Couldn’t concentrate on bigger projects, yesterday, so I resolved to push everything aside (literally…I always start with an orderly table, but by the end of an afternoon it is so piled up with tools, materials, books, junk, that I end up doing all my work at one little handkerchief-sized corner of the desk) and took a break to make a miniature book. A bijou book, if you like.
A great way to test out new binding techniques and use up small scraps that you’d normally throw away, this miniature book took less than two hours to make.
On the technical aspects of this binding, I’ve used the instructions in The Penland Book of Handmade Books—Eileen Wallace’s ‘Simplified Binding‘ to be precise—to make this. It’s certainly a quicker way of putting a book together, but I have to say that I don’t have much confidence in the way the covers are attached to the rest of the book…it just doesn’t seem strong enough to me, gluing the covers to spine material and the twill tapes, and then a little bit of extra holding from the endpages. But I am probably being paranoid, and unless the book is massive, this technique should hold it together just fine.
What I really do not like about the Simplified Binding, as it was presented in the Penland Book and as you can see in this biscuit book, is the way the spine fabric is visible on the inside of the covers. Aesthetically speaking, it jars, it looks unfinished, exposed, crude.
Which is fine, and which is why you have to try each technique out for yourself…learn the process, in order to improve the process. While putting this biscuit book together, I could visualize very clearly how to get rid of the problem. I’ve started another miniature book and so far so good, I think the solution is very workable. I’m also sure that what I have had to come up with, myself, is standard practice among professional bookbinders, it makes that much sense! But it’s more fun when I come up with these things on my own…
Show you tomorrow!
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