The Bindings of Trevor Jones

Jones, Trevor, Angela James and Colin Hamilton (editors). The Bindings of Trevor Jones. Foss: Duval & Hamilton, 2015. 9.5 x 11 inches. ISBN 9780950135519. 160 pages. Hardcover, dust jacket, $75.00. For orders outside of the Americas, cost is £45+ postage outside of UK. Please contact the publisher, duvalandhamilton@gmail.com to order.

Reviewed by Amy Borezo

“I consistently design beyond what I know I am capable of doing, and have to discover or invent the means as I go along.” – Trevor Jones (1931-2012)

The Bindings of Trevor Jones catalogs over 140 works by this eclectic bookbinder who sought experimentation with materials and a connection with fine art in his designs. In this impressive collection spanning nearly fifty years, his legacy in the history of bookbinding is made more than apparent. As one of the founding members of Designer Bookbinders, he and his colleagues helped revive the art and craft of bookbinding in Britain during the second half of the 20^th century. The images in the catalog are supplemented by detailed sketches and notes from the binder, as well as articles he wrote in the 1980s and 90s that are as informative and enlightening today as they undoubtedly were then.

Cat 49, Ivor Bannet, The Amazons

The full color images of the bindings are arranged in chronological order, from Jones' first experiments as a student to the fully formed, complex and expertly executed designs of later years. His early work was influenced by his first binding instructor, Arthur Johnson, who displayed a modern design aesthetic that echoed the fine art of the middle of the 20^th century. Jones' early bindings, in their asymmetrical compositions, amorphous color onlays and fluid black tooled lines, call to mind the bindings of Johnson and Edgar Mansfield, as well as painters like Miro and Picasso. At that time and in the years to come, Jones was inspired by the work of his peers and teachers rather than the purely decorative or overly restrained bindings of the past.

This forward looking approach to binding led to a great sense of experimentation. The catalog contains an informative essay on the use of spirit dyes, which is one of the many inventive techniques Jones utilized in his work. The freedom which the use of these dyes gave him was essential to his artistic development and allowed him to incorporate his training as an illustrator into his bindings. Jones often used the cover of a book as a painter would a canvas, filling it completely with pictorial, painterly representations, frequently of the human form. In his design of James Joyce's Pomes Penyeach, the binder made an innovative structural decision based on the need to have a long horizontal surface on which to depict a reclining nude. He doubled the amount of board surface by hinging another board to both the front and back covers. These inner covers are hidden when the book is fully closed, revealing only a portion of the female nude figure on the exterior. He used this cover structure many times throughout his work to increase the surface area on which to construct a design while simultaneously creating a cinematic effect of a long horizontal image fully revealed only through manipulation by a reader/viewer.

Cat 64, James Joyce, Pomes Penyeach

During the 1970s, many binders responded to new movements in visual art and architecture that exposed the function of an object and incorporated it into its design. During the same time period, the massive flooding of libraries in Italy brought to light many examples of historical binding structures which complimented the new functionalist art movements. Jones took note of these developments and made use of the sewing support as a design element in several of his best bindings. Dark cords and lacings snake across covers showing themselves in unexpected places. In the description for his binding of Edgar Mansfield's 11.2.80 On Creation he reveals that he used a method of chance to determine the composition of the cover, lifting the long cords up and letting them drop repeatedly, tracing the results. This method of discovery and openness to process is indicative of much of his work. The design for this same binding continues on the inside of the covers where the laces from the exterior appear again, embedded in the doublures of grey goatskin, having emerged through eyelet holes or wrapped around edges.

Cat. 80, Edgar Mansfield, 11.2.80 On Creation

One of Jones' most ambitious projects is his first binding of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The structure of the book and its casing is artfully complex and captures the ominous mood of the text. The binder uses old leather gloves to create onlays in dark browns and reds, cutting and spreading single gloves out to construct seemingly monstrous hands that appear to be reaching, flailing, or grasping. Three sewing tapes are exposed on the spine and ten dark leather thongs trail across the front and back covers, gathering at each corner and spilling over the covers as loose ties. The closed book sits in the chest area of a large straight-jacketed, simplified human form sewn from canvas in muted colors. The human form wraps around the book, snapping closed, revealing the roughly stenciled title of the book. The whole is contained in a hinged, wooden box. Every detail of this work, including the custom paste paper flyleaves, evokes a powerful and haunting image of the human soul, psychologically bound and oppressed.

Cat. 75, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Cat. 75, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

In Nineteen Eighty-Four and other work, Jones incorporated found materials in his designs, such as leather gloves, scraps of clothing, fur, handbags, wallets, and lacings. The found materials seem to share a connection to the human body, with the marks of time and use celebrated and highlighted by the binder. Jones also integrated into his designs the raw edges of the animal skins he worked with and would reinforce the grain of the leather and purposefully pucker and manipulate the skins, creating texture and dimension.

Cat.118, Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

Cat.118, Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

Jones had a deep connection with much of the work he chose to bind. He states in one of the catalog's essays that “[E]ven when I am binding a book for someone else I am at the time making it for myself.” The texts he worked with have a distinctly modern character, including those by James Joyce (of which there are many examples), George Mackay Brown, George Orwell, Arthur Miller, and David Jones. For the binding of Arthur Miller's, Death of a Salesman, Jones used onlays, inlays, cracquelle work, and stenciled spirit dyes to create two gripping, large scale self-portraits on front and back covers. The perspective and scale of the faces allow the viewer to connect with the deeply flawed everyman at the center of Miller's story. The tone and color of the portraits is dark and beautiful, ranging from a warm honeyed brown, like an aged photograph, where the cracks and fissures of the cracquelle work are most apparent, to the deep complimentary blue and purple-blacks. These are not just book covers, they are compelling paintings as well.

Trevor Jones created deeply personal work, unique in the history of bookbinding. The craftsmanship and art-making on display in this collection is informative and inspiring for anyone interested in the art of design binding, while the essays and historical context for the work advance and enrich the field of bookbinding on an international scale.

An excerpt from the introduction can be read on Oak Knoll Books' site.

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Amy Borezo Amy is an artist, bookbinder, and the proprietor of Shelter Bookworks, a bookbinding studio in Western Massachusetts.

InsideOUT, an exhibition of contemporary bindings of private press books

InsideOUT, contemporary bindings of private press books. Jeanette Koch (ed) with photographs by Paul David Ellis. Designer Bookbinders, 2014. 80 pp with full color throughout. GBP15.00 + sh.

An exhibition catalog review by Amy Borezo 

The recent exhibit InsideOUT, organized by Designer Bookbinders, showcases the work of 59 binders from the UK and the US each of whom completed a design binding of a text published by one of nine fine presses. The culminating works are an instance of eating one's cake and having it, too. These are one-of-a-kind pieces of art that illustrate the collaborative nature of the field of book art, with years of mastering one's craft on display on both the inside and outside of the book. Designer Bookbinders does a great service to the field as a whole in creating exhibitions like this one.

The 80pp full color catalog for the exhibition is expertly designed and organized, with images of the fine press texts acting as a subtle backdrop to the images of each binding. The bindings are artfully arranged on the white of the page, without a visual bounding box, only a slight shadow at the very bottom of the cover to indicate its three dimensionality. Detail shots of the books highlight a particular structural or design element. Bindings are grouped according to press, which allows for bindings of the same title to be shown alongside one another, giving the viewer insight into the quality of the writing and illustrations contained within, as well as the creative process of the binders.

A successful design binding should interpret the text to be bound in an original and visually compelling way while showing the style and technical skill of the individual binder. There are too many examples of successful design bindings in this catalog and exhibit to call out each one individually. However, there are a few here that directly illustrate the project of the exhibition and which display other characteristics that are of interest to me personally.

The three bindings for the Arion Press Journey Round My Room by Xavier de Maistre, are compelling in their similarity of interpretation, which speaks to the strength of the writing in conveying its message and to the publisher in communicating this message in its choice of layout, typeface, color, and accompanying imagery. The text, originally written in 1790, is an autobiographical account of a young officer imprisoned in a single room and who takes to describing in specific detail the voyages he takes in this confined space, both in body and mind. In the Arion edition, the text is accompanied by hazy photographs of objects in a room by architect Ross Anderson.

Journey Round My Room, binding by Annette Friedrich

All three binders of this text—Annette Friedrich, Jo Bird, and Haein Song—chose to represent the work with abstract imagery. The colors on all three design bindings are very similar, in the rose and tan color range, communicating to the viewer that these hues must be referenced in the writing itself. Annette Friedrich's book is bound in a light tan goatskin with tooling of precise and subtle markings in a variety of pigmented and metallic foils. The scale, color, and placement of the delicate dots, dashes, crosses, and arcs seem both improvisational and studied, representing the physical and mental wanderings of the main character. The outer bounds of the book cover smartly act as the visual boundaries of the room. Haein Song's binding is comparable in design using tan goatskin and similar markings, yet instead of tooling, these markings are thinly pared, irregularly shaped, feathered pieces of off-white leather onlay. They read as ghosts of footsteps in a room, yet are described as being reflections of light. The subtle shift in scale from foreground to background of these pieces creates a sense of depth, which is pleasing to the eye. Jo Bird's binding is covered with a series of small, carbon-tooled, irregular spirals arranged in a grid to illustrate the confined yet varying path of the main character about the room. In all three of these bindings, the bookbinder truly responded to the text and created a work that adds to the perception of a reader/viewer.

Steel Horizon, binding by Stephen Conway

Stephen Conway created two bindings for the texts of different presses. These bindings both used simple yet bold design elements and the inherent beauty of the covering materials to great effect. The design for Steel Horizon, a collection of poems by Jonathan Wonham about his time on a North Sea oil rig, published by Incline Press, is a checkerboard grid of panels alternating in dark grey goatskin and figured vellum. While a viewer may expect to see a binding with a long horizontal line as a design element for any text that contains the word “horizon”, Conway goes one step further, evoking an ominous feeling appropriate to the poems contained within. The dark grey goatskin panels are arranged to create a sense of enclosure as both horizontal and vertical lines visually lock into one another creating a cross, cross-hair, compass, bars, a window. He reinforces this effect by tooling horizontal and vertical lines in silver onto the goatskin panels. The mottled off-white vellum panels read like a leaden sky as they alternate with the dark grey. The corners of the panels are riveted into place, an industrial element that creates another subtle visual cue giving the reader/viewer a very real sense of place.

His other binding for Britten's Aldeburgh, published by Whittington Press, uses the same design elements of goat skin panels and figured vellum. The figured vellum is the off-white backdrop to a series of horizontal rectangular black goatskin onlays, stretching across the spine from back to front cover. The horizontal panels are tooled with gold horizontal lines. Conway uses visual repetition to great effect as the black and gold lines repeat down the cover from head to tail, calling to mind waves or a somewhat bleak landscape that is seen again and again. These lines also reference musical notation and the work of the composer Benjamin Britten, on whose walks around the Suffolk coastline this book is based. The natural isolated areas of darker pigmentation on the figured vellum are used expertly on the front and back covers at the very edges of the boards, again evoking the sky and gathering clouds. Conway has a very strong individual style and his technical skill is impeccable, but he does not allow his visual sensibility to overshadow the text—he honors it with his interpretation.

Bicycle Diaries, binding by Hannah Brown

Two exuberant bindings by Hannah Brown and Nicky Oliver show a less formal approach to design binding, yet are both successful. Embroidery on bindings dates back many centuries and lends a warmth and intimacy to books that is evident in Brown's work. In her design binding for the Bicycle Diaries, published by Midnight Paper Sales, the viewer is invited to look down on a city sidewalk scene of pigeons and a bicycle. This pictorial rendering has a three dimensional, hyperreal quality that completely transforms the materials she is working with. The three dimensionality is enhanced by a wash of acrylic paint used underneath the embroidery. The text is about the author Richard Goodman's journey through New York City on the day of September 11^th.

Lost and Found, binding by Nicky Oliver

Hannah Brown's interpretation of the text places us there with the author, unable to look at the most common city scene in quite the same way ever again. Nicky Oliver uses a painterly, unconventional approach to design binding. Her binding for Lost and Found published by Whittington Press is an expressive burst of color, line, and motion. She has a distinct style that shows layers and layers of work with leather dyes and decorative tooling. Her dynamic use of the entire cover as her canvas creates a visually compelling composition that draws the viewer in.

Circus, binding by Donald Glaister

Another binding of note is Donald Glaister's interpretation of Circus by Shanty Bay Press. His masterful technique combines a number of traditional and non-traditional materials to illustrate the larger-than-life experience of the circus. The tent on the cover appears to bust open and overtake the binding, partially covering the exquisitely tooled title on the spine of the book. His work shows humor, skill, and an artful engagement with the conventions of design binding.

All of the other bindings not mentioned here are worthy of their own examination and I only wish time and space allowed for me to write about them. I am honored to take this tour through the exhibition, courtesy of the fantastic accompanying catalog. I highly recommend this catalog to anyone interested in design binding.

The Exhibition was on display in the Layton Room Gallery at St Bride Foundation, London, 15 May to 22 August 2014.

Venues in the United States are:

Houghton Library, Harvard, MA: 11 September - 13 December 2014
Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis: 10 January - 28 March 2015
Bonhams, New York: 10-19 April 2015
San Francisco Center for the Book, California: 6 June - 5 July 2015

The exhibition was organized by Lester Capon, Stephen Conway, Simon Eccles, Sayaka Fukuda, Peter Jones, and Jeanette Koch. 

For more information and to order a catalog visit Designer Bookbinders' website.

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Amy Borezo Amy is an artist, bookbinder, and the proprietor of Shelter Bookworks,  a bookbinding studio in Western Massachusetts.

Airbrushed Decorated Paper - By Amy Borezo

One of my great  pleasures in hosting the Bind-O-Ramas is to to see binders and book artists challenge themselves to try new techniques and often create something truly special. In this case the standout for me is Amy's decorated paper. Below her description of how she created it. Thank you Amy. View all entries featuring bindings of "The Bone Folder" in the 2012 Bind-O-Rama here.

Our guest blogger today is Amy Borezo, book artist and edition binder.

For the Bind-o-rama exhibit featuring the set book The Bone Folder by Ernst Collin (translated by Peter D. Verheyen), I was inspired to create a version of the German Stiffened Paper Binding. The portion of the text itself which most interested me was the section on decorative papers. While the binding style is modest, I wanted the decorative paper used for the covering material to be inventive — having both a modern feel to echo the graphics of the time period in which the book was written, and a contemporary, process-oriented sensibility. To accomplish this, I used a bone folder (in keeping with the title of the book) to score a pattern on paper, which I then folded and airbrushed to create a unique geometric design. To begin, I first scored a hexagonal grid onto a piece of Cave paper using a metal bonefolder. Next, I folded the paper into a concertina in one direction (horizontal) along the scored lines. Leaving the mountain and valley folds intact, I aimed the airbrush so that the paint would only hit one side of the mountain fold with red paint.

Click to enlarge.

I then turned the paper around 180 degrees and painted the other side of the mountain folds with the airbrush in yellow. The color dries fairly quickly and I was able to now flatten the paper and begin folding along the diagonal scored lines. I changed to white paint and repeated the process of aiming the airbrush to only hit one side of the mountain fold with the white paint. I decided I liked the variation of having heavier coverage of white near one corner with a gradual fade to the other corner. This effect was easy enough to produce by angling the airbrush slightly.

Click to enlarge.

I flattened the paper again and folded along the opposing diagonal for the final application of white paint. I debated whether to continue along more folds, but felt like the resulting pattern was visually strong. I particularly like that the final design has a strong Art Deco look and that the paint was used to capture the physical process of the pattern being made through folding. I finished the binding by adding a subtle color fade to the book cloth on the spine with the airbrush in red.

Click to enlarge.

Go to Amy's blog for detailed views of this fantastic binding.

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Amy Borezo received an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from RISD in 2000. After graduating, she worked both as a bookbinder in a production bindery and as a book mechanic at Daniel Kelm's Wide Awake Garage where she learned that you can reinvent the book each time you make it. Amy is now a contemporary book artist and the proprietor of Shelter Bookworks, an edition binding studio in Western Massachusetts.