Another bookbinding throwback. I made this binding some ten years ago or so. It was my second attempt on cover design with leather inlays. The first try was much-much simpler — I should probably show it some other time.
Following the changes made to our sewing frame with hooks for cord adjustment, the cheaper version of the tool was revamped as well. Instead of the previously used chipboard, now it has a wooden board for a base.
I'm sure you know this feeling when you see something that really connects with you but are uncertain whether you are ready to spend money on it. That's precisely what happened to me with one of Luise Blackbird's prints.
Elbel Libro presented a new project during this Boekkunstbeurs, and that's one of the few new things I brought home this year. This is an edition binding project with only 20 copies made, all in a black covering material.
This weekend was very tiring and intense. But these two days were among the most inspiring and wonderful working days of the year. All because I participated in the Book Arts Fair in Leiden (Netherlands.)
We are almost ready for the Boekkunstbeurs — the book arts fair that is organized but the Dutch printing and bookbinding guilds every November in Leiden. Last year we took part in that event and it was amazing!
The launch of our new section punching tool was a blast! First, it was warmly welcomed by our Instagram followers, and then the orders just continued to come every day! Here are only a few of the recent orders.
The easy answer to the question "How to repair book spine with duct tape?" is that you just never, and I mean it, never use duct tape and most of the other types of tape on books and documents of at least some value.
We continue our series of inspiring bookbinding projects with several new objects. All these books (not only books) are quite different, but the thing that unites them is that there is something special about every single one of them.
Identifying the origins of a manuscript is a notoriously subjective art, one that requires an impressive visual memory and an exceedingly trained eye that can quickly spot the telltale details which hint at certain artists, periods, and locations.
It is estimated that during the peak of the Great Purge in the USSR some 680,000 to 1,200,000 people were killed by NKVD. An average investigator in Moscow had some 30-40 political cases per month. And sometimes they were bored.
This vintage Russian magazine about printing was published for only two years, but it already gave me a lot of insights into the epoch. This time we share the second issue of the first year of publishing: December 1901.
This is the spookiest time of the year, and we have some scary bookish things to share with you! Well, some of them are more fun than spooky, but that's probably the main idea of all this pandemonium.
This post is heavily influenced by an article by Christian Alschner published in 1984. He starts the article by recounting the reasons for the scarcity of the original girdle books as the overhanging leather was often removed by librarians.
So, here is the first book I ever bound. While the top photo is quite dramatic, check the other images to see some mistakes I made. The spine is stitched because I recycled the leather from a jacket and wanted to cover the old holes.
