Category:

Bookbinding

Art of The Fold by Hedi Kyle & Ulla Warchol

by Angela C 30th September 20181st October 2018

The Book Art Object Group were contacted by Laurence King Publishing about receiving an advance copy of the book the – The Art of the Fold: How to Make Innovative Books and Paper Structures by Hedi Kyle & Ulla Warchol – which will be available on 1st October 2018. I was looking forward to receiving the book, but when it arrived it was much more than I expected.

The content is obviously more important than the appearance of a book, but when a book manual (about making beautiful books) is itself visually pleasing it makes the whole experience of reading it and handling it feel so right. As well as being inspirational it is a beautiful object in itself.

Going from the title I thought it would be useful for my next project – I intend to make a folding book. If I’m totally honest I don’t do much paper folding in my work – it has never really appealed to me – Concertina was about as complicated as I would get. My preconceived notion of this book was that it would hopefully have a few techniques that would help me in the making of basic folding books and that rest would probably be way above my head and only for serious paper wranglers.

I was wrong – this is more than a book about folding books. My first delight was to see at least 2 structures that would help me with unresolved ideas that I could bring to fruition in my own practice. Then I realised there were a lot of other structures that would inspire me to make new books, and also various ideas that had been rattling round my head I could now see taking form in some of the other books shown. Also if you are a total beginner there is a comprehensive and excellent overview of materials, tools (always one of my favourite bits), and techniques at the beginning.

The book is beautifully laid out – the instructions and diagrams are clear and concise. Despite my talent for being able to put Ikea furniture together quite easily, I sometimes get confused by instructions in book making manuals. There was no such confusion here, I could easily visualise how I would go about making most of the structures shown.

I then found myself getting excited and I just wanted to get stuck in. When I saw the Star Box structure with the Feathers in it that was it – sold! I’ve been collecting found feathers for years and storage has always been a conundrum. This will be one of the first I will attempt (in fact I’ve already made a start – I couldn’t wait).

I have numerous books about book making going all the way back to the Craft of Bookbinding: A Practical Handbook by Eric Burdett – I have a feeling this will be one of my favourites. This is definitely more than a one off read – it is an extremely valuable reference and definitely a book I could turn to if I was ever stuck for inspiration. Finally, thanks to Laurence King Publishing for sending me this lovely book.

30th September 20181st October 2018 4 comments

Artists Books Book Arts Bookbinding Gulls Work In Progress

There’s No Such Thing As Seagulls, Work In Progress & Finished Book – Personal Histories Exhibition

by Angela 23rd February 201523rd May 2018

There’s No Such Thing As Seagulls

This book was made for the Personal Histories Exhibition. It was not the book I first intended to make – I was going to use the Twinkle Story – however, I just could not make this book work. I wanted it to have a glossy cover but could not get any paper that satisfied all my requirements i.e. the look and the feel, printed well, and could withstand a bit of man handling (!) when gluing and using the bone folder. I was disappointed, I thought I wouldn’t be able to take part, but one morning (lying in bed!) the idea for a new book came to me – it came from this blog post about one of my typewriter ramblings.

Initially I didn’t think the book would be suitable for the Personal Histories project, but then when I started to think about (really hard ’til it hurt!) I realised it was actually perfect. As I made the book and started to type up the Read Me that goes into the back pocket I realised how much it was a part of my personal history, much more than I had ever realised before.

Another thing that happened, was that everything seemed to come together really quickly. I already had all the paper and card (for the cover) – left overs from other projects. The 2 stamps for the images I used were from 2 other books I had made. That is not to say it was a really easy to make – there were the usual hiccups along the way, failed experiments and my printer breaking down.

All Covers and Signatures Cut

This is probably the simplest book I have ever made in terms of construction – not a hardcover, no gluing or cutting book board. The most difficult thing was all the typing. The typed text in the book pages was easy. I’ve come up with my own technique for alignment and measurement on the typewriter and there wasn’t a lot of text. However! I decided to be put a short ‘Read Me’ at the back in pocket – it was half an A4’s worth of typing. My original intention was to type it once get a good copy – scan this in and then print 10 copies (the book is an edition of 10). My printer had other ideas….so I ended up typing all 10.

When I started I thought there is no way I can type this 10 times – I’d done a few practice runs – but in the end I managed it. I made mistakes but I learned ways to amend them. My RSA I typing training started to come back to me. I learned to touch type in South Bristol College in the early 90’s on an electronic IBM and got a distinction in my exam! I remember buying my little typing kit from WH Smith with the special pencil eraser and brush etc. Its weird to think now that stationery shops sold stuff like that. I remember part of the training was correcting your mistakes and the tricks and techniques came back to me, I had totally forgotten about this even though I still have my certificate! Unfortunately the only photo I have of all 10 copies typed up is this awful one below. My hands were probably trembling after all the typing!

Silver-Reed Silverette – Read Me Typed Up

So not only did the book tell the story of part of my personal history – the making of it resurrected another part that I had forgotten about. I began to think about my long relationship with typewriters. The first typewriter I used was a very old Underwood (looking at photos it was probably a 1930s one). My mother found some of my old typewriter ramblings when she was doing a clear-out at home and posted them to me. Looking back on it I was about 12 when I started playing with the typewriter. I also forgot how much concentration it takes when you are using a manual typewriter – it was quite exhausting! You may also notice my lovely grey felt typewriter pad in the photo above. Very good for muffling the sound – especially since my Silver-Reed Silverette is the noisiest of all my typewriters. I got it from My Typewriter It was expensive but I looked all over and this seemed the thickest and best quality. It fits all my manual typewriters (5 in total now!).

It wasn’t until I got right to the end of the book and had nearly finished that I realised that if it was not for the events described in the story I might not even be making books today. Then I felt a bit stupid in totally overlooking this and not realising it was such a big part of my personal history. The ‘Read Me’ explanation is similar to the blog post but slightly amended, with some other thoughts. If you’ve got good eyesight you may be able to read it from the photo below.

There’s No Such Thing As Seagulls- Artists Book

There’s No Such Thing As Seagulls- Read Me

I can’t fully remember how I first started to use typewriter text for my rubber stamps but I seem to remember it has a lot to with font snobbery! Why else would I torture myself with choosing a really difficult serif font to carve instead of nice plain Verdana or Tahoma. I carved the text for the cover using the same method I had used for Nest Building Perils & Pleasures – all the text in that book was carved by hand (I must have been mad).

Text Transferred to Rubber Stamp

Carving Text on Rubber Stamp

All Text Carved on Rubber Stamp – Test Print

I am really happy with the way the cover text looks and it printed beautifully with a Memento Grey Flannel ink pad.

There's No Such Thing As Seagulls - Artists Book

There's No Such Thing As Seagulls - Artists Books

I used a 5-hole pamphlet stitch to sew it and decided to round the corners. I used an X-Cut 5mm corner punch for this. It did a good job on the thick 250gsm Somerset paper for the signatures and the Daler Rowney Canford Card (Dreadnought Grey) for the cover.

Sewing 5-Hole Pamphlet Stitch

I am quite happy with the end result and it has been posted to the lovely Robyn Foster who is coordinating this exhibition. I would like to take this opportunity to also say thanks to Robyn for all her hard work and patience organising this. Sounds like a nightmare of a task!

You can see all the Work In Progress and Completed Book here.

23rd February 201523rd May 2018 0 comment

Book Arts Bookbinding Stuff I Love

Advanced Book Binding, UWE, Bristol

by Angela 19th July 20124th October 2018

Rope Stitch with 3/4 Binding

Just spent a lovely week doing Advanced Bookbinding for Artists at UWE, Bristol. I’ve wanted to do this course for about 5 years but circumstances conspired against me.

I did my first course at UWE in 2006 – Basic Bookbinding – and intended to do the Advanced the following year. However, the course was cancelled and didn’t run for about 4 years. Then when it started up again I was torn between Bookbinding and Letterpress – Letterpress won! But I finally got to do Advanced Bookbinding this year. Here are a few pictures of what we did.

The course was led by Guy Begbie – what he doesn’t know about bookbinding isn’t worth knowing. An extremely patient man too – he rescued my terrible stitching mistakes a few times 🙂 He also has a wonderful collection of books with numerous types of bindings that you can peruse over the week – I always find this inspirational. Its also lovely to meet up with other bookbinding geeks and have conversations about nerdy book stuff which would raise eyebrows if held in any other context 🙂

Double Codex Binding

Double Codex Binding, Snow Shoes Stitch

Rope Binding in progress

Button Hole Stitch Binding

19th July 20124th October 2018 9 comments

Artists Books Book Art Object II Book Arts Bookbinding

Book Art Object – My Experience

by Angela 18th December 201116th October 2018

Book Art Object – Project I

Now that the call out for the 3rd Project of Book Art Object has gone out and we are getting started I just wanted to write a little bit about my experience.

I can’t remember how I found Sara Bowen’s post on Here. I think I got lost on the internet one day and found it 🙂 I felt cautious about committing myself. I work full-time and barely had time to do my own work let alone commit to something like this. I think I was also a little bit scared and intimidated. I had done quite a few bookbinding courses at UWE, Bristol and made a lot of books, but had never made an edition. I suppose in my mind I was ‘dabbling’ and didn’t really have the courage to call myself a Book Artist.

Well to anyone who is teetering on the brink and has similar concerns I say jump in! If you have never made a full edition of books and are scared like I was it is a great experience for many reasons. Making a one off book can be difficult enough and the thought of making 9 or 14 more of the same is very daunting, but it really improves your skills and for me this was a great way of putting into practice what I had learned. It does become less scary as you go along and by book 9 of the edition the fear is nearly gone 😉

The best part for me (apart from getting an edition of the most beautiful books through the post!) is connecting with other like minded people. I love to see the work in progress posts on the blog and hear about the processes people go through, failed experiments, rejected ideas, sometimes despair (!) and then the final elation when the book is complete. The most fascinating part is when we are all working from the same piece of text and the responses and approaches we come up with are so different. I really love this bit, I don’t know why but it still amazes me the way someone will come up with something which wouldn’t have occurred to me in a million years.

I am really glad we have chosen Sarah Bodman’s great book to work from. The possibilities are so endless, the minute Sara posted it on the blog I was excited! If you are worrying about deadlines I believe that we are aiming to submit for the Libris Awards in Australia. You would need to have at least one book of the edition completed ready to post to Sara Bowen by June 2012 so there is no big pressure to have the full edition completed by a certain date. You can double check with Sara on these timings if you are interested in joining up. Last and by no means least (its hard to say this without sounding like a creep!) its a lovely, friendly, relaxed, and talented bunch of people and I have really enjoyed getting to know everyone. So as I said if you are wavering or teetering, give it a go 🙂

Book Art Object – Project II

18th December 201116th October 2018 7 comments

Artists Books Book Art Object II Book Arts Bookbinding Rubber Stamps

Nest Building Perils & Pleasures – Making Process

by Angela 4th October 201127th March 2017

The first cut is the deepest…

This post is long overdue. Just some photos of the making of the rubber stamps for my book – Nest Building Perils & Pleasures. This book was made as part of Book Art Object and is the second project for this group. In case you don’t know Book Art Object was founded by Sara Bowen and is collaboration between 14 book artists. 9 in Australia, 1 in the US, 1 in Canada and 3 in the UK. This project was divided into 2 Groups this time – each working on a piece of text as inspiration. I chose to be part of the Art & Lies Group and we used an extract from Jeanette Winterson’s book. The paragraph below was the bit that grabbed me.

“300BC. The Ptolemies founded the great library at Alexandria. 400,000 volumes in vertiginous glory. The Alexandrians employed climbing boys much in the same way as the Victorians employed sweeps. Unnamed bipeds, light as dust, gripping with swollen fingers and toes, the nooks and juts of sheer-faced walls………Accordingly, the boys built themselves eyries in among the books, and were to be seen squatting and scowling at greater and greater heights around the library.”

Extract from – Jeanette Winterson, Art & Lies (London: Jonathon Cape, 1994), pp. 4-6.

The part of extract that inspired me was the boys building themselves nests among the books. It made me think about nest building, and making yourself safe. The first line that came into my head was – Where do you build your nest? How do you keep it safe from life’s crows and magpies? This came to me in bed one night and I scribbled it down on the little notebook I have. Sometimes when I check this in the morning what I’ve written is partially illegible because I don’t bother to switch the light on.

I think I decided to use rubber stamps straight off and got going on this. It took me a while to come up with the title which I originally planned to stamp on the cover – but I wasn’t sure how I would do this. In the end I ended up doing something totally different.

All the text was typed on a my lovely Silver-Reed Silverette – scanned and then enlarged to twice it size. Which made the text about 5mm high. This text was then drawn over with a pencil and transferred to the rubber by just going over the back of the paper with a pencil [top picture and picture below]. Apart from the fact that I love typewriters I think one of the reasons that I use typewriter text so much in my artwork is that I have gradually become a bit of a font snob! When I use text in my work I just hated so many fonts that I ended up using typewriter text by default.

I don’t what it is about this book but I am really emotionally attached to it. Maybe it’s because I spent so much time hand cutting all the stamps and printing it all by hand…the fact that I absolutely love all the bird stamps and that I really love birds because they make me happy every day. They sing lovely songs when I walk through the park, magpies and naughty gulls amuse me with their antics, crows look so beautiful with their blue black feathers – and they all fly! Something I only do in my dreams.

More photos here

4th October 201127th March 2017 15 comments

Bookbinding Stuff I Love

Incunabula, Cardiff University Library – Special Collections

by Angela 24th January 201119th February 2017

Through my job I was lucky enough to visit the Cardiff University Library, Special Collections this week. The Library acquired a collection of 14,000 rare and antiquarian books (including incunabula) in May of last year. I first heard of incunabula when I started studying bookbinding. I was doing a search for ways to do a coptic binding when I found a link to on the website of the National Diet Library of Japan there are some beautiful pictures on there. I have been fascinated by them every since, but never dreamed I would actually see one in ‘real life’. It is very hard to describe what it meant to me to see these books without sounding totally over the top or a complete geek (!) so I won’t even try. The tour was given by Peter Keelan, Head of Special Collections and Archives at Cardiff University. I get the impression what he doesn’t know about the subject is not worth knowing. Suffice it to say that those 2 hours were among the most enjoyable and fascinating of my life, and I still can’t believe I have seen a book from 1478!

The top book in the above photo is from 1478,
below is a picture of the book open.

The book above and below is from 1606 and is Abraham Ortelius’ World Atlas. It was absolutely stunning and the pictures here do not do it any justice.

Above – Map of Wales

Map of England

This beautiful book was of special interest to me and is John Gould’s – The Birds of Great Britain circa 1870. This is stunning picture of a sea eagle.

The above needs no explanation and was beautifully hand embroidered.

These pictures obviously only represent a very small part of the collection. There are also archives of letters, maps, diaries etc. There is also one of the most comprehensive collections of Restoration Dramas and it is a small mystery why such a collection would be in Wales.

24th January 201119th February 2017 4 comments

Artists Books Book Arts Bookbinding

Paper Clay Book

by Angela 19th December 201018th January 2018

Paper Clay Book – Coptic Stitch

Paper Clay Book Pages

This book was about 4 years in the making, not because it was hard work but because I made the pages in paper clay first and had no idea how to bind them. The pages were made on a paper clay workshop during my MA at UWE, Bristol in 2002. I wasn’t what sure to do on the workshop so I decided to make pages for a book. There was a punch there so I made the holes ready for binding. I added the text using some lettering that was there. The text takes words from a line from a Chinese film – In The Mood For Love – “you can see the past but you can’t touch it”.

I have no idea why I chose the book format for paper clay and initially thought this is going to be one of those things that never gets finished. The pages lay tucked away in bubble wrap for about 4 years. I did my first Bookbinding workshop in 2006 and some time after this I got the brainwave to try a coptic binding for my paper clay pages. It wasn’t easy to do but it worked. I used a strong linen thread which went really nicely with the paper clay (top picture).

All the discussions on Book Art Object and especially this one by Abigail Thomas reminded me of the book again and also Gortys in Crete where I saw the Law Code inscribed on the wall. Which is a coincidence because Anna Mavromatis‘ work for the Book Art Object Project II is influenced by the Gortyn Code.

Section of Wall Gortys, Crete

Complete Wall, Gortys Crete

19th December 201018th January 2018 5 comments

Book Arts Bookbinding Work In Progress

HP B9180 – Printer Fun & Games

by Angela 21st March 2010

This is just an update on the progress (or not) of the book I am making for Book Art Object. I’ve finished all the content and its already for printing. I’ve managed to print it off (below) on Somerset Book paper which is really gorgeous. However, I am printing double sided and have had a few problems with alignment. It was while I was carrying out some experiments on cheaper paper to get the alignment right, that I had the result above. I can’t totally blame the printer for this, it was pretty rubbish paper and I was printing through the speciality media tray so it didn’t like it too much.

I’ve also recently upgraded to Mac OS 10.6 and no longer have the full features in my print drivers (and every time it prints it tells me all the print heads are missing!). I’ve posted on the HP forums about this, but although they are really trying to help none of the suggested fixes are working. I am still getting great prints and wonderful colours but I just don’t have all the bells & whistles I had in 10.5.

21st March 2010 0 comment

Book Arts Bookbinding Work In Progress

Work In Progress

by Angela 5th March 2010

I have already posted this on Book Art Object which is the Book Arts Blog I have joined, but thought I’d like it on my own blog as well, so people know what I’ve been up too! We have been set a project by Sara to make an edition of books based on this poem:

Learning Absences (1986)

Being alone is also to be learnt
Long time or short time.

Walking the length of the house, shutting
The doors and the windows

No longer calling casually over one’s shoulder.
Returning to find no trace

Of the other, companionable living –
Bread smell, the stove still warm,

Clothes on the line like messages,
Or messages written and left on the kitchen table:

“We need to keep watering the cumquat.”
Or, “I have paid the milkman.”

At night, at this season, lingering at the window
Not being certain where to find Halley’s Comet,

And looking a long time at the darkening sky.

The first thing that inspired me from the poem was the subtle traces left behind by the person who had left. Then I started to think about the body as an abandoned building and what would happen to it if it was left untouched. Mould, rust, dust, cobwebs etc. If your body was like an abandoned building and you were left alone, would you rust up, become covered in cobwebs and go mouldy?

The book which I think I will call – 7 Signs of Absence – (I think the Olay advert – the 7 signs of ageing – somehow got stuck in my head!) also connects up with other work I have been doing about ‘Traces Left Behind’ which explores ideas about emotional/mental wounds being shown as physical manifestations.

When I first signed up for the book club I was thinking do I really have time for this? I have so much stuff I need to do and I work full-time, but it has worked out that ideas that have been rattling round my head have now become consolidated into this book and become a cohesive piece of work rather than random thoughts. Its given me a much needed kick up the ass to do stuff.

I am currently working on Rust and hope it progresses quicker than the mould did! I also want to do blind embossed text on the cover, so far my experiments aren’t looking half as good as Sara’s boxes.

I am also trying a new binding that I haven’t done before which is Pamphlet stitch with a hardcover. I’ve made a practice one using notes from 2 books [Creative Bookbinding by Pauline Johnson and Hand Bookbinding: A Manual of Instruction by Aldren A. Watson]. I was pretty happy with the result, but I tipped in the endpaper and it didn’t work out to well. I think I will sew in the endpaper and it will be neater.

However! Lying in bed last night I started to think about a concertina binding. How sad am I? My boyfriend said “what are you thinking about?” and I sheepishly replied – bookbinding…..

5th March 2010 1 comment

Book Arts Bookbinding

Homemade Book Press

by Angela 15th October 200919th February 2017

In an ideal world I would have on of these beauties. Unfortunately they are frequently over priced because they are antiques/collector’s items. If their only use or value was use as a nipping press, you’d probably pick them up for £50. So in keeping with my motto “stop whining and just get on with it” – I have a homemade book press of sorts.

After I did my first bookbinding course 3 years ago I knew I needed some form of book press. Our tutor suggested 2 sheets of thick MDF and some heavy weights to start with. I was idly talking to a work colleague about this one day because I was having great difficulty finding anywhere that would cut MDF to size. He said he had some left over bits from his Ikea work top which he could cut to size for me. I had also seen some home made ones which had bolts and wing-nuts on them, he said he could drill holes for this if I wanted.

You would have thought it would be easy to find the bolts I wanted, but after several visits to places like B&Q, Homebase, Travis Perkins etc. I eventually found exactly the ones I wanted on screwfix.com They still send me a catalogue every know then, the Screwfix catalogue is one of my guilty pleasures (do I sound a bit sad?)

I then had to decide on a size. I wanted it to go up to A3 if possible, but including an allowance for the bolts this would have been huge. I compromised, it will do A3 but I have to remove the bolts.

So with my all my measurements and instructions my work colleague duly made the press for me. I was delighted. The other people in work were very bemused by our conversations and when he eventually brought it in to work even more baffled, but not as baffled as the people who saw me lugging it home on the Train from Bristol to Cardiff! So big up to Kristian Benning for making the press for me, I am eternally grateful. The Blueberry Patch is the shop he runs with his wife.

French stitch ready for gluing

I also use it when marking and gluing the spine, its not perfect but its perfect for me at the moment. One day I will have an amazing studio with at least 3 cast iron nipping presses in all different sizes, and while I’m at it a lovely wooden plan chest for all my paper.

“Dreams are essential to life”
Anais Nin

15th October 200919th February 2017 2 comments

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