In the second and final year at North Bennet Street School all students are given

the same book in sheets (known as a set book) to complete as a fine

binding. Given complete freedom over the materials and design, the inspiration
should be derived from the set book. This year we bound copies of The
Songlines by Bruce Chatwin.
My main inspiration came from an Aboriginal painting depicting imagery
referred to as Dreaming. At the moment a mother is conscience of conception,
the unborn child receives the spirit of a totemic ancestor connected with the
location when awareness occurred. In a general sense, the Dreaming relates to a
period before the memory of living creatures, during the time of the creator
ancestors and supernatural beings. The paintings themselves are visual
representations of the artists individual spiritual beliefs.
For this binding I wanted to challenge myself with a few different leather
techniques including back-pared onlay, ascona onlay and using fluid acrylic
paint to create a portion of the design. The binding is full goatskin leather in
chocolate brown. The lizard is a back-pared onlay in fair goatskin. A back-
pared onlay is where a piece of thinly pared leather is pasted to a base leather of
full thickness. The base leather is then pared to a workable thickness, creating a
smooth transition between the base leather and back-pared onlay.

When it came to painting on the leather, I sought advice from binder Don
Glaister. In order to achieve an opaque, smooth finish I used fluid acrylic by
Golden. The process was surprisingly quick, although once the paint hits the
leather it become permanently colored. I also painted the inside of the front and
back cover with symbols from the Dreaming. This binding (along with my
classmates) went on display during the Student/Alumni Show put on at the end
of the year by North Bennet Street.
Fantasy & Nonsense is a compilation of poems from 19th century American
poet James Whitcomb Riley elegantly letterpress printed on handmade paper
with wood engravings by Robert Buchert. Riley was known for writing about
rural Midwestern life to an audience of young readers. However, this unique
collection portrays a devilishly playful side of Rileys poetry through whimsical
tales of things both eerie and peculiar. Bucherts illustrations harmonize
beautifully to the mischievous tune of Rileys words.
This binding was completed for an exhibition put on by the Rocky Mountain
Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers. Each submission will be judged for its
level of craft and creativity. Results are still pending.

My inspiration for this binding came from two lines in the first poem A
Nonsense Rhyme (sea of pale pink lemonade and cringing grass). The style of
binding is referred to as Millimeter (specifically Rubow) where a millimeter of
leather is exposed on the head and tail edge of the book. I wanted to keep true
to the whimsical feel of the poetry, so I used two separate leather colors, blue-
gray for the head and mauve for the tail.
The paste paper cover was created with a mixture of acrylic paint, distilled
vinegar and sugar with accents of cucumber paper from Hiromi.
Check out more photos after the jump.
A clamshell box was made with the same mauve leather on the spine, a stamped
label in the same blue-gray leather and brown Canapetta cloth. The inside is
lined with Ultrasuede in white to protect the texture of the paste paper.
In April 2011, I took my first trip out of the country to London. While I was
there I made my way to the Natural History Museum for their touring exhibition
of Sexual Nature, a show on the sexual habits of various animal species from the
praying mantis to rams to angler fish to humans. I was intrigued and shocked by
the facts and imagery presented in the exhibit, particularly the Green
Porno shorts by Isabella Rossellini. On my way out I perused the gift shop and
decided on a whim to purchase two books by Anas Nin (Little Birds and Delta
of Venus).
Both books are a collection of short stories published in the late 1970s
posthumously. Written in the 1940s, Nin and a group of writers were given the
task of writing erotica for an anonymous private collector. Her erotic shorts deal
with various sexual themes, some quite taboo (varying from pedophilia to
lesbianism), all the while she maintains a focus on the study of women and her
female characters.

The cover design for Little Birds was taken from the title pages of the individual
stories, a V formation of sparrows. I chose a simple color palette for my simple
design, red (the color of love and seduction), white (the color of purity and
innocence) and gold (the color of luxuriance). The book is bound in full scarlet
goatskin leather from Harmatan. The sparrows are surface gilt in gold leaf with
white suede inlays.
I covered the inside of each board with a leather edge to edge doublure in the
same scarlet goatskin. An edge to edge doublure describes a technique where a
thinly pared piece of leather covers the inside of the board, stretching from edge
to edge creating a seamless transition from the outside to the inside. The
doublure also stretches over the joint and onto the text block creating a very
strong attachment. Along with the leather doublure is a sunken panel filled with
white suede framed in surface gilt gold leaf. The fly leaf is a handmade Lokta
paper from Nepal, printed with a pattern of white feathers on a natural base.
The book is housed in a rounded spine clamshell box, using the same materials
as the binding. The spine is lined with scarlet goatskin with the title hand tooled
in gold. The case and trays are covered in the same feather pattern Lokta paper
and are lined with Hahnemhle Ingres in smoke.
This fine binding of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A.
Abbott was completed for the Guild of Book Workers National Traveling show
Horizon. The show opened on June 8th at The Great Hall at the Margaret I.
King Special Collections Library in the University of Kentucky and will soon be
traveling to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City for the grand
opening of the Standards Seminar on October 11, 2012.
I choose Flatland (not only because its one of my favorite science fictions
novels), but I wanted to challenge myself by creating a 3-dimensional cover for
the binding. Abbotts novella is an observation on the social hierarchy of
Victorian culture set in a fictional 2-dimensional world known as Flatland
whose denizens are geometric figures which defines their place in the social
ladder (women are depicted as lowly lines). Readers are guided through the text
by a Square who dreams of other dimensions and challenges the authority of the
high class Circle. As you move around the book, a sphere begins to emerge from
the cover, illustrating the Squares discovery of the third dimension.
The book has been bound in white buffalo skin, while the shapes are tooled
onlays of both goat and buffalo with palladium outlines. A plastic lens was
mounted to bass wood to give the right dimension for the sphere and adhered to
the front board before covering. The order of the shapes was taken from the
hierarchy listed in the book, while the layout was greatly inspired by Art Deco
bindings of the early 1900s. The edges of the text block are gilt with Palladium
leaf over a base of graphite; headbands have been sewn to mimic the color
pattern created by the shapes.

The title was tooled with palladium using a series of line palettes and gouges to
create a custom font.
At the beginning and end of the text block a pop-up of a cube is revealed
representing another opportunity to transform a 2-dimensional object into a 3-
dimensional one. The book is housed in an elaborate enclosure, in order to
protect the raised area of the cover a spacer was constructed with a circle
cutout. The spacer is lined with leather and white suede on the side facing the
book and paper on the other. A chemise lined with white suede encompassed
the spacer and book. All three components rest inside a leather spine clamshell
box. The title and an image of the Flatlanders home are tooled on the spine of
the box.
The millimeter binding (specifically Rubow) is my most favorite structure due to
its simple elegance and traditional use of handmade paste paper. Talking to
Myself was bound with blank pages to be used as a journal. On this binding the
head edge and tail edge are lined with maroon goatskin with leather wrapped
headbands in the same leather. This paste paper was especially fun to
design. By taking inspiration from Sarah Creighton, I aimed to create an alien
landscape with rich oranges and browns.
The initial peachy layer of acrylic paint mixed with wheat starch paste and water
was applied to the Hahnemuhle Ingres paper with a sponge brush. Once that
dried completely the three other colors (of the same mixture) were applied
separately with a piece of binders board in order to create the peaks and icicle-
like forms. The title was smoke-tooled with handle letters. Smoke-tooling is a
technique were the face of the tool is greased up with petroleum jelly and then
stuck in a flame to collect carbon; the tool is then pressed into the cover leaving
a trace of carbon behind. This give a rich, deep black impression of the tool.
Even though this book is more heavily tooled then her other bindings, she keeps
to the same rhythm of repeating her signature tools in order to create the
design. The same tool is used in each corner and lines are used to break up the
already complex design. This edition of Francois Villons Ballades and
Miscellaneous Poems was printed in 1900 by the Eragny Press and bound by
Sybil in 1928. Covered in red goatskin over 5 raised bands, the design also
includes onlays of green and natural goatskin. This book can be seen in detail
online at the British Library.