I ran across Hannah Brown’s tumblr the other day. She does fine binding commissions and has a wonderful post on how she made this cover for a miniature book about Monet. It’s a leather binding that she painted and then added details with sewing and onlays. Here’s the cover and a closeup, but check out the post as there are many more details.
Sharon McCartney‘s books are inspired by nature. I love that she’s used a compact, with all its openings, for her artwork. She also makes artist’s books, see the 2 final photos. See all here work here.
Years ago, my friend Cathy gave me a lovely letterpress printed book by Carol Blinn of Warwick Press (I wrote a blog post about it here.) I was excited to see that Carol would be at the Oak Knoll Fest and we had a nice chat. She talked to me about her newest work, which is a mixture of paper and fabric pages with sewing and no text, a completely different turn for her. The fabric was gorgeous—vintage Japanese cloth—and the paper she dyed herself. The book cried out to be touched. The word for my prompt challenge group this month is “embroider.” I thought I knew what I was going to do for my book, but Carol’s work has sent me in a completely different direction.
Here’s the book I saw. She doesn’t have it on her website, but check out her book about her paper dyeing here.
Here are two more objects I saw at the Oak Knoll Fest recently. Because I make my own miniature scroll book, I was drawn to these more elaborate and larger scrollers. The first is by Jessica White (Heroes and Criminals Press) and features her story “The Bad Sparrow.” It’s letterpress printed and hand colored, with a 25 foot scroll in a 14x20x5 box. She has a youtube video of the machine working here. See more here.
The second one is by Thomas Parker Williams (Luminice Press) in Philadelphia. Williams drew directly on the scroll (10ft long). The viewer “travels” though an imaginary landscape, over hill, dale and water. See a video here and many (better) pictures here.
Here are a few highlights from Oak Knoll Fest, the book fair I attended last weekend. There will be more later in the week.
Editions Denise Lapointe showed a prototype of a long skinny book where the pages had “cants” (log cuts) printed letterpress on Japanese paper. There’s a poem written specially for the book that will be added later.
This great photo is in the box housing “James Reid: Selected Wood Engravings,” published by Brier Hill Gallery in Boston. Below is one of Reid’s woodcuts. See many more here
At the table next to mine were students from the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Bowe House Press in Richmond. The book below is called Immortals. It’s 15 6 x 6 x 6″ triangular panels with letterpress printing on both sides, hinged together so the book can be manipulated and read in a variety of ways. I loved the way the book moved. More about it and other student books here.
In my bookmaking, I keep coming back to this poem by Emily Dickinson
Bee! I’m expecting you!
Was saying Yesterday
To Somebody you know
That you were due—The Frogs got Home last Week—
Are settled, and at work—
Birds, mostly back—
The Clover warm and thick—You’ll get my Letter by
The seventeenth; Reply
Or better, be with me—
Yours, Fly.
Last year I started to make a tunnel book based on the poem, but didn’t get very far. Recently I revisited the book. Here’s the first version. It’s constructed by placing 5 panels between 2 accordion-folded strips (instructions here). The strips make up the sides of the book. It’s a matchbox book, so it’s small—1-3/8″ wide by 2″ tall.
I put the poem on the sides, in the accordion folds.
Two problems with this version. First, the poem is hard to read. Second, I printed the side accordion on white paper, which cracked when I folded it, showing the white core. So I tried using blue paper.
The blue is a lot darker, almost a gray blue, so the printing colors are dull (it’s printed on my Epson inkjet). There’s not as much light inside the tunnel because the paper is blue on both sides. For the poem, I tried turning it 90 degrees and made the type darker…
But now only every other line of the poem is visible, with the odd lines hidden in the accordion fold, so that didn’t work! Next I looked for a brighter blue paper. I found one, and used it for the accordion sides. I printed the panels inside the tunnel on white paper, hoping the blues wouldn’t be too different. This would keep some white on the paper facing the inside of the tunnel, to provide more light. I also added slits in the accordion sides. I put just half the poem on the sides—on the folds facing the viewer.
Here’s another shot of this test. The poem placement is better, if I used a different font it might really be readable (that’s an 19th century handwriting font in this test)
But where to put the rest of the poem? Only half of it fits on the 2 sides. I tried putting it on the top of the matchbox sleeve. Then I showed the book to several people who all said the poem actually wasn’t readable on the sides. So I tried the back of the book
That allowed me to put an envelope on the matchbox sleeve, since the poem is a letter. And I changed the sides to have clover. (I tried putting the the poem in the envelope, but it’s awfully tiny and hard to get the sheet out of the envelope.)
Here’s the current state of the tunnel—the fly and bee need work (with prototypes, sloppy cutting is allowed!). And how will the viewer know the poem is on the back of the book? That’s when I realized that the poem can go in the bottom of the matchbox, so the viewer sees it when she removes the tunnel book. So that’s what I’m going to try next.