English book artist Mandy Pattullo has a treasure trove of wonderful looking fabric books on her website. And this blog post.
Category: Bookmaking
Another Patron Saint of Bookbinders
There was a lot of interest in St Bartholomew Day earlier this week. There’s another patron saint of bookbinders (as well as poets): St. Columba. His feast day is June 9 (hopefully I can remember that for next year!) and the story is that he wrote 300 book in his lifetime and went to great lengths to obtain or make copies of valuable manuscripts (he lived 521-597). And this blog tells this rather modern story:
In 540 his first master procured a copy of St. Jerome’s Vulgate. Columba got permission to view it and made a copy of it for his own use. His master, Finnian, on being told of this, laid claim not only to the original but also to the copy. Columba withheld this copy, made by his own hand, and the question of ownership was put before the King of Ireland. Columba lost, the trial ending with King’s decree: “To every cow her calf, and to every book its son-book” (an interesting early case of copyright infringement).
Corner-matic
I stumbled on this little “tool” made from book board that would make trimming bookcloth corners much easier. It’s from a blog called The Design Loft (the page I found is here). The blog says:
this is what was fondly called the corner-matic in the conservation lab. It is used to cut the corners of book cloth when making up the cover. I think the Banister book has instructions for something similar, but I much prefer this design. This pictures shows the corner-matic face up so you can see how it is put together. To use it, place it face down over the corner you want to trim and you will get a nice 45 degree cut the right distance from the board corner.
(UPDATE: see other posts about a corner mitering tool here)
Happy St Bartholomew Day!
Today, Aug 24, is St Bartholomew Day, the patron saint of bookbinders. Aug 24 is also the day of the traditional printer’s wayzgoose. A wayzgoose is an entertainment given by a master printer to his workmen. It marks the traditional end of summer and the start of the season of working by candlelight. Later, the word came to refer to an annual outing and dinner for the staff of a printing works or the printers on a newspaper. The picture I found of St Bart with a book also shows him with quite a ferocious knife! Maybe he’s bent on defending that book! So, today, make a book, print something, or just have a very nice dinner!
In a Ring Box
A message inside a little ring box by Christine Kelly . Check out her blog where she does lovely textile work with words.
Joan Ingoldsby Brown’s Immortality
I ran across a picture of Joan Ingoldsby Brown’s book “Immortality” the other day. It was a big inspiration the first time I saw it in about 2001 at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Brown said “A 4″ x 4″ accordion book containing Emily Dickinson’s poem about immortality and unfolding into a 20″ x 30″ collage using found engravings of the 1800s to depict the era of the poem.” I think the poem is the one that starts with
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
