Covering a laced on board binding with leather.

Wait til you hear about modern hand bound design bindings that are selling for tens of thousands, the pangolins of books.

Sewing double core or batonet endbands with some thin ass Kinkami thread. Both cores are paper, unfortunately not rolled on the thighs of Italian nuns. I’m grateful for all the friendship bracelets I made as a kid because the skill translates to this wild hand ballet. I love making cool stuff

I used to make guest books for Disney Cruises when I started out, they were substantial, stacked on one another, on tapes. Since then I’ve come to appreciate the large space to work.

Time lapse of sewing a laced on board binding. I use a frame to maintain tension on the cords while everything else tends to flop around at will. #bookbinding #craft #designfinebinding

#bookbinding #americanacademyofbookbinding #openset

A binding of The Helen Fragments that I made for the OPEN•SET exhibition. My binding was selected for the SET category, where all binders submit their interpretations of the same book. Covered in calf skin with wood veneer and dyed leather inlays and an onlay of stingray over the spine.

Oh look at how lucky that wish was. See you soon!

@blackoakbindery.bsky.social I saw your binding! It is beautiful and I wish you were here.

Thank you!

gold foil to get the shine on the ridges. The red was painted in last, I firmly believe most things can be improved with a little bit of red!

If memory serves, first I painted the stroke of frisket over fair goat, then dyed it with aniline brown from Hewitt. Then I slapped a piece of stingray over it and put it in the nipping press while still damp from the dye to make those circle debossings. When it was dry I used a tacking iron over/

All sorts of different leather textures and treatments. A mix of fish skins, box calf, lizard, inclusions, dyed calf, foils and bubbles 🫧 #bookbinding #finebinding #leatherworking

Any dust that had settled on a gilded gold edge could simply be blown off. Like the patriarchy.

This leaves a delightfully smooth surface that presents all sorts of opportunities for top edge decoration. Traditionally, libraries used lamps that produced soot and the top edges of books were treated, usually gilded, to prevent the carbon sediments from settling in between the pages.

There are so many small meditations in craft. Here is the trimming of the top edge of a book using a vertical plough. A blade drops lower with each rotation of the black wheel and the top of the book is trimmed a few pages as a time.

Rounding the spine of the book after sewing is an exercise in gentle insistence. Also a helpful motivator in my own life.

I’ve gotten very lucky in the hunt! Do you have a workspace set up?

It turned out beautifully!

Some cast iron from the bindery. Even finding the equipment necessary to do some of this work feels like a treasure hunt. From left; Jacques board sheer, job backer, book press, and sharfix #bookbinding #workshop #craft

Some details of a binding of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by M.W. Shelley. Bound in fair calf with onlays of stingray, inlays of dyed calf, piercings of steel wire. Lines are blind tooled in red foil and edge to edge paper doublures were dyed with spirit dyes. #bookbinding #fineart #craft

I make books! #bookbinding #reliure #designbinding