I know, I'm a million years behind my promised travel posts, but I'd rather tell those stories with pictures, which I haven't finished sorting yet.... So we'll take a detour down the book binding lane because it was AWESOME (and I have crappy phone pictures).
My professor has a studio we were required to visit this Saturday. There she had a guest show us the awesome art of hand-binding books in a workshop so that we may do so for a project we will have at the end of the semester. She had done the hard part and cut out all the papers and covers we would need to the right size. We just had to start by folding sets of three papers in half. Each set of three pages folded is called a signature, and we ended up with eight signatures.
We then took a sewing pattern and poked holes through the paper, one signature at time. Next, we took book-binding thread and sewed each signature one at a time (after getting a little wax in the picture on it), following the pattern, and tying special knots (paller and keller) at the end of each signature. Down the middle, we cut three 3 inch stripes of book tape (or ribbon with iron-on glue on the back) that we sewed around to attach them.
Another type of paper was used for the end pages that are glued on once the signatures are sewn. One end page is glued to the first page, and the other is glued to the last. If the end pages have a texture or patter, it
should be folded to the inside.
Pressure should be applied at this point while the glue dries. It also is important because the PVC glue should be brushed onto the spine and needs to dry under pressure.
Cover paper was also provided, and it was coated with PVC and glued to the cardboard for the front and back covers. A jig (double the width of the cover) was used to trim the corners in order to fold the edges of the cover paper over onto the inside of the cover. The other side of the end paper was coated with PVC and attached to the covers.
After that, all that was left was ironing on the book tapes and putting the book in a book clamp for about a day.
The result:
an awesome, tiny, one-of-a-kind, hand-made book full of empty pages. Now what to fill it with? And can I possibly repeat this process on my own without disaster striking?
