All these past months since I bought my first 3d-printed I’ve been experimenting with making different tools and jigs for bookbinding and other crafts. But one of the things I wanted to try since the very beginning of that creative process was to make moulds for papermaking.
Bookbinders always produce lots of offcuts. Paper, leather and book cloth are usually manufactured in sizes that are at least a bit larger than you need for your book. You also cut many elements a bit larger to trim them to exact size during the later stages of making a book.
Paper has made it to Europe almost in the end of the Middle Ages, when it had already been known in China for more than a millennium. Traditional washi paper is made from the bark of gampi tree in Japan since the 8th century and is used for almost anything from fashion to furniture, and books, of course.
Like many of my fellow bookbinders, I am mostly self-taught; we comb the internet for tips on binding techniques, sewing patterns and leather-versus-cloth options. This initial interest in book arts tends to begin with modern takes on traditional bindings. But after having bound a few works, it’s natural to want to move a bit further back in history, researching the origins and techniques of other book-related arts, such as marbled end papers.
We have a pretty thorough list of tutorials and bookbinding instructions here at iBookBinding.com. At least if you are interested in case binding and some non-adhesive types of bindings. Today we start posting new tutorials. Sometimes they would cover some very small steps of bookbinding process.
Following last weeks popular marbling post (see here), I received a number of emails from visitors about the different types of paper available and their suitability for marbling, calligraphy and use in bookbinding and restoration projects. So, today I decided to put together a post on advanced paper-making techniques as there seems only to be a limited number of resources currently on the internet, much of which is pretty hard to find. I hope it will help a few of you out there.
Note that I am no expert in papermaking but have attended numerous paper-making workshops and have visited a handful of Washi paper making factories in Japan over the years. If you have any questions on the subject, please feel free to ask in the comments section below and I’ll do my best to help where I can.
The end papers should always be made, this is, the coloured paper pasted to a white one; the style of binding must decide what kind of ends are to be made, that is, the coloured paper pasted to a white one; the style of binding must decide what kind of ends are to be used. I give a slight idea of the kinds of papers used and the method of making them.
