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Set of books finished

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Rosemarie

: The books arrived in a poor state but also text was completely muddled up

: Set of 6 with text sorted and rebound securely

: Old cover reattached

: Finely engraved illustrations now in their correct places

: Illustrations and a poem accompany the stories

At last these books have been sorted through thoroughly so that the text pages were in their correct order. Then the books were prepared for rebinding so that the owner could at last read them.

What remained of the old spines were reattached and the decorative front work was carefully removed from the old covers and attached to the new bindings.

What a difficult task – unbelievable how muddled up the text was. Plus the beautiful engravings were all in one of the volumes so careful sorting through was necessary to find their correct places throughout the 6 volumes.

As it was a Londoner helping me with these books, plus the owner had spent most of his life in London – and the books were about London we decided to have an English Food dinner party to present the books to the owner. What fun we had.

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Lamella binding and craquele decoration

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Rosemarie

: Hand painted board papers completes the book

: Spine creates a curve and each page is shown fully

: Bird images in resist and craquele texture for hills

I purchased this unbound text some time ago. It is a book of poetry by Nan McDonald, illustrated by Jan Brown (both “Canberra artists) and printed by Ampersand Duck. Poems about birds and sensitive drawings beautifully letterpress printed on grey paper.

After wondering how to bind it I decided to try a technique I saw demonstrated at the Society of Bookbinders conference last year called by the delightful presenter Christina ‘Lamella binding’.

Muted colours and references to bird forms seemed to be called for,

I liked the way this form of concertina, or stub binding, throws the pages up and open plus creates a curve at the spine. The ‘Lamellas’ are the rigid supports attached to the spine, I have extended them to show a dominant bird form.

Hope you like it.

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An Islamic style of book

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Rosemarie

: The envelope style of front flap closed over very easily

: Endpapers add a decorative elememt to a plain chocolate brown covering

: The book opens well and is ready for reading and writing

: An undecorated covering but the book funcitions well

I have had the pleasure and challenge of a private student who had a specific project in mind – to be able to bind a run of books, in a secure manner, in a style that we recognise as Islamic. This is the first book Joseph has made and we were both very pleased with the result.

The pages were single leaves so no sewing of sections were possible. We did a secure form of adhesive binding with additional stitching along the spine. The grain of the paper was parallel to the spine so the pages opened comfortably. All went together well and we enjoyed how well the book open

Joseph has bound a small book – about A6 in size plus one that was A4 in size. All books were well made and funtioned very well.

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Knight’s London books

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Rosemarie

: Books is a poor state on arrival to my bindery

: Cloth at turn-in very damaged and board edges also damaged

: Pages and sections all muddled up throughout the volumes

: Original cloth front cover carefully removed to reuse on new covers

: At last mending done and all volumes corrected collated

: Endpapers added, books rounded and backed

A gentleman came to my studio with a rather tatty set of books. He wanted them restored.

It was soon discovered that these volumes were not only broken but unreadable as parts of one volume were in other volumes, sections and pages were even muddled up – printers and collators mistakes.

Collating the books was a major task as there was not logic to their order – or rather disorder. After getting the covers off, the spines cleaned and mended we set about collating them into the correct order – a huge task.

I am very interested in how the books got to Australia, why they are in such a mess and any other details about the publication. The Knight’s London are in 6 volumes, no priting date but the last reference to a date is in the chapter about Tattersalls moving to new premises in 1865. The volumes are standard trade binding in style with attractive front covers.

These volumes were followed by 2 volumes under the title of Curiosities written by John Timbes, FSA. These were originally printed in 1855 by the same company in the same binding style and covers as the Knight’s London. They were revised and reprinted in 1867. I am assuming the Knight’s were also reprinted then.

After pulling these two volumes it was discovered they were really only 1\one large book, there was no logical division that allowed them to be separated into 2 books (this made them the same size as the Knight’s volumes).

If anyone can shed some light on these books, why they were in the confused state and where I can source more information about them. We all are intrigued over here about their story and history. I can give more information about them if required.

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Asian Cookbook

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Rosemarie

I have neglected to keep this blog going with new images of my, and my student’s works. I begin to correct this with images of my latest book.

This book took months to complete in between working on commercial jobs. I was inspired by Jen Lindsay’s wonderful book explaining the steps to take to make a fine leather covered binding with a leather joint etc. Of course I see quite a few areas that are not as good as I had hoped but I enjoyed the journey. So a huge thanks to Jen. Just loved reading and working through her book. Now need to work on another one.

The book is bound in Oasis goat skin, scalf joined with gold tooling to complete the design. On the covers and spine are large relief letters spelling out the word ASIAN. Inside covers show gold tooling, suede and coloured paper with cut-outs. Is quite a large, heavy book.

One of the biggest challenges was doing the edge decoration. Flat colour with gold tooling. Had to do this twice and still feel a bit insecure about the results.

I was very pleased with the headbands.