Gauging leather thickness

When binding a book with leather, the thickness measurement of the leather is important to know. Leather thickness can impact the book aesthetics as well as the mechanical operation. Thick leather spine hinges, for instance, can cause opening and closing issues for the cover boards. Or if the turn-in’s are too thick, the corners of the book suffer from build up of leather layers.

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Making Book Jewelry

Copper wire formed on a metal jig

Bookmark Sketches

Tempering the copper metal on an anvil

Finished bookmark on a book page

 

I began experimenting with copper for unique book jewelry that can slip over a book page. I use a metal jig with movable pins that can be configured into a number of patterns. The 18-gauge copper wire, as a soft malleable metal, is easily formed on a metal jig into the desired shape.

The Monastic Endband

Step 1. Primary endband of linen on the top of the spine

I am working on another book. This one is a collection of Yeats’ poems and stories combined with my photographs as center spreads. It is a small intimate book that fits in the palm of the hand. I have finished the edge decoration on the top and bottom book edges and have moved on to the end bands.

The Thread That Binds Binding

The Thread That Binds: Interviews with Private Practice Binders bookbinding by Esther Kibby.

Pamela Leutz, a fine binder, wrote the book The Thread That Binds: Interviews with Private Practice Binders. It is a book that interviews well-known craftsmen who have made bookbinding a vocation. In 2010, the Lone Star Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers planned an exhibition around the individual design binding of this book. Oak Knoll Press printed a limited number of unbound book sets as well as their bound edition. Fifty-one bookbinders bought the unbound sets and crafted their own binding designs to express both binding knowledge and creativity.

Water book binding

The concept with the Starfish was selected for the Water bookbinding.

The starfish shape is built up on the davy board covers using paper clay, a white moldable, clay-like substance made from paper that dries quickly. A technique called “paring” thins the base leather on the edges and at the fold of the spine. In paring, the binder passes a spokeshave with a sharp blade across the skin-side of the leather. The blade gradually thins the leather to the desired thickness. The pared dark blue leather is laid over the whole book and very thin leather onlays applied. The white and sand color onlays are “wetted and pasted out” with wheat paste and then puckered in the application. This gives the impression of ripples in the sea foam.