Bookmaking – Page 71 – Green Chair Press Blog

In Cahoots Press

Macy Chadwick is a fellow letterpress printer and book artist here in the Bay Area. She calls her press “In Cahoots” and she’s recently put up a website with photos of her work. I first got to know Macy when she wrote about her playful long-distance collaborations with her friend Lisa Hasegawa for Ampersand. They work on joint books for one hour a week and mail the results back and forth. (You can read the article here and see photos of some of their books here.) Macy has a new book, and wouldn’t you know, it’s got a map theme! Called The Topography of Home, it’s letterpress printed and the pages have cutouts inserted with silk paper that’s been stenciled. The book is to the left with a detail below.

Pictorial Webster’s

I had a wonderful time exploring all the books on offer at the Codex Foundation Book Fair in Berkeley the other day. My favorite book (although it’s hard to choose just one) is Quercus Press’ Pictorial Webster’s — a 400+ page leather-bound book printed using the original wood engravings and copper electrotypes of the Merriam-Webster dictionaries of the 19th Century — the 1859 & 1864 editions of the American Dictionary of the English Language (the 1st illustrated dictionary in America) and the 1890 International Dictionary. I think I first saw this as a work-in-progress when I had a table at a book fair in Seattle, about 5 years ago. It was wonderful to see the printing finished and the book bound, and even better to hold it in my hands and page though it.
The Quercus Press website has a lot of information about how they obtained the images (borrowed from Yale), how they selected the order, and how they were printed (using a linotype and letterpress). There are also lots of photos of page spreads. Here’s a page from the finished book:

Adhesives: Double-Fan Binding

Quick and easy, the double-fan adhesive or millennial binding is a great solution for turning single sheets into an extremely durable paperback book that opens flat and stays open. Its strength comes from the way the pages are glued, using a double-fanning technique that brings glue just a millimeter or so into the textblock. And its “openability” comes from a pop-off spine that moves independently of the textblock.
I learned this method from notes by Dominic Reilly, who learned it from Gary Frost. Currently conservator for the libraries at the University of Iowa and author of the Future of the Book blog, Frost is renowned for devising conservation bindings based on enduring mechanical features of historic bindings that he has “deconstructed” and reproduced. In this particular structure, he sought not only to protect a book’s contents and ensure that it opened flat for easy reading but also to incorporate such modern materials as transfer tape and Tyvek and accommodate laser-printed copies and production editioning methods.
I’ve adapted this structure for my food & exercise diary and Sherlock Holmes notebooks. It’s good for anything that needs to open flat—like a calendar or day planner. It’s also can be used to rebind a favorite paperback book. While it’s an easy book to make, please note that you’ll need access to a guillotine (stack paper cutter) to give the book a final trim.
Full directions and pictures are available here.

My Brain Has Always Governed My Heart

This year marks the 150th birthday of Arthur Conan Doyle, the man who gave us Sherlock Holmes. To celebrate I’ve designed a blank notebook with a Holmes theme. First I asked my friend Glen, expert in all things Sherlock, for some quotes I might use along with the portrait. He suggested

My brain has always governed my heart

and

I am glad of all details, whether they seem to you to be relevant or not

The first is from The Sign of Four and the second from The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.
I letterpress printed the covers and bound the books using a perfect (glued) binding. I really like the zippy red spine paper as a contrast to the black & white cover (I also used the red paper for endsheets). They are 4-1/4″ x 5-1/2″, with at least 100 blank pages for writing, sketching, or note taking. For sale here.

Macclesfield Alphabet Book

The Medieval ancestors of today’s graphic designers created ‘model’ or ‘pattern’ books to show their work to potential clients. Only a handful survive and the British Library is currently raising money to acquire an example of “outstanding significance” — the so-called Macclesfield Alphabet Book, a book that has been in the Earls of Macclesfield library since the 1750s. Below are a few more pictures, and go here to see even more.

All the Pennies in Her Pocket

In a comment to one of my blog posts, Judith mentioned that she read the Live Journal handmade books community. I hopped over there to take a look, and among other things found this wonderful book made from pennies with a double needle coptic binding from Kate Black. Here’s her post with more about making her penny book. (Kate also sells buttons and mirrors that say Reading is Sexy.)
Want to know more about the double needle coptic binding? Read here — search down for “COPTIC STITCH” to find the instructions.