also in the comments here on my blog. So, I'm going to post about it again and maybe answer questions for a few other people too.

I have seen instructions for sewing Coptic endbands in just one book, "Making & Keeping Creative Journals" by Tourtillott. I found the instructions difficult to follow, and I'm not sure that I actually ended up doing it quite the way it was described, but I had some success with it. There may be a better resource - if anyone has a suggestion - please share. Edit: "Headbands: How to Work Them" by Jane Greenfield is apparently a better resource! thanks for sharing that, Marloes.

One of the other questions was, would these endbands help stabilize the book's spine and prevent it from skewing diagonally. The short answer is, Yes. And if this kind of skewing is a problem for you, keep in mind that this kind of chain stitch binding is not well suited to big or thick books. So if you are making a really big and thick book with many signatures, an unsupported and exposed chain stitch is not a good choice. On the other hand, when used on a smaller slim book, the unsupported, exposed, chain stitch could be perfect!

This question also led me to my bookshelf, to refer to Szirmai's descriptions of the early and late Coptic bindings because I seemed to recall that these bindings were not really meant to have exposed spines. In his description of the early multi-quire Coptic bindings (pre 7th Century), Szirmai describes one example which had leather strips pasted across the spine, then a larger piece of leather pasted over the whole spine surface, obviously completely covering the chain stitching. And in the later Coptic bindings, Szirmai writes that the chain stitch bindings of that period had cloth pasted to the spine for stability. Usually a coarse blue cloth, pasted directly onto the spine and extended on both sides and pasted to the outside of the cover boards.

Here is a beautiful example of a leather-covered spine, from Kaija, Paperiaarre. Thanks for finding that perfect example for me, Astrid!

To some, it may seem crazy to cover up the beauty of a well-formed chain stitch, but if a book is meant to be durable and reliable, then having a binding that is functional and effective should be more important than having an exposed spine. As always, I keep ranting about structures. So now I'm wondering, what's my point? We just need to keep this stuff in mind when designing books. All the different elements have to work together. And if a binding needs support, then support it.

More Halloween Book Stuff

Happy Halloween everyone! Firstly, congratulations to Re:Paper, and the Sugar Skull book who won the BEST Zombie Award! The voting was a real nail biter. The Sugar Skull and my coffin book were neck in neck, always at each others heels, breathing down each others necks! Phew! During the last few days, I've come upon some other books and book-related items that seem appropriate for Halloween. One of my favorite books, read and re-read, love it completely is Shelley's Frankenstein. Etsy seller, Lightreading, made this Mary Shelley art paper doll. Stained and shredded pages from Frankenstein are used to make the skirt, and lots of other materials and textures and images are used to complete her. Also by Lightreading, this is a Halloween room decoration. Described in her Flickr photostream as "paper shreds strung with wire & black feathers and charms." The text is from three books, all in my list of favorites: Dracula, Sleepy Hollow and again Frankenstein. This one seems to be the opposite of my own halloween book, which was the coffin with a book inside. This is a book with a skeleton inside. By Etsy seller,SauvageRavenCreation. This is "Tina, the twisted" - a small wooden book box transformed into Tina's final resting place. I thought this was a terrific Halloween image, very goulish and spooky and such. And also great that it has a spooky book in it. I found this photo on Flickr - the description made me laugh, as it says the old book was "borrowed" (with the quotation marks) from a rare book library for the photo shoot. Hmmm...! This photographer also has a nice photo of Bram Stoker's gravestone and the absolute best Alien costume ever. More room decorations for Halloween - book pumpkins! Looks like the books have been trimmed and opened 360 degrees, then little jack-o-lantern faces attached. I found this image on Flickr and also in context on the same person's blog, RoseyLittleThings, who has done a lot of Halloween decorating if you're looking for ideas.

Halloween Books

The Bookbinding Etsy Street Team issued a Halloween Challenge to its members. The plan was to make themed books to capture the spirit of any of the upcoming holidays: Halloween, Bonfire Night, Thanksgiving, etc, whatever inspired us. Now we want everyone to vote for their favorite. I made a little coffin book, and it has its own coffin!

Using Antique Photographs

I recently fell into a selection of antique photographs. Well, not literally. They were carefully handed to me by my mother, and I did not fall. My mother is involved in a local historical society and they were given these photographs - but the subjects are unknown and probably not local, therefore not of much interest to their group. So, the photos were passed on to me. The pictures are in excellent condition, especially since they are probably 100 years old (give or take a decade). Nearly all the photographs are mounted on sturdy board and show very little wear or fading. Here is my first project with them, simply using the photos unaltered, as covers for a few journals.

Prop Books

Library scene from The Name of the Rose

I've been having fun going through the links being posted over at the Book Arts Forum. The entire thread can be seen here: Books from Movies

Some of the highlights -
Jase's Books - replica of the Monster Book from the Harry Potter movie

Jase's Books - replica of spell book from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Ross MacDonald - National Treasure, Book of Secrets

Ross MacDonald - The Ledged of Zorro

Ross MacDonald - Dr Frankenstein's diaries

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada

Happy Thanksgiving to Canadians having turkey or tofurkey from coast to coast. The leaves are turning red and orange and falling all over the ground now. I must have been inspired by the season when I was making this book today, a chain stich binding with autumn flavoured Chyiogami covers: And, on an almost entirely unrelated note, check out the article about the Saint John's Bible project on the B.E.S.T blog. Imagine writing the entire bible by hand, in perfect calligraphic form, illuminated beautifully, using ink you made by grinding pigments, etc etc. Quite a tremendous undertaking. The project has its own website too, at www.saintjohnsbible.org.

Yotsume Toji

"Japanese Bookbinding" by Ikegami was the first bookbinding book that I ever bought and I've always loved its focus on technique and process. I got it the day after my first bookbinding class and I read it cover to cover and gradually made everything in it including all the books, boxes, and scrolls. Just recently I did a few simple stab bindings, shown here, and I still think these bindings are the epitome of style and structure.

Shown right to left: basic four-hole binding yotsume toji; then the embellished corner variation called the Kangxi binding; the third is the tortoise-shell variation called kikkō toji; and then the hemp leaf pattern called asa-no-ha toji (which usually includes the Kangxi corners, I think).

More itty bitty books

I liked those little pink books so much, that I decided to make more...

Practicing Coptic Endbands

I've only tried this a few times so recently I decided to practice. I didn't photograph the first practice attempts! But I got a few books done with decent results. Although I'm not sure that I do it correctly, this is how it looks: And since I was in chain stitch mode, I made some itty bitty books too, but without the endbands: