At the Society of Bookbinders Seminars last week, a variation on the standard cased-in binding (=hardback) was demonstrated. Yesterday I prepared a textblock of handmade paper and today I bound it according to the handout and my notes.
Textblock plus one of my recent acquisitions - a bookbinders weight of lead. I have three and each weighs as much as a brick.
This is the start. The endpapers are attached to the text block, the spine has been prepared and the first cover board has been put in position on front and back. The spine section has been bound. I have used black book cloth.
And this is the book completed. What I have done is to partially cover another coverboard (one each for front and back) and then these are applied to the first cover board and wrapped neatly round the edges which takes a lot of care. I used cotton dyed with two colours which had been mounted on bank paper.
Now it is not like me to rush home and try out a new technique, so why am I so enthusiastic? There are several reasons, all to do with using fabric for book covers. The demonstration did the whole procedure in leather. 1) I could see it was much easier to get an accurate result than the standard method. 2) Since I now need two separate pieces of fabric for the two covers, I can pick two pieces which are not next to each other, in other words, select both covers individually instead of having to make compromises about which piece the whole cover is cut from. The above photo shows two sections one cut from each end of the fabric. 3) when you are putting the title on, you can now position the spine title and the front title entirely independently and, oh boy! is that a good thing.
This book has not been titled because it contains blank paper, but I shall start on another one and put a title on that. There is nothing to stop me putting fabric on the spine or using three different types of fabric. Don't think I would care for that but you never know.
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