Bookmaking of a different kind

Hey, we made The New Yorker this week... 

“Vinnie, we gotta talk about what ‘bookmaking’ means.”

From this week's issue of The New Yorker.

You have no idea how many bookies are out there wanting to learn about making books, at least based on my my referring URLs...  This opens possibilities for further workshop venues - metaphor as material anyone?

The Spirit Books of Susan K. Gaylord

Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord. The Spirit Books. Newburyport, MA: Self-published, 2014. Available at Etsy for $20.

Reviewed by Velma Bolyard

The rich world of artists’ books encompasses so much work, from peculiar and fascinating ‘zines to amazing unique books, and all sorts of work in between. Each book made has purpose, each book is read in some way, each maker presents something to experience. As a maker and reader, I revel in the current variety and am always curious about seeing work that is new to me. Last April at the University of Southern Maine, Portland’s Book Arts Bazaar I had the pleasure of meeting Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord and spending a tiny bit of time looking a Spirit Book that she was showing. What I saw was stunning and made me want to spend more time with these pieces. Nothing had prepared me for the impact of “meeting” a Spirit Book. And this is why her new book The Spirit Books about this series is so generous, it gets you very close to these books the way you need to actually experience them. She’s added text that explains more about the making of each piece.

The Spirit Books begins with a sensitive and reflective introduction by Rosemary Noon. Noon writes, “The series claims mastery of a whole realm of knowledge outside language.” This rings true to me. Gaylord, a calligrapher, seems at ease with making wordless books, or rather books without words to frame experience while “reading” the piece. Marks on the pages are etched or sewn in a variety of ways, still missing are words. But the presence of many sorts of markings evokes meaning, feeling, contemplation, examination. The Spirit Books give the reader an insight into Gaylord’s thinking and process answering some questions while stimulating more.

Spirit Book #13: Hope Offering

In a brief and cogent artists statement about the body of work Gaylord writes: “Each page is a meditation that echoes nature with both repetition and variety.” I think she is completely correct here. Each book is intended to be a contemplative experience. I was surprised by the complex and at times subtle layers of meaning in the Spirit Books. Each Spirit Book is made from textural and earthy papers, with marks evolving from a variety of means; sewn beads, bits of twigs, seeds, plants, threads, wires, and patterns carefully composed for careful looking. They are meant to be displayed opened for viewing each in its own cradle or nest. This supporting structure is designed to fully compliment the book it supports. Further, the books appear as small alters of contemplation, meditations in fact. Gaylord achieves this by presenting each book as an important artifact, elevated to viewing by each one’s unique stage. The Spirit Books serves as a catalog of the series and is the next best thing to seeing a piece, you can get very close. The photography is clear and intimate, one sees the fibers lifting off the edges of pages, the gleam of an amber bead, the carefully placed stitches, or trimmed twigs delineating pages.

This modest book cataloging The Spirit Books series presents a grouping of 35 from the total of at least 73 books. Gaylord explains that the series remains fluid, sometimes she disbinds a book and re-composes it into another piece. Each Spirit Book is presented as a discrete contemplation placed in its own unique cradle, or nest, or one might even say alter built specifically to present and contain its book. On the verso page Gaylord names the book photographed on the recto. She describes the book including a few words about the making and naming of it. Gaylord wisely lets the photos present the books as singular objects. Her descriptions are sparse, but there is enough information to prompt thinking. Book number 1 is called Sewn Prayer and “it was named for the act of sewing which is considered a symbol of life and its temporal nature.” What The Spirit Books does so well is present a hint of the breadth of the series. It suggests how rich the visual and emotive experience of the Spirit Books series must be. In that busy, energetic marketplace of the Book Arts Bazaar, I wanted to stop and think about what was being offered. This book reminds me of stopping and looking.

SpiritBook #43: RenewedWisdom

I can imagine hiking in my own northern woods and coming upon a granite ridge face with a naturally occurring mossy niche, surprisingly holding a Spirit Book. I can imagine pausing, looking carefully, reading, and thinking this most appropriate. I can see that each page, each leaf, might echo the experience Gaylord is seeking to prompt. Alternatively, I can see an installation of many Spirit Books, in a space that is conducive to contemplation, with the books elevated and accessible so that you could look deeply into the architectural environments of each one while moving around them. Lacking the opportunity to see these books in person, or to act as a memento of this singular series, The Spirit Books by Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord is a fine alternative.

[Note: to view more of the Spirit Books online visit Susan K. Gaylord's site online]

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Velma Bolyard teaches emotionally disturbed children in Potsdam, NY. She also teaches papermaking, book arts, and fiber arts workshops, often at her mill, Wake Robin Papers. She holds a BS Design, MS Teaching, with elementary, art, and special education certifications, and has studied fiber, paper and book arts in the US and Canada. In 2000 she received the Nell Mendell Scholarship for PBI (Paper and Book Intensive). She has shown her work in fiber, paper, and books for many years.

Émigrés, The Transformation of Art Publishing in Britain

Anna Nyburg. Émigrés: The Transformation of Art Publishing in Britain. London: Phaidon Press, 2014. ISBN 0714867020. 288 pages.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Morris

Drawing upon her previous publication, From Leipzig to London: The Life and Work of the Émigré Artist Hellmuth Weissenborn, Anna Nyburg presents a broader view of the impact of émigré publishers, artists, and art historians upon the cultural landscape of Britain in Émigrés: The Transformation of Art Publishing in Britain. Although Émigrés contains a good deal of interesting information about the cultural background of émigrés, as well as deeply personal characterizations of these important figures, it should not be viewed as a thorough and scholarly publication.

The main purpose of the text serves to highlight the role of three publishing houses with Viennese roots, Phaidon, Adprint, and Thames & Hudson, and the paths of their founders through personal accounts and portrayals, with a heavy emphasis on the personal lives of Phaidon’s Béla Horovitz and Ludwig Goldscheider. While the first half of the text focuses on providing biographical information of noteworthy individuals in publishing from the first half of the 20^th century, the latter half explores the outcome of publishing houses Phaidon and Thames & Hudson post-1950, with a brief chapter on Adprint, founded by Wolfgang Foges, and the concept of ‘book packaging.’

Interspersed within the first chapter of character ‘portraits’, the reader will find fundamental  information about the developmental elements and genius of émigré book design and production; however, the sparseness and organization of this material is such that it might easily be missed. Even when Nyburg makes key points about book design, the reader is left without an image to illustrate an example of these transformative interior layouts. For example, Nyburg writes “He was particularly skilled at choosing details: selecting and highlighting a corner from a painting or sculpture and cropping the photograph, producing a fresh and different image with a technique that was unusual at the time” (p.15), but fails to provide an example and does not give a date or time-frame for when this ‘new’ approach was employed.

Moving onwards, Nyburg provides some cultural background for the émigrés of Mitteleurope, and how their education and immersion in the Classics, Literature, and Art aided in their natural abilities for design and publishing; the emphasis is again placed on Phaidon’s Horovitz and Goldscheider, along with Walter and Eva Neurath of Thames & Hudson. Additionally, there is more contextual information of what life as a Jewish person in Nazi Germany was like through personal accounts of the countless difficult decisions and hardships that were encountered during the late 1930s.

Chapters 4 and 5, ‘Arrival and War: Publishing Émigrés in Britain’ and ‘A New Start: Phaidon and Art Publishing after the War’ add value and necessary context as the book becomes more descriptive and focused on the specific elements for the arrival of émigrés in Britain: how they were able to assimilate into British culture, the processes in place for registering as aliens and the tribunals, and the creative relationships that arose from being placed within internment camps, such as the Isle of Man. There were also personal anecdotes from émigrés on the discrimination they encountered from British citizens who were unemployed or unsure of their alliance to Germany, but also how they were able to assist in war efforts from creating ‘black’ propaganda to fire-watching duties.

Nyburg also discusses the influence and guidance that was provided by Zwemmer’s Bookshop and Gallery in London to both émigré and British publishers and citizens, as they created a physical and intellectual place for art education and connoisseurship. She also discusses the role of Teddy Schüller, who moved to London in 1932 and was a lifelong Anglophile, and his work in creating the Oxford Companion to Art, published by Oxford University Press. He relied on his network of German-speaking art historians, including E.H. Gombrich (The Story of Art published by Phaidon), to complete this work that was realized in the 1930s and finally published by 1970. The text, however, begins to take a more negative approach to discussing the difficulties in the relationship between Phaidon’s Horovitz and Sir Stanley Unwin, when Phaidon moved to independent ownership, resulting in severed ties between the two parties. Continuous personal instances of uncited and biased information detract greatly from the main mission of the book in providing a narrative of this much underrepresented topic.

Moving on to Chapter 6, ‘Between the Pages: Typography, Design and Illustration’, the reader is able to find the necessary and much-needed historical context of the publishing and book arts landscape pre-WWI that illuminates the cooperative and collaborative relationships between English and German publishers and artists. Nyburg describes the influential relationships of great artists and typographers such as William Morris, Eric Gill, Stanley Morison and Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson on key German artists and publishers like Anton Kippenberg, Rudolf Koch, and Karl Ernst Poeschel. Although this chapter illustrates key elements in the transformation of British publishing, Nyburg writes with a biased voice about how German contributions to the book arts outweigh those of the British. In doing so, Nyburg presents contradictory information, as British publishers did in fact work for and employ German typographers and designers before WWII, and continued to do so throughout the 20th century (p.109). She also notes several British publishers that were knowledgeable and trained in German book production and design, such as Oliver Simon, Sir Francis Meynell, Stanley Morison and Abram Games, despite also noting the lack of professional training in publishing and exposure to fine art for British culture; additionally, British publishing giant Penguin Books, headed by Allen Lane, is briefly discussed.

Nyburg writes that typography and overall book design became ever increasingly important and ‘essential’ for all German publishers and book designers throughout the first three decades of the 20th century, but that it was only bibliophiles and collectors who were concerned with these aspects in Britain; however, earlier in the same chapter (Chapter 6) Nyburg discusses the start and influence of art nouveau movements in each country at the end of the 19th century that led into the early 20th century, which drew upon the exchange of education and influence between key British figures with German counterparts, such as Anton Kippenberg, owner of Insel Verlag. In 1905, Kippenberg “was so determined to keep his books free from the over-the-top Germanic style that he employed English book designers and typographers such as Eric Gill” (p.102). Such contradictory statements, confused further by jumping continuously across periods of time, create an unclear narrative that leaves the reader with more questions than answers.

One of the more interesting portions of the book comes from Chapter 8, ‘The Rise and Fall of Adprint’ since it discusses the extremely innovative practice of ‘book packaging’ as it transformed the practice of art book publishing in Europe. Further, it explores advances in publishing with color images, collaborative work with Penguin Books, the significant Britain in Picture series, the diminishing power of Adprint, and in particular on the personal career of Wolfgang Foges and the bitter rivalry between Foges and Neurath. The final chapters move on to discuss the Neuraths of Thames & Hudson and touches upon many others of importance for image reproduction such as Jarrold of Norwich Printers. However, there is some confusion to be found within the personal narratives of second, third, and even fourth generational émigré family members from publishing giants on their cultural background and training. While some individuals, including Eva Neurath, believe that the advancements of the émigré publishers would have achieved notoriety regardless of geographical location, Nyburg argues that the success of Phaidon and Thames & Hudson in the latter half of the 20^th century is due largely to the cultural values passed on from the émigrés as second, third and fourth generations acquired, operated and continued in the world of art book publishing in Britain. Richard Schlagman, who acquired Phaidon books, is described as saying, “…he questioned any notion of Phaidon’s Jewishness, saying that the tradition of culture often attributed to the Jews of ‘Mitteleuropa’ was more likely a product of central Europe itself’ (p. 187).

The most confusing aspects of the book lie within Nyburg’s negative stance on British culture, education and artistic efforts, as well as with the complete lack of design elements that are noted as being the transformational elements of art publishing (note: this book is published by Phaidon). Nyburg makes a series of criticisms of British culture and art, such as on p. 37, “In the visual arts, the only modernists who made their mark were Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson, in sculpture and painting respectively,” and education on p.211, ‘…the English working-class teenagers. Not only were they technically incompetent, unable to use a pencil or a brush correctly, but they were also embarrassed by the very notion of art other than as a form of technical reproduction.” Furthermore, she gives a disparaging portrayal of Sir Stanley Unwin throughout the latter portion of the book, who assisted Horovitz and Goldscheider in their personal and professional migration to England, despite Unwin taking on the responsibility for the personal safety and well-being of the émigrés for at least a decade (p.61-62).

What's more, the book is written in a manner that suggests the reader should have some prior knowledge of the subject, as well as with key figures of émigré publishing, writing and book design. Herman Ullstein, Jan Tschichold, Dr. Franz Leppmann, Ruth Rosenberg, Fritz Landshoff, Walter Landauer, Henrich Hauser, Bermann Fischer, and Peter Suhrkamp… are all mentioned within two pages (p.52-53) without any clarification as to how these individuals fit within the overall narrative, a common approach found throughout the text.  Although they may provide singular, tangible examples of a point Nyburg is trying to convey, it only adds further confusion as to whom they are and the role they played within the transformation of British art publishing. Short biographical information as an added appendix would have been particularly helpful for readers to refer to as they navigate and conceptualize the turbulence of these times and events.

In terms of book design, the text is extremely limited in images and illustrative examples of the transformation of art publishing; the majority of color images included are of book covers and very few page spreads. Other images interspersed within the text are black and white photographic reproductions of the émigrés and their family members, serving more as an archival exploration of the families instead of art publishing. Nyburg ironically groups together the core color illustrations of art books in the middle of the text using color plates, a common practice in art books before the evolutionary practices of Phaidon, Adprint, and Thames and Hudson (p.151). What Nyburg praises for the transformation of art book publishing by the émigrés is completely contradicted by the design and layout of this text, which is meant to detail and explore this specific topic. One highlight of the text is the appendices, which provide published books by Phaidon by year from 1932-55 and a list of books published by Thames & Hudson from 1950-1959. Additionally, the book boasts a rich bibliography of resources that will aid anyone in further research on this topic.

Ultimately, there is not enough information on the actual transformation of publishing in technical terms, particularly for image and photographic reproduction which played an immense role in the art publishing landscape, and an overabundance of information about the personal lives of the émigrés, including that of second and third generational émigré family members. The book would have been a richer resource had the technical processes and design elements been described in greater detail, and if Nyburg would have defined what constitutes an ‘art book’ in the transformation of the publishing landscape from the onset, the overall goal of the text may have been more clearly elucidated to the reader.

It could be argued that rather than the émigré publishers transforming the landscape of British publishing for art books, that the transformation lies within the collaborative relationships and exchanges between émigré and British art historians, publishers, artists and designers that were in place pre-WWI, and continue to the present day. Due to the Anschluss, many citizens of Central Europe were forced to leave their homes and find refuge in other countries, Britain being one of the most central. It was these circumstances which have led to the creation and foundation of British art publishing in the 20^th century, and the ability for these relationships to prosper for over a century should be applauded.

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Beth Morris is Assistant Librarian at the Yale Center for British Art, Reference Library and Archives, where she started a preservation program with in-house book repairs for the collection. She holds an MLIS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she completed her thesis on artists' book collections. Additionally she holds a BA in Fine Art from Elon University.

Finishing in Hand Bookbinding, a new edition

Herbert and Peter Fahey. Finishing in Hand Bookbinding: A reprint in facsimile of the 1951 edition with a new Introduction by Alan Isaac and Foreword by Maureen Duke. Oxford: Published by Alan Isaac Rare Books with Maureen Duke, 2014.

Edition limited to 500 copies. Hardbound, purple cloth, gilt. 227 x 152mm, portraits frontis, xviii, 82p, vi.5  mono. plates. 2 additional color plates.  £29. To order go to Alan Isaac Rare Books, or for those outside the UK via email at info@aibooks.co.uk.

Reviewed by Samuel Feinstein

Those interested in the book arts, especially bookbinders, will be grateful for the reprinting of Finishing in Hand Bookbinding this new edition, and each time at a different stage in my development of finishing skills. I was fortunate that this book was available to me for two years during my training at the North Bennet Street School in Boston. Now, with an affordable edition available, the knowledge contained within is much more accessible to those interested in learning, those wanting to review, and those wanting to further broaden their finishing practices. Regardless, these writings are useful for almost all levels of finishing. I would love to see this reprinting be the catalyst of a renewed conversation about hand-tooling, or, more than that, a rallying call inspiring enthusiasm for the use of this decorative technique.

The Faheys make an argument, carried throughout the book, as to why hand tooling is best in finishing. Unlike flat stamping, usually by machine, or even foil tooling, hand tooling using gold leaf is the most reflective and lively type of decoration; this is quintessential to everything that follows. Hand tooling imparts “life”, as the Faheys say, “by various tools reflecting the light and gold at slightly different angles and planes,” as opposed to the monotonous effect given by plate-stamped designs (Fahey 19). To those that see and handle them, hand-tooled bindings have an inherent allure created not only by the sumptuousness of the materials, but by the play of light reflecting off of the gold and the wonder it provokes. Dr. Marianne Tidcombe in the introduction to Twenty-Five Gold-Tooled Bindings wrote, “Gold-tooling is the most visible and striking of all the traditional techniques, but it has been less in evidence with each passing decade” (Tidcombe 5). Although written in 1997, it is hard to deny that gold-tooled bindings are much less prevalent than they once were.

The reprinted edition is a flat back case binding in full purple cloth, sewn, with plain endpapers. “FINISHING” appears on the front cover in gold foil stamping, a subtle tip of the hat to the Faheys’ belief that the covers should have a conceptual correlation to the title page. There is also an image of a hand holding a decorative finishing tool, while the spine has the name of the name of the book and authors’ last name foil-stamped in a sans-serif type-face. This facsimile of the 1951 edition is slightly smaller than the original printing. There is a new frontispiece showing Herbert and Peter Fahey at work, two new color plates and, best of all, a new Introduction and Foreword.

Alan Isaac’s Introduction to the new edition acquaints one with a brief background of the Faheys. For me, having only known about the Faheys from the first edition of this book, Isaac really brings them to life: their beginnings, their first forays into the world of bookbinding, their development of skills, the many places they studied in and people they studied with, and their legacy.

Maureen Duke’s Foreword focuses on updating some of the aspects of the processes the Faheys used. She says it beautifully: “Our knowledge concerning the deterioration of bindings has been advanced by those studying book conservation, and which has added considerately to the breadth of our understanding and affected the way in which certain procedures are done” (Duke xv). A few of the items she addresses are the advantages of brass type, the use of toxic solvents in neutralizing the oil used to hold the gold leaf in place on the leather, and the use of asbestos in tool handles. She also notes the development of shellac-based glaire, which is better suited to beginners than egg glaire.

The Faheys’ manual of 1951 is, in part, a response to what they felt to be a lack of more “modern” style finishing instruction the English manuals of the time, which had sections on finishing. The manuals in use focused mainly on period style tooling, and many were superficial in their instructions. The Faheys’ manual not only is much clearer about the process, but also incorporates their personal styles in design and concept.

The act of finishing is meditative. Losing a sense of self while tooling for days, weeks, or months, when all that exists is the design, the gold, the book, and the tool, is such a difficult thing to describe. This book articulates well many of the “feelings” experienced with finishing that are not easily translatable into words. The Faheys take their time in explaining the processes in depth, and will sometimes come back to an idea another place in the book to further expound upon it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention their first instructor, Ignatz Wiemeler of Germany (1895 – 1952). Wiemeler helped in the development of their own philosophy, in both appearance and concept. His influence on the Faheys’ style is readily apparent, especially in the use of line. Wiemeler was in harmony with the Arts and Crafts Movement, the belief in using the best materials, sewing on raised cords when the paper suited that technique, having the binding’s decoration harmonize with the content, and taking the best of centuries-old techniques to improve the bookbinding of his time. This excerpt from his article Bookbinding, Old and New gives a general feeling of his philosophy:

A well-made book must be beautiful, in each stage of its development, if the finished book should be convincing. The natural beauty of the whole and of each single part cannot be premeditated and executed, but must be borne in mind along with the work. It cannot be seen alone, but more than that, it must be felt by touch of hand. It is the sum total of exactitude and care for every detail, of the harmony of the size of the book and the thickness of its covers with the width of its edges; in short, it is the result of inspired work (Wiemeler 159).

Weimeler had an ardent belief that the use of lettering was not simply for identification of the book, but an integral part of the design. This is something that the Faheys incorporated into their own philosophy, and it is easily noted when looking at their bindings.

The Faheys explain what is meant by “finishing” in their Introduction: “The term “finishing” is applied to all work done after the book has been forwarded. The finisher must decide what lettering and decoration are to be put on the book. This includes tooling of the patterns in blind or with metal, onlay and inlay work, polishing and varnishing” (Fahey 7). They prefer simple designs rather than complex. Not necessarily “less is more”, as is seen in some of their designs with large amounts of tooling, but rather using finishing tools in a way that is not exceedingly complex. They are practical about this, both from a design standpoint and craftsman standpoint. As they say, "A finisher must make things easy for himself" (Fahey 12).

The Faheys describe at length the tools used in finishing. I can only speak from my own standpoint, but some of the terminology when referring to the different types of tools may be a product of the book being, as Maureen Duke says it in the Foreword, “of its time” (Duke xv). One such possible example would be the use of the term “straight line tool” (Fahey 40) when referring to a line tool for tooling on a spine. The difficulty with that term is that there is a distinction between straight line tools (or pallets) used across the spine, what I would call a “flat-faced pallet”, and straight line tools used on the boards, which have a slight curve to it, to ensure even pressure throughout the impression. I would suggest John Mitchell’s An Introduction to Gold Finishing, pages 77-91, as a wonderful source explaining the different kinds of tools and their usage. One other marvelous source on finishing tools is Tom Conroy’s Bookbinders’ Finishing Tool Makers 1780-1965, which, in addition to the wealth of information on finishing tool makers, has an in depth Introduction that identifies the different parts of finishing tools and discusses how they were made.

The Faheys’ finishing process is straightforward and explained clearly. In addition to the order of operations, they write at length about the “why” for each step. The basic procedure involves the following steps: making up a template on strong, thin paper using tools and a stamp pad; securing the template in place on the leather and tooling through it; removing the template and tooling again; building up a blind impression with several strikes of the tool until the impression has been tooled with a heated tool and moisture in the leather (but surface-dry). The leather is then given a vinegar wash, and tooled with a warm tool when surface-dry; the impressions are penciled in with vinegar, then given a first coat of glaire before the vinegar has completely dried, and a second coat of glaire is applied after the first has dried. While the glaire is drying, the leaf is made ready, cut to the size necessary for the given tool; the tool is heated to the correct temperature, is given a slight amount of oil with which the gold is picked up, and the impression is tooled with the leaf. “In the finest bindings, gold is put on several times to be sure it is solid and brilliant” (Fahey 51). This order of operations can be applied to most gold/leaf tooling, with the exception of water impervious leathers. Variants for different kinds of leather, such as calf, are explained.

Although their preference in transferring the leaf into the impression is to pick it up on the tool, they also explain the process of all-over tooling: glairing the entire area to be tooled, laying leaf onto the leather with grease or oil on the leather to keep the gold in place, tooling through the gold, and removing the excess gold with a solvent. There should be no extraneous movements, as these lead to mistakes. Every time the tool is picked up, it should with intention and with purpose. “Tooling should be done firmly and decisively—any additional pressure and prolonged dwelling beyond the first impression does not help and may harm through too much depth, twisting of tool, and breaking the gold” (Fahey 51).

The gilding size the Faheys use is egg glaire. In 1951 Fixor was already being used in France, and shellac-based glaire was being developed and used in England during and after the Second World War, when eggs were a limited resource. But the Faheys are writing about their particular practice. Nowadays there are proponents of each: shellac-glaire for its ease of use and convenience (especially helpful on water-impervious leathers, as well as in developing skills since it eliminates the complications of “open-time” with egg glaire), egg glaire for its brilliance and ease in cleaning impressions. In addition to blind tooling and tooling with leaf, they also have a chapter on inlay and onlay, and give several different onlaying practices other than their preferred method. Tooling on different materials is also discussed, including parchment and cloth.

Five black-and-white plates of Fahey bindings are included at the back of the book along with a small description of each; these were present in the original printing. The unifying concept between book and binding is explained, revealing more of their philosophy. Their use of line is prevalent in each plate, as is their use of the book’s title, but both in different ways. The two new color plates in the front do not have descriptions from the authors, but are higher quality printings and showcase the beauty of gold on leather, and the effect of Fahey bindings.

The Faheys wrote this book to help enrich the binding community by contributing their particular finishing processes. No doubt, other finishing manuals and books describe more modern designs from the time period. One is Jules Fache’s La Dorure et la Decoration des Reliures, published in 1954. He was an absolute master, and though many might not know his name, almost everyone knows one of the designers for whom he worked: Paul Bonet. And there are others, such as Emilio Brugalla’s Tres Ensayos sobre el Arte de la Encuadernacion (1945), that talk about tooling in a more modern manner, in addition to traditional designs. The problem with these other texts for us is often the language barrier.

The use of hand-tooling in bookbinding captures and illustrates the magnificence of the materials. The Faheys continued to explore such tooling, which became an expression of their own artistry. They, here, have written a manual based on their extensive knowledge attained through fastidious work and discipline. When practiced, it provides an excellent framework for one’s finishing methods. It also is a great fount from which from which one can apply certain aspects of the Faheys’ process. This book stands as a treatise of utilizing hand-tooling to make beautiful and creative bindings.

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Bibliography:

• Brugalla, Emilio. Tres Ensayos Sobre el Arte de la Ecuadernacion. Madrid: Ollero & Ramos, 2000. (Originally published: 1945)
• Conroy, Tom. Bookbinders’ Finishing Tool Makers 1780-1965. New Castle, DE: The Oak Knoll Press, The Plough Press, 2002.
• Duke, Maureen. Foreward to Finishing in Hand Bookbinding.
• Fache, Jules. La Dorure et la Decoration des Reliures. Paris: Chez L’Auteur,1954.
• Fahey, Herbert and Peter. Finishing In Hand Bookbinding. Alan Isaac Rare Books with Maureen Duke. Oxford, 2014
• Isaac, Alan. Introduction to Finishing in Hand Bookbinding.
• Mitchell, John. An Introduction to Gold Finishing. Edited and Designed by Nolan Watts. Worthing, Sussex, UK: The Standing Press 1995 and 2005.
• Tidcombe, Marianne. Introduction to Twenty-Five Gold-Tooled Bindings, An International Tribute to Bernard Middleton’s Recollections. Edited by Marianne Tidcombe, with an essay on “The Use of Gold in Bookbinding” by Bernard C. Middleton. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press 1997.
• Wiemeler, Ignatz. “Bookbinding, Old and New”. Translated from the German by Peter Mueller-Munk and Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt. The Dolphin, A Journal of the Making of Books. New York: Limited Editions Club, 1933: 146-160.

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Samuel Feinstein trained formally at the North Bennet Street School program where he studied under Jeff Altepeter and Martha Kearsley. Since graduating in 2012 he has been in private practice creating fine bindings, luxury clamshell boxes, new bindings in period style, and gold finishing for other binders. He is an avid proponent of tooled-bookbindings, and he teaches occasionally. His work can be seen on his website www.SamuelFeinsteinBookbinding.com or in more detail on his blog: www.SamuelFeinstein.wordpress.com

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.

Methods of Presenting e-Publications

The Bonefolder ceased publication as an e-journal over a year-and-a-half ago, but is still seeing heavy regular access via a wide variety of websites or online databases. It's great to see the level of use steady. Since 2004, 554,133 page views, 385,738 unique page views for all issues combined.

The past issues are made available as downloadable PDFs from Syracuse University Libraries' digital collections server. Other journals hosted from there are also on that server as well as in our institutional repository (IR), SURFACE. While fully accessible as downloadable PDFs, that format is not interactive, i.e. does not facilitate discussion around topics in the issue via social media, embedding in other websites, nor does it have lots of "pretty" bells and whistles like page-turning...

The use of digital collections, multimedia, interactivity is a big topic in academic library circles and some of us realize that there is a lot more we can do to facilitate use (and reuse) materials of our collections. Here some really interesting articles on the issues and challenges:

• Dark Matter: The dark matter of the Internet is open, social, peer-to-peer and read/write—and it’s the future of museums
• More at Code | Words
• The Evolving Scholarly Record, an OCLC Research publication
• See also: A modern day equivalent of Leonardo’s notebooks? Bringing an “archival mind” to the evolving scholarly record

There are a lot more of  those kinds of articles in the library/academic literature.

In order to experiment and gather feedback from users, a group of us at Syracuse University are going to be trying out different platforms to see how they work and how we might integrate them into other tools and workflows we are using.

Here our first, ISSUU, all bundled together in a "stack" that hopefully looks better than most of our desks...

And here, embedded, our last and perhaps best issue...

So, what do you think of this mode of publication? What are advantages, disadvantages, ...? How you you like being able to share directly to social media? Use the comment form below and let us know what you think.

As we try other platforms, we'll share and gather your feedback - thank you.

Then again, there's this...

Student Reading Practices in Print and Electronic Media
By  Nancy M. Foasberg
From College & Research Libraries, September 2014

Conclusions
“Despite the ever-increasing popularity of new ways of reading, the study participants read in a fairly traditional way. Most of them preferred to use print for long-form and academic reading, at least partly because they felt more comfortable annotating docu¬ments in a print environment. They read electronically a great deal, but this reading consisted primarily of brief, nonacademic materials.

Their dislike of electronic textbooks was especially striking… The University of Minnesota provides an Open Textbook Catalog, which identifies open textbooks and allows reviews; notably, the designers of the catalog offer inexpensive print on demand options for each work, acknowledging that many students dislike online textbooks.  In the midst of this attention to the digital, it is worth noting that students in the pres¬ent study were less comfortable using textbooks in an electronic format, and some of them said they usually print out the sections they use, thus negating any savings.”

http://crl.acrl.org/content/75/5/705.full.pdf+html

Playing with Pop-ups: The Art of Dimensional, Moving Paper Designs

Helen Hiebert. Playing with Pop-ups: The Art of Dimensional, Moving Paper Designs.  Beverly, MA: Quarry Books, 2014. ISBN 1592539084. 144 pages. $24.99.

Reviewed by Suzy Morgan

I love pop-up books. I collect pop-up books:  my family still gives them to me as birthday and holiday presents, even though I am a grown adult. I work in a library with a substantial collection of pop-up books, and I am quick to tell anyone who will listen that I have gotten to hold and play with an original Meggendorfer pop-up book. Therefore, I wasn’t surprised when I was asked to review Helen Hiebert’s new book, Playing With Pop-Ups. A passing observer would probably remark that I was “elated” at the prospect of doing such a review.

Teaching the art of the pop-up is difficult, just like any how-to book about bookbinding, because it challenges the author to describe 3-D concepts in a 2-D format. Many pop-up structures function with a front-end and a back-end structure, just like a website: the viewer almost always only sees the front-end result, and the back-end support is not very apparent except to the experienced reader. I’ve looked at many a damaged pop-up book and wondered, “How on EARTH did they make this?” while trying to fit two parts of a broken whole back together unsuccessfully.  Helen Hiebert’s approach to this essential problem with teaching these complicated structures is a combination of providing templates to practice on, and a wealth of concisely illustrated instructions.

The book begins with a very brief history of pop-ups, a commentary on the state of pop-up arts today, an interesting glimpse into the production of a commercially published pop-up book, and overview of the basic pop-up terminology, tools, and tricks of the trade. I particularly enjoyed the description of the production line process of a commercially published pop-up, myself. Each different kind of fold and cut used in the following project instructions was clearly illustrated with a nice photograph and a well-written description. Hiebert also provides a list of recommended tools, as well as alternatives for some tools – like using a paperclip or the back of a knife instead of a bone folder to fold or score paper. This is a nice touch that makes the craft more accessible and promotes the kind of “creative reuse” so endemic to bookbinding.

However, in my opinion, the real genius of Hiebert’s book is the templates she provides for each project. These are pages in the book that are meant to be photocopied onto the paper of your choice, and then you just follow the dotted, dashed, and solid lines with bonefolder, knife, and glue, to create the pop-up. The first three projects are termed “Pop-up Warm-ups,” and are meant to familiarize the budding paper-engineer with the basic tenants of pop-up structure. The projects that follow increase in difficulty, but provide a nicely diverse range of different types of structures and themes.  These include a pop-up city skyline, a Valentine’s card, paper earrings, a tunnel book, and a volvelle with six slots. Our conservation lab intern and I spent a happy afternoon completing one of the projects using the templates. It’s really a no-brainer way of teaching the structure, as it removes the risk of beginner mistakes such as mis-measuring; each part of the template is clearly labeled with different lines for cuts, mountain folds, or valley folds. The other wonderful thing about the templates is that many of them are blank or simple enough that you could easily customize them or slightly modify them to create an original work. In my opinion, the templates get the point across very effectively and leave very little confusion about how they should work.

The final section of the book is devoted to a beautifully photographed gallery of current-day pop-up book artists and their work. Seeing these artist’s amazing work serves as inspiration to think creatively about your own future projects, as well as a visual bibliography of pop-up books to seek out in your local library or bookstore. As a collector of pop-up books, it was reaffirming to see books from my own library represented and to feel that kindred spark of passion for the art. In other words, “We like the same pop-up books!” Hiebert’s book is a solid addition to the library of any beginner or intermediate paper engineer, and is a welcome complement to other pop-up book manuals, such as Carol Barton’s The Pocket Paper Engineer series or David Carter and James Diaz’s The Elements of Pop-Up.

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Suzy Morgan is a 2009 graduate of the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin, where she received a certificate in advanced studies in conservation from the Kilgarlin Center for the Preservation of the Historic Record. She has had internships at Northwestern University, Syracuse University, the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Ringling Museum of Art. After working as the web developer at the Newberry Library and working in private practice as a book conservator and preservation consultant, she is now Preservation Specialist for the Arizona State Library.She is also the creator of The Multi-lingual Bookbinding/Conservation Dictionary Project: The goal of this project is to combine, in one place, all the known bookbinding and book conservation terminology, in as many languages as possible.