Tabula Rasa

My biblionautic chums and friends.
An other Booker Time Update.
https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker.../prize-years/2024

This has been a little of a challenge, but more about that later.
Having sorted out the design, material use etc I set about doing my thing.....
Machine sewing, purposely badly, hand dying and reworking leather. Book Cloth inlaid panels and so forth.

I will be posting progress over the next couple of weeks... I hope.
Please note.... there are other studios/binderies doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts.

My biblionautic chums and friends.

I think it is now safe to say that I have started a new teaching post on the full time book binding course at West Dean.

https://www.westdean.ac.uk/degrees-and-diplomas/fda-books-binding

Please note.... there are other courses, studios/binderies doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts.

My biblionautic chums and friends.

What, you may ask, is happening in Studio 5 Book Arts on Saturday Mark?

Well in short......
A Designer Bookbinders Masterclass Introduction to Letterpress Printing using the wonderful Adana 8x5.

So today, Friday, is spent in set up, ensuring everything works, inks, papers, blocks and type. These classes do not happen at the click of fingers, I wish though.

The day is an introduction, a day of fun, no real rules, just experimentation and finding out. The aim is to produce a series of two colour sample pages... Perhaps with a touch of Mertz by the great Kurt Schwitters......he lived, for a while, 5 minutes from Studio 5 (before my time)...... to serve as inspiration.

Please note.... there are other studios/binderies doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts.

My biblionautic chums and friends.
Booker Time Update.

https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker.../prize-years/2024
My Booker Book is Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.

Having read from cover to cover once I shall be reading again. However the initial design idea is bouncing around my head and sketch book already. So much so that I have started on the end papers already. They will be leather jointed so work on the doubler can be done later.

Below tiny snap shots of the end papers, I cannot reveal them in completely until after the event, just a glimpse, a teaser perhaps....

I will be posting progress over the next 6 or so weeks.
Please note.... there are other studios/binderies doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts.

My biblionautic chums and friends.
Booker Time.
Now that the Booker 2024 Short List is out.....
https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker.../prize-years/2024
My Booker Book is Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.

The specially printed sheets arrived, sections folded and in the press over night.

I will be posting progress over the next 6 or so weeks.
Please note.... there are other studios/binderies doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts.

My biblionautic chums and friends.

Booker Time.

Now that the Booker 2024 Short List is out.....
https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/2024

I can reveal that my Booker Book is Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.
The specially printed sheets will be arriving soon but I have my reading copy.....
One of the highlights of the annual Booker Prize season comes when each of the shortlisted authors is presented with a unique, hand-bound edition of their nominated works. These one-of-a-kind books are made and designed between the shortlist announcement and winner ceremony. From folding the specially printed sheets into sections, each book is the result of around 150 hours of dedicated work and the process, which involves at least 25 distinct stages. What would normally take months is condensed in to weeks, this year I have 6 week!

Please note.... there are other studios/binderies doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts.

My biblionautic chums and friends.
Buried Book in a Box, a stop motion video of the pages, a real page turner!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyM7gtQQ3So

Please note.... there are other studios/binderies doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts

Full Leather Buried Book The Pages Part of the buried book series. A stop motion video of the pages (a real page turner!)

My biblionautic chums and friends.

Buried Book in a Box, a stop motion page turner of a video!

https://youtu.be/XyM7gtQQ3So

Please note.... there are other studios/binderies doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts.

Full Leather Buried Book The Pages Part of the buried book series. A stop motion video of the pages (a real page turner!)

My biblionautic chums and friends.

Many years ago, when I was a Licentiate of Designer Bookbinders, I had the chance to get up close and personal with a binding of Moby Dick by the late Philip Smith. Many things impressed me, the use of materials and the way he had shaped the head end band to form a spine profile that continued the wave design across the boards amongst other things. The end band sort of stuck in my mind.

A few weeks later I was faced with the binding of a text block that had beautiful hand made paper, deckle edge and all to the fore edge and tail, you know the sort of thing. And, as such, one does not trim a text block that had beautiful hand made paper, deckle edge and all. So..... I wanted to have sewn end bands and it was then that I remembered Smith's shaped end band... what if I were to reverse it? To follow the contours of the text block at the tail, to have an end band that fitted the text block? Any way, I gave it a bash, why not? What could possibly go wrong?

I made up a practise text block and bashed away. On completion I looked at it and thought that it looked okay. One of my students came over to see what I was up to, he too thought it looked okay. Then asking how I had done it he asked what the technique was called. I had know idea, I had just done it, so in one of those casual moments I replied that it looked similar to the Manhattan sky line. The name stuck.

All of this because I reversed what someone else had done.

A Picture of Dorian Gray, hand sewn, Manhattan, single needle end band with Pip beading in silk.

Please note.... I realised, of course that there is little that is new under the sun... I felt pretty sure that in the 2,000 or so years of the codex that someone some where would have done the same.
Please further note....there are other end band styles, studios/binderies doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts.

My biblionautic chums and friends.
Buried Book in a Box, the next exciting chapter. The drying out process continues, for the last few days the book has supported on a mesh tray to allow air circulation for an hour or so then pressed in wooden boards, to absorb moisture, under weights. Then an hour on the mesh tray... repeat, repeat etc.
Slowly the book begins to dry out and revealing more textures contained within the text block.
Please note.... there are other studios/binderies doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts.

My biblionautic chums and friends.
Buried Book in a Box, after a period in the deep freeze the long careful process of separating the pages and drying out the book begins. The book is supported on a mesh tray to allow air circulation for an hour or so then pressed in wooden boards, to absorb moisture, under weights. Then an hour on the mesh tray... repeat, repeat etc.

Already the leather and boards have begun to contort and shrink, creating a new form perhaps, dare one say, a more sculptured form. Earth textures leave impressions along with the residue of insects, larvae, snails and other wee beasties.

Please note.... there are other studios/binderies doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts.

My biblionautic chums and friends.

Yet another exhumation of a Buried Book, this time full leather...

https://youtu.be/oYYSw4gZUlw

Please note.... there are other studios/binderies doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts.

Full Leather Binding imovie Book Buried in a Box. A full leather binding forming part of the Buried book series.