Paper Dragon Books

TWO METHODS FOR PHOTO TRANSFER ON LEATHER - The box Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 17:40:00 +0000

For the past 15 years I have been engaged on a single project making custom clamshell boxes for signed Modern First Editions, using many different design binding techniques such as tooling, onlays, inlays, and a variety of different methods of printing and photo transfer on leather.

These methods I briefly detailed in a previous article, basic techniques for printing on goatskin.

The motivation to explore these techniques as always was the necessity to find easy methods for introducing a design element quickly, and where applicable avoid large amounts of tooling and onlay work - primarily to save time, but they also look cool too.

Alongside these experiments, I was also looking for a way to print on leather without using blocks, mag plates, and half-tone polymer plates(all very good methods), namely photo transfer.

Having done some rudimentary woodblock printing, I had come across a useful tool called a blender pen. This felt tip pen is loaded with Xylene, and I had been using them to transfer an image from a photocopy onto a block for carving.

After doing some initial transfers on skin with the Xylene pen, which worked fine, I quickly embarked on a determined quest to find a method that did not involve possibly damaging solvents.

So briefly I will give the pros and cons of the two methods of photo transfer that have given me the best results - none of which involve Acetone or Xylene.

1. MATTE MEDIUM

Available in all art stores, Matte Medium is basically an acrylic.

1. Stipple matte medium onto copy.

2. Place copy face down onto area to be printed between acrylic boards with wax paper.

3. Press for 20 seconds.

4. Spray back side of the print with water, the image should show through.

5. Carefully rub fibres of the back of the paper, and gradually peel back the layers of paper.

6. take care not to be too rough and peel the image.

What you are essentially doing is gluing the image to the surface, so it's a very low-tech

solution.

Pros

quick

easy

effectively fool proof if done correctly

Cons

The glued area becomes stiff, making it difficult and problematic to use over areas that require flexibility, such as joints. If the area becomes cracked, the layer may peel, and nobody wants that, so avoid where possible using across the joint. This method is used best for inlays, and for images requiring great detail and half-tones.

2. PAPER LITHOGRAPHY

This method basically turns your copy into a printing plate, making it able to be used over joints as only the ink adheres, so while you can use it over the joints and turn-ins without cracking or risk of peeling, its still delicate, best results are achieved in high contrast and black and white images.

1. Mix Gum Arabic with water in a 12oz bottle in a 1-1 or 50-50 solution.

2. Paste solution onto an acrylic board and place copy print side up on board.

3. Paste solution over the print, removing all bubbles making sure copy is pasted onto board

4. Sponge off plate with water, let dry for a few minutes, and brush over more solution.

5. Repeat 2 times before applying ink

6. Ink plate after 5 minutes.

7. Remove any ink in the white areas with sponge and water.

8. Repeat 2 more times.

9. Peel up the copy, place it on leather and press for a few minutes, remove and peel before it dries.

Best results achieved in either method are made using smooth skins.....so regular goat is not so good, but smooth goat and calf can be used in any and all printing and transfer techniques to great affect, the longer any printing dries the better, and calfskin works very well with ink.

Thats all folks !

Heroic Works - Designer Bookbinders International Competition 2017

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Sat, 29 Jul 2017 19:42:00 +0000

Designer Bookbinders UK opened their 3rd international exhibit mid-July 2017 at the Bodleian Library, and I was pleased to be included.

The binding was of Ovid's "Metamorphoses", an edition from Shanty Bay Press, a good size plenty of room on the page in both english and greek, with some very nice photogravure work.

I printed the ends with oak leafs on sekishu tissue, the binding itself is a split board, three piece, bradel , or caped - binding - depending on who you talk to! There are a lot of different ways to describe essentially the same thing.

The boards are covered in sanded and airbrushed goatskin with matte foil tooling, suggestive of the pattern of an insect wing, with hints of gold leaf and turquoise onlays.

The exhibition goes to Birmingham, and later to St.Brides, before coming state-side to the North Bennett Street school in Boston.

Ive a number of new book projects and bindings to get stuck into so hopefully more technically challenging work to follow.

COMING IN FROM THE COLD - Binding Exhibitions in 2013, 2014, and 2017

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 21:47:00 +0000

Since leaving the city in 2014, I have made a concerted effort to complete and send bindings to exhibitions for display and just for me.

Afterall, I never became a bookbinder because I enjoyed making case-bindings and boxes.

Opposite at the top is a binding of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" which won First prize in the Argentinian International binding competition in 2014 (EARA 2014).

Before leaving New York in 2013 I was very pleased to be invited to send a binding for the Designer Bookbinders anglo-american exhibit, which toured the UK and the USA.

The next 2 shots feature this binding, "Lens of Crystal", dyed goatskin , with monoprinted endpapers.

This year I was very gratified that my binding will be featured in the up-coming designer bookbinders international competition.

The theme of the exhibit is "myths and heroes",
so having sourced a beautifully printed copy of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" printed by Shanty Bay Press, binding was completed in september of last year.

The last 2 shots on the right show details of the front and inside, aswell as dyed skin, tooled onlays, and monoprinted doublures.

I will post more about it after opening night at the Bodleian library in Oxford, UK, July 17th this summer - fingers crossed!

Ive got a few more things in the pipeline, so will endeavour to document and post the progress of those.

NOTES FROM THE WILDERNESS - Thomas Pynchon, and lettering in circle onlays

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:48:00 +0000

Since 2014 and before I have designed several covers for Thomas Pynchon titles - always a fun prospect as a lot of his work is zany and yet rooted in a contemporary landscape, which means they can be quite fun.

Lots of Photo-transfer , lots of Pop images , lots of colour , lots of airbrushing - sometimes acryllic direct onto the skin.

Having done a lot of Photo-transfer on goatskin, I have yet to find a suitable and flexible enough technique that does not involve making photopolymer plates, printing presses, or xylene.

Using acryllic stiffens the skin, the image can crack, and it of course makes hand-lettering a problem.....

So, until i manage to sort that problem out - a short-term design solution has worked quite well - lettering in circle onlays

More next week, including a look at some tradtional work completed in the last 2 years, aswell as some design binding.

NOTES FROM THE WILDERNESS - sundry boxes and such

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Sat, 20 Aug 2016 20:46:00 +0000

Throughout my years in relative seclusion the box project has trundled along with the persistence of a squeaky wheel.....with some good work , and the usual barrage of pen tooling, dye work, back pared onlays.

Ive included here some more highlights from the last 2 years, though there are more to follow.

Above was a fun day prepping a cover for Cormac Macarthy's "Blood Meridian" in 2014 - nothing like flicking red ink everywhere....

The tooling on the front board of J.P.Doneleavey's "Ginger Man", in 2015, was - lets just say - a happy accident.

Had fun making pink eyes for James
Joyce's "dubliners - trippy

Simple line and dot tooling made a quick and effective design for Isaac Asimov's "I,Robot" - whilst a good way to recreate the artwork from Graham Greene's "The Quiet American" dust jacket was to make blocks using white erasers.

Making do with less is a good way to pare down your aesthetic. Less time, money, and effort....

Less colour, less design....

A well placed dot....etc....etc.....

one technique I might explore more of is cut outs and reveals - quite effective

and so it goes....

I hope it never ends.

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NOTES FROM THE WILDERNESS - back pared onlays

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 15:48:00 +0000

So the Box job continues as it has done over the years - using as shown here for The Shining, Black Mischief, and King's Thinner - the by-now standard technique of back-pared onlays.

For those who are interested - leaving the backing paper on the onlay while pressing and paring and indeed glueing the boards and spine on - makes for a better finish.

What you don't want is for the onlay to be proud.

Using this method, you can get a smooth finish, ideally with a slightly indented surface, which I've found preferable.

A bientot.....

NOTES FROM THE WILDERNESS

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 01:30:00 +0000

Bless me father for I have sinned - its been over 2 years since my last confession and, I must admit , I'm decidedly rusty and have no idea where to start.

A lot has happened since leaving New York, most of which I'll cover over the course of these notes from the wilderness.

I'm out of practise with writing so I'll be terse.

I completed this set of first edition Bond's in the summer of 2014 at the time of the move to California.

Finished them all in the new place with the customary Airbrushing, surface gilding, back-pared onlays, tooling, and Photo-transfer

In the coming weeks I'll be writing about some Pynchon Design work, the use of hand letters in circle onlays on spines, a bit of design binding and whatever else comes my way.

PDB has also joined Instagram - you can find that on the right > and I am currently engaged in building my 5th and last Bindery in Pound Ridge, New York.

But I suppose the big news is - Im back...so watch out!

The Rose Family Seder - 2004 to 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 00:25:00 +0000

Well.....what can I say, but if you read the first part....here....I thought this would take a couple of weeks - I was wrong.

However, the book I was dreading is finally done. I say dreading because of the state of the pages i was given.

The previous temporary Rose Seder binding had been stuffed with pages, all glued in in-properly cockled, boards glued to pages, all of the margins ignored!, and just a bit of mess really.

First it had to be broken up, and those folds that could were sewn on stubbs. Pages that were not folds were gaurded, the boards were removed and some beautiful caligraphy was reframed using more appropriate paper and japanese tissue. Pages were joined into folds, and sewn onto stubbs, and some artwork that had been very poorly glued in were removed, carefully seperated and remounted on the appropriate paper.

All of this was rather nerve racking because all the artwork inside is completely original and irreplaceable, so...slowly slowly.

The signatures had to be individually gilded as there were many parts that needed gaurding compensation , were of different sizes, thickness, and as I mentioned before, some leaves were laminated to museum board , so doing it all at once was not an option....bad news for me, and for my gold.

We haven't even got to the binding yet.....a stubb binding, so all stubbs are sewn using an unsupported french link. Because of the size of the book(15x12x2) I knew I was probably going to have to split the binding up into 3 parts, as I wanted to use goat, and there aren't many skins about in a 1st quality large enough to do the whole thing in one go. Besides, I think it worked better that way.

Its backed in the normal way, lined, it got a 3/4 hollow, a cartonnage spine, finished with a paper cape which runs along the spine and over each edge about 2 inches which I will use along with the leather to attach the boards.

The spine was covered and head caps made in the normal manner, the boards made up, lined and covered , and only turned-in along the spine edge.

I made several designs on paper, all were variations on circular straight line tooled patterns, chose the simplest( and best i think!). Have it on hand and ready to go before you cover, that way your blind tooled lines will go a lot better.

The gold work took 2 days, 1 board a day, then they were attached and turned-in.

As you can see a leather joint was put in, in the french manner, and doublure of white calfskin could be inlaid.

Further tooling around the edges of the doublure was completed, and finally a goatskin suede laid down on the fly and trimmed.

After some simple tooling on the spine, a box was constructed with one my favorite additions of an outer wall along the trays.

The Rose Seder books will be on display at the NYPL from April 3rd to the 22nd for Passover, although possibly not this one, but they are worth a look - this is the forth.

All said and done....I like it....it was very hard to make ....took way too long, and came at a bad time .

But I'm back.......and badder than ever!

Lens of Crystal

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 01:27:00 +0000

The first of many proper bookbindings, I hope, for 2014,

Ombre dyed Goat

Monoprinted ends with onlays

Frontispiece

Artist comission for Chris Ofili

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 13:58:00 +0000

Chris Ofili is a well known and internationally exhibited turner prize winning british artist, born in Manchester England. He might better be known as... "that guy who paints with elephant dung", but more accurately he is well known for his intricately designed canvases infused with african motifs.....and his painting of the black Madonna.

I was honored to meet Chris and his family when they stopped by the bindery a couple of years ago, as I've long been a fan of his work, and of the fact that he manged to rattle Mayor Guilliani's cage all those years ago with his Madonna!
He was meeting to discuss the re-production of smaller artworks that he had created on a much larger scale and in goatskin. He had had some done before and I had seen them so I knew it was feasable, there were only two things that really concerened me.....the size of the skins(what animals), and the nature of the framing and base (warping etc.....)

Well, we shook hands said goodbye and I forgot about the whole thing until I got the call earlier in
april of this year - "....it's going ahead, and we need it by the beginning of june..." - nuts!!!

Then began a frantic set of calls to all known and unknown associates to research a warp free base that wouldn't be to heavy (MDF was out)....and some animals large enough to do the job. Also, this is not a one man job, I knew I was going to have to call on someone highly skilled to help me, or hold my hand, either or.....so who?

I called Nicky Oliver (Black Fox Bindery, London) or mentioned on facebook, would she want to come to New York to help me, she stupidly agreed and was a little stunned when she arrived, as was I. I had known Nicky briefly when we past each other in the old binderies of LCP back in '99 to 2000, and we were I think aware of each other. To think that a decade or more later we'd be collaborating on a project in New york city as proprietors of our own binderies would have been ridiculous. We were to spend the next 30 or so days in each other's company
for most hours of the day. I also called Nicky not just because I thought we'd get along and work well together, but because of her prodigious skill as a colourist and dyer of animal skins, which will become apparent later.

So, Nicky's on the way, I got 2 weeks to get everything ready...the base, the skins, the dyes etc...and all the rest of it. I had been sent a scaled up version of the small A4 original artwork, which had been printed to 6ft high by 4 ft across, which would make dissecting the artwork into more manageable pieces a lot easier. Pinned to the wall I marked it up the distance on either side.

The base - after much conversation on the book-arts listserv(valuable resource), and with my friend and talented conservator working now in england Abigail Bainbridge, I found that the notion of using Aluminum honey-comb core panels came up intriguingly a couple of times. The immediate advantage I was assured, by Abby especially was that the honey structure with an Aluminum skin on either side would prevent the expected warping produced by laminating skins and material on one side. It would also provide a solid base without unduly adding to the weight of the piece(20-40lbs max). The base was 1/2" thick, and the skins on either side of the honeycomb structure were approx 2mm thick.

Just one note - Abigail Bainbridge is an extremely knowledgeable conservator and part time instructor at Camberwell....I have long said that when she does end up running a major institution, that shes to give me a job...I am hoping that wont be too long.

The adhesive - what was I going to use to adhere the skins to the structure? Laminating the surface with a fabric using epoxy resin had been suggested, but upon discussion with a specialist art framer, I discovered that a piece of heavy watercolour paper could be successfully laminated the full length of the core using PVA. First I decided to laminate a layer of airplane linen to one side, and turning over the edges of the frame(which had been filled in with epoxy for a flush edge) so that the leather had a surface
to go over when being turned over the frame. The paper was laminated and cut flush...this then further provided a surface to draw the artwork over the frame, retrace then cut and paste the numerous inlays of goat and calf into place. The frame was filled in on the other side and left to dry on 1 of the 8ft by 4ft benches in the bindery with larger sized boards placed ontop with much labour, for pressing and to keep flat. This Nicky and I accomplished in the first half of the day.

Dissecting the Artwork - luckily for us denise
had found a massive light-box lying on the street in chelsea back in 2006, and its been with me ever since and vital to PDB operations. We were able to take the scaled-up print out and trace over it using sharpies...which in-turn enabled us to see the outlines when the print out was laid on the bench underneath an over-sized roll of tracing paper....job done.....The tracing then pressed onto the surface of the watercolour paper on the frame........
What we were left with was the artwork, broken up into pieces and outlines on the frame.

The skins - I had at our disposal several alum
tawed skins, and oversized un-dyed goat and calf skins big enough to tackle the larger pieces. The first problem was the size of the pieces needed. I did look into using buffalo skins, but they didn't prove adequate. I was able to secure large un-dyed goats up to 10ft sq and some even larger calf skins from stephen seigel of Seigel leathers USA, which proved ultimately very useful. We had to decide what skins we were going to use first. Here the genius of our division of labour served us very well. Oversized templates were made from the seperate outlined pieces and labeled, then having worked out which skins were going where, the skins cut and Nicky's colouring could begin.

The colouring - an epic process mapped meticulously by Nicky, completed using tests colour charts, recipes, all posted on the wall, before the skins were cut. Nick decided to start
with the Pink, the loudest colour, and after some initial tests discovered that the neon of the pink yellow and oranges were best matched using the alum tawed goat, as it had a very bright white base and made the colour really pop......so thats that settled...the pinks were cut out oversized, and with enough room to turn over the fram at the edges. Once the colour had been acheived the skins were cut and dyed, then cut again and glued onto the surface of the frame.

In choosing a particular skin several things had to be considered; continuity (the same part of the same object had to be done using the same skin, ie the backround pink all alum tawed skin); the size needed and available in skin (the middle backround being the largest peice had to be cut out of the calf, then for continuity the other size was made in calf also), not least balancing these 2 with how the colour reacted to the different materials.....It was complicated.

So we were off, Nick was in the corner with her syringes like a mad scientist, and my job was to cut and paste it all together, sometimes bevelling on and off the board retracing and cutting.

Next we started on the figures, Nick dyeing an over sized piece of calf for the woman, then me re-cutting with the appropriate bevels and pasting it into place, and so it continued, with occasional breaks after major applications to stand it up and compare it to the print. Nick used this time to see what else she had to add by way of shading and colouring once the main pieces were on.

I think the hardest part for me was inlaying the large yellow and red calf backround in the middle between the figures, matching up the bevels etc...., just the size and awkwardnes of having to do it standing on the frame, insane!

If you had to ask, the hardest part for Nicky was the TROUSERS! such odd colours to match and capture in the right place that in the end she had to make a paper template for the colouring.

I think the most pleasing from a colour point of view and for how easy it went down are the pinks yellow and oranges of the alum tawed skins, there is a section there against the blue water and inset in a black backround that just looks like a massive candy sandwich....delicious! Nicky really surpassed any
reasonable expectation of matching the original.

In total there were approx 90-100 seperate pieces of calf goat and alum tawed goat all hand cut dyed and inlaid together.

The whole piece was finished a week early and we had time to take out pieces we weren't happy with and put them in again, turn the edges over the frame and touch it up at our leisure.

In the end the whole pieced was framed and hung.

The Box Challenge - End game....or is it?

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 23:08:00 +0000

Bless me father for I have sinned, it has been 6 months since my last confession.

This does not mean by any means that I have not been hard at work, and posts over the next few days will I hope illuminate.

But first......some news.

As many of you know, or may not (I'm not offended), for the past 7-8 years, before PDB existed, I have been working on a project making custom design boxes for first editions.

Today, I decided to stop for the time being and take a break. There are many reasons, but I think the most important was that I just ran out of steam. I went as far as I could with the project so far, learning many new techniques and applying them with some modicum of success....printing, painting, dyeing, inking etc...etc...

It has been one of the most important and influential jobs I have done to date, although I wouldn't like to say I am ever to do......but I called it quits, for the time being anyway...call it a temporary sabbatical...

The first 30-60 boxes were awful looking back, but when I started to experiment I really found my stride, and after 300 or more completed I have progressed as a binder a great deal.

I couldn't hand letter in leaf, now I can comfortably hand tool in gold in all kinds of ways.....I knew little of onlaying, now I don't think there is an onlay in existence that I haven't completed.

For this I am very grateful to the client in giving me the freedom to do what I liked, and to my middleman "A" who had my back the whole time.

A bookbinder has a choice at the beginning of their career. Work and get gainful employment and work in the trade.....or remain true to the original passion of what makes them want to be better. In my opinion the most successful binders choose the latter, and while they may not enjoy immediate success, they will enjoy much more deeper, gratifying and long-lasting victories.

I chose the first, and was all too eager to take on anything that came through the door......now I feel its time to step back, and hopefully re-discover just what it was that made me want to be a bookbinder in the first place.

This is not the end, but perhaps I can take a break and approach it anew with renewed pep later. Over the coming months, there may be even a restructuring of PDB that reflects this new outlook.

My next post will include a review of a project completed for the artist Chris Ofili.

As a wise woman once told me in the Wyvern bindery back in london...

"Theres more to life than money"

but then again, you gotta be rich to think like that...

Babar and the The Rose family Seder

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 20:41:00 +0000

The news that Punxatawney Phil may be indicted on charges of making false proclamations came as no surprise to anyone braced by the bitter cold these past few days, but Spring is here so the reliably predictable Gregorian calendar tells us.

As recent developments in the Vatican have shown, nothing is immune from fallibility, not even the gregorian calendar, and not everyone tears the days away in the same manner either.

The Assyrians, whilst having 12 months, and a lunar calendar will be celebrating the coming of the year 6763. The Persians a solar calendar, based on observable equinox's rather than set dates will be celebrating the year 1392. In the year of the Snake many east asian people use a calendar that is both lunar and solar, and im sure we were all relieved when the mayan long count calendar did not lead us all inexorably to oblivion as many had predicted.

So what then of the Jewish people. Well unlike many others in the middle-east celebrating new years, many Jews will be preparing to celebrate the Passover festival, culminating in a scene depicted opposite by Laurent de Brunhoff, who carried on his father's work, creating and illustrating the world of "Babar" the little elephant.

For the last 50-60 years the Rose family of New York has created or commissioned artists to illustrate several pages in a guest sign-in book for those attending the family's Seder, or passover meal. Over the decades the artist illustrations and sign-in sheets have been collated into volumes of permanent bindings, which are housed in the Dorot division of the NewYork Public Library. Which is where the bookbinder comes in.

I was first tasked with recreating the temporary binding produced by the previous bookbinder which had served well as a tough, decade-long interim binding. The large folios were sewn around a folded carton made up of a sandwich of card between airplane linen, which acts as a kind of non-adhesive spring-back when dry, and provides a tough but flexible core for the text block, allowing for a perfectly flat opening, whilst maintaining as evident from the previous binding a great deal of strength. The opening needs to be unrestricted to allow the artists to work unencumbered, and it also needs to be a strong binding due to its size and use, but without using adhesive so the volume can be taken apart and bound in a more permanent fashion.

The binding was housed in 1/4 leather case binding, with an open joint of course for ease of opening and as there was no need for joints on the text block. The spine of the book was not glued-in to the case also so as not to restrict the opening, making it even more imperative for a stronger sewn core.

Only having time for a slipcase, and naturally concerned about possible sag of the text block and the strain this would put on the core flanges and ends both glued down onto the boards not to mention the weight of paper, and also aesetically to its loss of shape which seems entirely expected over a decade of use, I made sure to include fabric coated pads on the horizontal planes of the walls, and a round bar at the back.(the horizontal ones had to be left unglued at the opening end in order to turn the skin underneath.) Of course it will be stored flat, but it certainly couldn't hurt.

Because of the sheer size and weight of the volume, getting it out of the case could prove problematic, so aswell as the edges rounded to protect the caps, and bevelled to a pleasing finish, I decided to make my cut away quite large, and because it is a rather gradual or flat gradient or curve, it was very easy to turn in too. I detest using ribbons and avoid them when I can. A piece of bristol board the width of the leather was glued along the opening following the curve, so that the leather made a nice recess for the thickness of the substantial and tough buckram used to cover the rest.

The temporary binding was then finished with a favourite decorative roll in french pale leaf, and a label stamped in leaf and glued into a recess.

As you can see it opens flat, which im sure all the artists will appreciate, and it holds........

Laurent de Brunhoffs watercolours of the story of the exodus, and Babar's family and friends sitting at seder are stunning, and I cant wait to get the chance to see it filled in 10 years time and put it in a permanent binding.

You can read more about the History and importance of the Rose family Seder book in a 2005 article written on PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly

My great thanks to both Joanna Rose and barbara for including me in this project. Barbara Wolff is a supremely talented calligrapher, and I look forward to binding the permanent binding for the NYPL in a couple of weeks, which includes some of her fabulous illuminations.

Barbara has for some years now been working on a hand illuminated Haggadah on vellum and I am including a link to the video which explains her process.

You can see more of Barbara's fantastic work here

happy - new year, Norooz, Passover , Easter everybody

box challenge - still going

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 15:16:00 +0000

yes ive been away from desk as it werefor quite some time........but work in the bindery has not stopped...
here are some of latest ...having fun with the stylus tool!

more later

Alaska.....the new PDB apprentice

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Wed, 23 May 2012 22:40:00 +0000

Alaska McFadden started as the 2012 PDB apprentice, and in the first few weeks is already making an impact......A book Artist in her own rite aleady, she runs A Wrecked Tangle Press in Brooklyn with colleague Jessica Elsaesser.
Alaska is already proven to be a great asset to the bindery, and you can follow her progress at her blog :

anything with a spine

check it out and see what she's up to....

blog hiatus over soon...too many irons in the fire...more boxes...plus part 2 of the new york book fair....i know but the books are worth the wait.......

Wrecks divide...Tangles bind....quite!

New York Book Fair - parte deux

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:06:00 +0000

This will be a first for the PDB blog as I join the mile high club as it were posting as I am from 30,000 feet in the air over cowboy country, Texas. It is amazing the things technology affords us to do.

Please enjoy these French Book binding gems from the fair.............

parte deux...........

It wasnt all ancient manuscripts, incunabular, iconography and brass ornaments at the fair.

Modern design binding and book art, aswell as fine print were surprisingly well represented.

A real highlight for me was coming face-to-face with a fine number of french art-deco bindings, know only to me by thumbing through the pages of my copy of Alastair Duncan’s “art deco and art nouveau bookbindings".

There were pockets of modern french bookbinding from those periods throughout the many booths, but there was a heavy concentration in the booth of Dr.Fluhmann from Zurich. The good Dr. had some stunning and famous bindings from both the art nouveau and deco periods.

The two amazing bonets on display were immediately recognisable, and would jump out at any bookbinder. The size, the characteristic gold tooling, yes all that , and the fact that you’ve studied them in books for a long time...nothing beats seeing one in person. Some lucky person snapped up Bonet's binding of "FLORILEGE DES AMOURS" that night for 25,000...a bargain! I congratulated the Dr. and he was assured that it had found a good home.....nae bother! as they say up north because he still had at least 2 more fine Bonet's, yet another spectacular binding with onlays, a very precisely completed gold work naturally, and studded with mother of pearl- “Bubu de montpartnasse by Charles Louis Phillipe”.
The pieces of shell I have used in the past were rather thin, these were a good thickness, so i can appreciate the difficulty of cutting such exacting shapes.

The affable Dr’s collection was just getting started ......there were more bonets that were on display - most of which was instantly recogniseable to anyone who has studied french bookbinding from that period.

A very familiar binding by Francois Louis Schmied (les climats) with effortless gold tooling with each impression and line completed without any discernable deviation in heat pressure or dwell....a typical design mapped out using half circles, and intersected straight lines giving that characteristic schematic and architectural look that is so pleasing and familiar in almost all objects from that period.

The binding opposite by Francois Louis Schmied, demonstrated a willingness to break from the more tradtional format...using appliques and surface gilding and colouring, The precision of the inlaid veneer was evident and of course impressive, but this binding was more notable for the abscence of a rigid architectural pattern. The calf skin was immaculate, not a scratch or a dimple in it!

The rest of the bindings on display struggled to compete for attention in Dr.fluhmann’s comparatively modest cases, but were no less interesting or famous for that matter.

The art Nouveau bindings are distinct....the colours are darker, the designs much more figurative, often using floral patterns of onlays and tooling , though not always. This style was evident in an art nouveau style binding of Goethe’s Faust Charles Meunier. Instantly recognisable again, not least for the planed boards and cut-relief leather work.....techniques I covered at school when doing medieval binding...and have seldom used since.

Next to that was a copy of Faust bound much more to my taste by Bonet..great leather work, and tooling, and of course the powerful dot-tooled pattern work. You can see the wonderful large grain of the moroccan skin, sadly no longer around.

The Dr’s modest booth was made up of 2 cases housing a little over ten bindings, small and Qto sized, all of them stunners, all of them significant bindings from an important period of bookbinding, all of them historically significant pieces of art.

The fair was huge, wall to wall booths from dealers all over the world, with just an absolute cocophony of books and art, and you would have to go far to find more great french bookbinding from that period and later.

French dealer Jean-Baptiste de Proyart brought along a large and fine collection of books. Now its probably the Philistine in me but i am a sucker for larger bindings...i guess there is just more of it to love....never truer when facing Pierre-Lucien Martin’s binding of Stephanie Mallarme’s “Un coup de des jamais n’abolira le hasard” .

The design is so simple and maybe that’s why I like it so much...it appears to be an alphabet of handletters cut in outline, so that the letter can be tooled and an onlay placed within the outline and tooled again... definately envious of the handletters.

I suppose that by now we have been spoiled so much that we barely even notice the rather modest bindings by Jean de Gonet on the shelf below...three diminuitive bindings all in a row showing the characteristic 3-phase binding, sectioned hollow, and exposed sewing. One stood out from the others in that it appeared the leather covering material at the spine seemed to be made up using strips of a skin weaved together??!!

Jean Baptiste also had another work by Stephanie Mallarme, bound by Bonet, which was very pleasant, and easy on the eye.....an embarrassment of riches by this time really..

One more then, by another famous french binder known for his adept finishing ...Henri Creutzevault..

The Brick Row Book Shop brought this very famous binding of “Le Grand Testament” by Francoys Villon bound by french binder Lucie Weill in 1948.

Again, although there was definately more historical bookbinding at the fair than anything else, there was a great deal of interesting finds and modern binding work, and we have barely scuffed the veneer.

Up next ...well bindings from Douglas Cockerell of course, not one , but 2 kelmscott Chaucers...and some great stuff from pirages, bromers, etc...etc...

descending over the Poconos on a sunny day....

the better part of leaving New York, is coming home.

Park Avenue Armory 2012 - part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 03:42:00 +0000

There really was too much to cover at this year's 52nd new york antiquarian book fair at the park avenue armory, so that as i visited on 3 seperate occassions over the weekend, this post really has to be splitt in to parts also.

Among a truly embarrassment of riches of religous and secular literature, there were distinctive pocket of book arts, modern design bindings, modern art, and my favourite, the art deco bindings of F.L.Schmied, Pierre Legrain, Paul Bonet et al.

But for now we will just have to content ourselves with the opulent and ancient religious manuscripts and incunabular, rennaisance bindings, anatomical text books, a very fine copy of Erasmus, Slavic gospels in solid brass bindings, and a rather interesting laced and tacketed account book.

When i walked in, your bookbinding senses suffer a complete overload...best to just pick a side and travel. If you went left like i did the first booth you would come across was Dr.Joern Guenther's from Zurich Switzerland.

In the middle you can clearly see a classic example, among many, of a rennaisance binding covered in red velvet, and to the right a smaller illuminated gospel of st.paul, by simon Master c.1150-75, who according to the card,

"was known to have illuminated books for Abott of Simon of St.albans.....The manuscript is extremely close to the group of glossed manuscripts made for Thomas Becket...."

In almost every case there were examples of hand illuminated manuscripts from throughout the medieval and rennaisance periods, of all shapes, all sizes, each unique, in a variety of bindings...some with clasps, some in leather, some with brass boss's. The standouts for me were the few later secular texts mixed into the soup of handcoloured and illuminated gospels and multiple "book of hours".

One of which was a first edition german translation of versalius' "de humani de corporis fabrica libri septem." The card read

"...one of the most influencial works in western medicine. Versalius(1514-1564)was appointed physician to Charles V. He is regarded as the father of modern ideas on anatomy."

Quite!...and this was the first booth!

I complemented Dr. Joern Guenther on his showcased bindings, and professed a certain naive incredulity as to how you would come by such historical bindings as a private collector. I asked when he started collecting, and he answered that his interest in books began at 14 and he has continued to collect for 40 years. Of course it doesn't hurt to be in the continent such work was completed, but when further pressed on where he came by them, he was suitably vague "private collectors...."

.......................................................................................................................

Ursus books was one of another booths that seemed to be overflowing with historically significant illuminated manuscripts and binding.

One standout was the slavic bible from the 17th century, with brass covers that were etched with illustrations.

Another notable addition at the Ursus was the use of I-pads to display different pages of the illuminated manuscripts ...pretty smart juxtaposition of technologies...

..................................................................................................................................

Gregarious Bookseller Rudolphe Chamonal from Paris had a few historical gems too - an early edition of Champier, french Humanist published in lyons, 1508. What was notable about this binding was that the velvet used was pink, but it has faded to beige.

................................................................................................................................

A trip over to James Cummings of New York would bring you face to face with a copy of Erasmus' Aldine adagia c.1508, bound in pigskin on double-cords and wooden boards, a translation of latin proverbs.

"in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king"

etc.........

............................................................................................................................................

Wrapping up the third day brought more discovery in historical binding, when touring with binder Christine Giard and my friend and book expert "a", we chanced upon an early contemporary binding of an account book for a jewish family of financeers. The binding is referred to as "laced and tacketed", and we were very lucky that both Chela Metzger and the bookseller at Musinsky Rare Books of New York, were fortunately on hand to help bring a greater understanding of the context, value, and construction of the book.

All together 3-4 days was nowhere near long enough to get a full experience from the show, and required quite a bit of photo editing aswell.

In the following posts, bindings from the 19th century aswell as modern design bindings, some book art, some modern art, and art deco celebrities like legrain, bonet and schmied will all require seperate posting..

next ...art deco bindings

PDB Apprenticeship program

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:54:00 +0000

The incomparable Faith Hale has spent the last year in the bindery with me, and it has been a great experience for both of us.

Faith, after a year, is continuing her education in the field of book arts enrolled on an MFA course at Mills college.

I will be sorry to see her go, and will miss her fastidious efforts for learning of course, but more than that I will miss her continually upbeat vivacity, and good humour which are always necessary qualities at PDB.

The position was advertised on the various lists and of course our facebook page, and I am pleased to announce that Alaska L.McFadden will be PDB's next participant in the program. Alaska is a graduate from Pratt university, and a talented book artist in her own right, operating A Wrecked Tangle Press with Jessica Elsaesser, and having her work already exhibited in a number of national institutions.

You can see her work at....

www.awreckedtanglepress.com

design work including back pared onlay demos are imminent.......

The Box Challenge - Huey P. Long

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:15:00 +0000

Robert Penn Warren's book follows the career of fictional character, populist governor Willie Stark's rise to power, and inevitable corruption and fall.

‎"If you were living in louisiana you knew you were living in history defining itself before your eyes and you knew you were not seeing a half-drunk hick buffoon performing an old routine, but witnessing a drama which was a version of the world's drama and the drama of history too: the old drama of power and ethics." RPW

Although he insists his book is not about politics or any politician in particular, his character Stark, is a mirror image of louisana's real and corrupt populist governor Huey P. Long.

Huey Long, began his career as a traveling sales man, selling amongst other remedys for varied ailments, a liquid evacuant called "black draught", still available today.

To the working poor he would remain a hero for providing schools, work, bridges and roads, for whole sections of louisiana's poorest communities, but to the richest and most powerful american's he was a scourge and by others still, like notable historian Arthur Schlesinger, he was the closest any american politician would come to a dictator.

Read more of his history here

Ken burns has a pretty good documentary about him too, which includes an interview with Robert Penn Warren about Long, or you can watch Broderick Crawford(1949), or Sean Penn(2006) deliver Stark's famous treatise on "dirt".

Stencilled and dyed onlays of Long in characteristic full flow, yellow dot tooling.

William Morris - 'nuff said

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:37:00 +0000

Its not often that you will get to see a Kelmscott edition, and when you come across one you are sure to remember, no doubt through a mystic haze. I'm sure every binder has a story or two detailing their discovery of a Kelmscott edition, me included.
So I was happy when a dealer and friend brought in Morris' edition of Beowulf.
Immediately recognisable are the decorative initials and marginalia, the intertwinning floral designs printed from woodblocks. The lettering is a characteristic medieval gothic, and the paper a rich white and well preserved.
The binding is not up to much really, cant see the benefit of pasting down ends onto a limp vellum cover, as you can see.
I remembering studying Beowulf at the beginning of a very short lived career as a student of English in North Wales....couldn't handle the anglo-saxon, but then, what did I know....

William Morris...'nuff said......

The bonefolder 2012 R.I.P

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

It was with mixed feelings that Peter Verheyen informed me that while a recent article I had written on my work was included in the latest "bonefolder" online magazine, it would actually be the last issue.
There are some 14 issues, covering many aspects of bookbinding, and with many how-to demos from notable book artists like Tim Ely.
I am downloading each issue and will be rebinding them for inclusion in the PDB reference library.
Who knows what will come next to take it's place.

The last issue includes an article written by yours truly "A Bookbinder's Gamble", chronicling the last 6 years of "The Box Challenge", aswell as some other great articles.

get it here

basic techniques for printing on goatskin

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 01:38:00 +0000

This post first appeared on the DBOA blog earlier this year, I am reposting it for the members of this blog.

Out of necessity in 2008-09, I worked hard on transforming the regular goatskin onlays I was using to decorate my boxes. I had already been working on the boxes for 3 years, and after completing a lot of regular tooled onlays, I needed to start using new techniques in order to keep the work fresh, and keep both myself and the client interested. I had done some stamped onlays, but limited the use of these for children's books, and other volumes that had distinct jacket designs. As in the set of C.S. Lewis, and boxes like the signed first edition of Camus' La Peste. However, I tend to avoid the use of plates where possible, for although they do save time and make the design process easier, they can give a box a generic machine made look. I had done lacunose on a box a few times, but that can be time consuming, and certainly not efficient when working on an edition. I needed a more inventive, artistic method to transfer an image onto goatskin, or to find new ways to work or transform the onlays.

It was with this in mind that I began printing on goatskin, by first carving images into blocks of wood. I took some fair goat, dyed it, inked up the blocks, and pressed them onto the pre-pared skins. The first question was, "should I pare the skins first or after printing?". The next issue to overcome was the exact method of pressing in the studio, without the use of either a table-top adana, or any other hand-cranked letterpress machine, which I would later employ to great effect.

I experimented at first with hand techniques similar to those used in Japanese wood-block printing, but found it difficult to get enough pressure. Lastly, resorting to the use of a nipping press. You can get good results using a nipping press, but it requires a deft touch. The problem with using a nipping press is that all the pressure is exerted on all points of the block at the same time, which can lead to bad bleeding. Using a cylinder is much more preferable for this reason, although even with a cylinder press its possible to bleed an image with either too much ink, or too much pressure. If you are going to try this yourself, care must be taken not to smudge away the image while pasting onto the surface. The method of pressing, and the fact that the onlay is already pared to 0.10 microns, means that the image tends to be more delicate.

I used this method quite well in Cormac Mcarthy's "Child Of God, and Budd Schulberg's"Waterfront", and some others, however having had some success with rudimentary printing on goat, decided it warranted using more complex methods.

In the next development, I made regular polymer plates (Box-Car Press), for use on a hand-cranked Vandercook cylinder press. By"regular", I mean a plate that has a positive and negative printable area. Images from distinctive jacket designs were relayed to the plate maker. With the help of friend and print artist Mindy Beloff (Intima Press)we set them up on her Vandercook. I brought both pared fair goat, and un-pared goat, and it became clear right away that we were going to get much better results more easily with the unpared goat. I need not have been concerned about the paring, as with enough skill and enough sharp blades, onlays could be comfortably pared down to .10 - 0.12 microns on the scharfix without stretching and distorting the images...mind you, it doesnt hurt to have a few spares!!!

The next step was to see if the half-tone polymer plates I had used in the reproduction of some famous civil war photography for the endpapers of a binding of Walt Whitman's "Wrenching Times", which I was working on in 2009, would print well enough on goatskin. They did, heres a tip - ink up the plate 5-6 times before rolling over the with the goat. The results were very impressive, and a long way from the rudimentary wood block printed onlays. The half-tone plate works using a seires of small dots allowing for a variety of tones in the image, much the way older printing technologies have worked. What about running the skins throught the scharfix. No problem!, again no stretch, but always advisable to have spares. It is still possible to rub the ink off by over pasting the onlays, and if the onlay is too thin, so caution must always be heeded, but the onlays were much more stable than the wood block printed onlays of before.

This technique provided me with opportunity to transform the images, whether by dyeing, distorting, tooling. Its a good way to add an element to a design without too much hand tooling, but using photography printed by half-tone on goatskin can get old very quickly, if its over used , or not used in combination with other techniques, or it is not essential to the overall atmosphere of the design. In the case of the binding of "Wrencing Times", the images used not only are some of the first ever photographs to be taken in history, and some of the most expressive and famous images of the civil war era, they go well with gaylord's wood engravings inside the book. The images though, have not been used without some element of transformation, ie , they have been deliberated distorted by colouring over them, in the hope of giving them more subtlety, and have been surrounded by broken surfaces of gold leaf, to give an atmosphere of a faded, empty, and perhaps forgotten glory.

The Latest method for printing on goatskin I have used (october 2011), is quick, easy, and very effective.

Photo-transfer, or off-set printing on animal skins for bookbinding is nothing new, but the methods I have used before in combination with acetone were in no way as effective as this last method. You do not need plates, a vandercook or proofing press, inks, or any other solvents. It is a very basic method, rudimentary, and possibly not the most tidy, or elegant method out there.....but it does work, and work well. Take an image, remembering to reverse it before printing on a high quality printer, or make a xerox copy - colour or black+white. Cover the image to be transfered with a layer of liquitex matte medium and press. If you are carfeull enough you should be able to remove the paper after drying using water and a piece of cotton. If you are too aggressive you can break the polymer bond, leaving craters, so take your time and do it in stages. This method is good for inlays or for parts of the cover that do not require movement...such as the joints and turn-ins.....as the surface will break, and so too the image....The images used for a box made for Woody Guthrie's own copy of "American Folksong", are over 12"x9" large, and the transfer is of a very good quality black and white, managing to capture all tones light to dark.

This last technique has great potential for making endpapers, doublures, or for use in covers as part of more complex collage work.

My experiments with printing on goatskin, and transforming goatskin in general will continue, and I'm sure there are many more techniques out there I could put to good use.

2012 - the year of the dragon

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:53:00 +0000

celebrating the coming year of the dragon with a new web site

check it out

all the best for 2012
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The Box Challenge - Woody Guthrie

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 21:20:00 +0000

It seems appropriate timing given the current climate, that the last two of my designs dealt with Huey Long, the populist politician, and now Woody Guthrie, who once said famously when accused of being a red..."I dont know about any reds, but I been in the red all my life..."

Politics aside, it is becoming clear the last few years that the most valuable tool in the bindery, apart from the scharfix, has been the large lightbox, found on the street some years ago, close to our first shop in Chelsea. An unbelievable find thanks to PDB CEO Denise Dovey.

I use it to trace patterns and images to make stencils for airbrushing, patterns for tooling and onlaying, to prepare designs using printed goatskins, tracing designs onto templates, and also now, in the production of off-set printed goatskin, and photo-transfer.

Now photo-transfer is nothing new, I first did some at LCP a decade ago, using acetone - but I never got results like this. The latest discovery in printing on goatskin, is quick, easy, and effective...and you dont need to use any plates, you dont need a vandercook, or any toxic chemicals. Its not a new technique, but it works well for goatskin, and has unlimited possibilities when it comes to constructing a cover design based on collage and used with other techniques.

The photo on the front board is from the LOC digital archive, and a famous picture taken possibly by Dorothea Lange(not sure), blown up, cropped, and manipulated in photoshop - sharpening contrast and exposure will ensure a good print. The photo on the back is taken from the opening shot of Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" which I found fitting to use considering Woody's song about Tom Joad, included in the book "American Folksong", the box for which houses Guthrie's own copy.(that's tom in the distance)When I think of American Folk in that era, I see baptists, hobos, blue jeans, riding the rails, windmills, dirt crossroads, and yes, clearly telegraph poles.

If I had been making this design for myself, I would have completed the design with rows of stormtrooper police, and sprayed anarchist signs all over it, giving it a topical and menacing look, a nod to Guthrie's own politics - "This machine kills fascists"....but its not, and I think using the pictures evokes Guthrie's era, and a sense of american folk, with a much more subtle flavour.

The box was finished with tooled outlines of images of Guthrie, which i decided to keep to the side, so as not to distract from the image. I also decided to just leave it there. It is lettered down the spine as it is a rather large and narrow box.

Boston GBW Standards

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 19:04:00 +0000

Denise and I are in Boston this weekend, with the rest of the bookbinding community. Boston is hosting the Annual, Standards Seminar for the Guild of Bookworkers. Various seminars, bindery tours, and all our favorite bookbinding vendors in one city. Registration is closed, but the vendor room is open to the public....see you at the

Boston Park Plaza hotel
50 Park Plaza,
Arlington st.

We shall be making a first visit to bBromer's Booksellers around the corner too

A quick method for surface gilding

noreply@blogger.com (Paper dragon books) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 16:47:00 +0000

for the bookbinders out there written up one method I have been usuing since 2010 for surface gilding leather......you will find it on the new DBOA blog

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