🫶🏾💙⚓️🏴‍☠️ Yes ma’am! #StandardsofExcellence
OPhiO 14 💚☺️

Four sheets of decorative papers. The bottom paper is printed with blue lines in a wood grain pattern. The paper above is a pale pink with white leave imprints pressed into the thick decked paper. The paper above is a striking cross-hatched pattern in shades of blue. The top paper is a beautiful multicolored abstract pattern with the texture of a brush pressed into the paper in alternating shades of blues and greens.

Two letterpress prints side by side on a carpet. The print on the left is a portrait orientation titled Shop Cats: Bookbinding. It features two cartoon cats, one black, one white with a stripe on its head, going through 12 steps to create a book: cutting, fold & punch, sew, ploughing, round & back, spine lining, pare leather, cover, gild, pastedowns, press, it’s a book! Print by Yi Bin Liang, First edition, 2019. Two illustrations the poster would like to highlight in detail are sew, in which one of the cats is sewing a text block on a frame while the other cat bats at the ball of cord, and press, in which both cats are napping on top of a board, which is pressing down on the finished book to hold the glue in place as it dries. The other print is titled Prayer for Mistakes and features a poem set in dark green ink by Stuart Kestenbaum. On either side of the poem, the paper has been dipped into blue watercolor, giving the effect of curtains or a river at the edges of the page.

Post-conference haul, part 2: papers and prints. I don’t currently have a lab or a studio, but whenever I do, this shop cats print will be the very first thing I put up on the wall.

#Bookbinding #StandardsOfExcellence #GuildOfBookWorkers

Photograph of a wooden table covered with bookbinding instruments. The instruments from left to right, then bottom to top, include three medium to large brushes, a bag with eight small brushes, two finishing knives, a micro-spatula, a bone folder, two teflon bufferers, a teflon bone folder, a drafting triangle, a divider tool, tweezers, two awls, brass band nippers, an Olfa knife with a cannister of spare blades, a 12 inch grid ruler, linen tape, pre-sewn headbands, and two spools of linen thread with one spool in blue and one spool in natural linen.

Semi-obligatory photo of post-conference haul from the vendor's tables. I found pretty much everything on my list of bindery tools I wanted, plus a few that folks talked me into when they heard what I was interested in doing. #Bookbinding #StandardsOfExcellence #GuildOfBookWorkers