Recently in Bookbinding Category

Every time I go to J Hewit & Sons, my favourite bookbinding supplier, I feel the overwhelming desire to bring a camera, tripod, and a day's free time. I don't think I will ever tire of taking pictures there.

I could take the "industrial site" type pictures of all of the machinery they use to dye leathers, or the "variety of stuff" pictures of the rolls and rolls of finished hides, or the "run down melancholy" shots of the light from the dusty windows falling on the worn boards of the upper floor. I'd photograph the staff, who always treat me so well, if it wouldn't embarrass them.

But I don't, because I am there to buy. I did take a few shots of the pale leathers they had piled on the Low Value Shelf upstairs.

Edges of a stack of pale goatskin

Taken 7 April 2006

The same grained goatskin, with the marks of the stretching clips still visible.

Taken 7 April 2006

Pale calfskin, un-grained.

Taken 7 April 2006

Maybe I can find a market for a feature article on the company - its history, its processes, its business. I'd love to do it. I'd love to have the excuse!

Just back from the Society of Bookbinders biennial convention in Bath. Here are some things I learned there, in roughly chronological order:

1. Conservators are not conservationists.
2. The history and decoration of Russia leather.
3. Chicken feet have much more potential than I ever realised.
4. Boxmaking.
5. Don't bother to make a relevant box for a binding competition unless it will definitely be judged and shown.
6. Sewn boards binding.
7. The value of an unexpected lunch partner, and why so many people are fond of Paul Delrue.
8. Bradel binding.
9. I really do like the other members of the Scottish region of the Society of Bookbinders.
10. People value the Bookweb for its confessional side as well as its instructional side.
11. Never get into a scar competition with someone who was in a car accident. Not even with my burn scars.
12. When I drink, I talk faster. When some of the people I drink with drink, they think slower. Eventually, communication stops.
13. Sometimes it doesn't stop soon enough.
14. I cannot be an apprentice or have a single mentor at this stage in my binding life.
15. Another form of onlaying.
16. Tini Miura would make a magnificent arm-wrestler, if she weren't so kind.
17. Ways to alter a bone folder and a paring knife.
18. I can walk through shoulder-high blackberry bushes because I am able to goose-step like Basil Fawlty.
19. I want to do more botanical onlay bindings.
20. Herons make a very peculiar sound when they're angry.
21. How to use a slightly punctured plastic bag, a hair rubber band, and a disposable paper bath mat to wick the water from a dripping tap silently down the plughole.
22. People will buy pretty much anything for a tenner from the back of a white van.
23. Never be intimidated by someone simply because she seems talented, confident and beautiful. She probably doesn't realise she is all of these things.
24. You meet colleagues in the darndest places.
25. Motor racing has the potential to be interesting, even if it doesn't interest me.

After endless promises and 404 messages, the Evilrooster Bindery has its own sales and display site. Thanks to Martin's Movable Type wizardry, I can now post photos and descriptions of my bindings in a more customer-oriented site than the Bookweb. (Not that the Bookweb will go away - but I felt the need to differentiate between the face I present to people who might like to buy my books and other binders.)

The driving urgency to get the site up is that we are at Worldcon, I'm in the art show, and I want people to see the same books there that are on display on my site.

Go look! Evilrooster.com awaits. What are you doing reading this?

As part of my desire to encourage a little more civility in American politics, I have decided to give a gift to someone whose politics I disagree with. Specifically, I'm sending a handbound copy of the Constitution to President George W. Bush.

I was going to be sarcastic about it, and say something about the rules of good gift-giving. After all, you're supposed to give people something that they might find useful, for instance at work, and something that they don't appear to own already.

But really, that sort of commentary is pretty nasty and counterproductive. And I think this is a matter more for sincerity than nastiness. So here's the text of the letter I'm sending along with the binding. The language is a little stiff and florid, but the feeling behind it is sincere.

Dear Mr President,

I am an American citizen, although I have been living in the United Kingdom for almost eleven years. Living abroad has given me an interesting perspective on our shared identity as Americans, particularly with regard to our Constitution. It really is a unique and valuable document, one that has made our country what it is today.

I am concerned, therefore, by the ways in which your current policies do not reflect the values enshrined in this foundation of our nation's law. I know that, as President, you must find a balance between the security of our fellow citizens and the culture of liberty that America values. I am sure you are sincere in the choices you have made. Unfortunately, I cannot agree with those choices, which seem to me to undermine many of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

I am particularly worried by the lack of trials for some citizens suspected of terrorism, the chilling effect that use of "free speech zones" has on the First Amendment rights of people who disagree with you, and the drive to use the Constitution to limit peoples' freedoms and the states' rights to legislate with regard to marriage. I am also concerned by our frequent disregard of the Geneva conventions, either by the reclassification of prisoners or by a simple failure to follow its rules.

If we are to be the beacon of liberty to the world that we hope we are, then America must take the lead in defending peoples' freedoms, both inside and outside of our borders. Peaceful, secure people do not as a rule join terrorist organizations; people who feel that their culture and religion are under attack may very well do so. By working in isolation and appearing to target Islam as a whole, we are the terrorists' best recruiting incentive.

As a token of my regard for the Constitution and the ideals it expresses, I am sending you the enclosed leatherbound copy of this most important document. I created it myself, using traditional fine binding techniques. If you prefer not to keep it, I would appreciate its donation to an educational institution, where it can inform and educate another generation of Americans.

Very Truly Yours,

Abi Sutherland

I plan to post the book and letter on Tuesday (post offices are closed tomorrow). Normally, I wouldn't post pictures and binding notes on a gift before the recipient has seen it. But I doubt that President Bush reads this blog, so I'm unlikely to spoil the surprise. (If I have, I'm sorry, George!)

Though it was rather overshadowed by subsequent events (scan, tenth anniversary), I did actually go to the Society of Bookbinders biennial Training and Education Conference.

I was deeply intimidated by the entire thing. I'd never met a bookbinder before, ever. And the bookbinding world is still deeply rooted in the traditions of apprenticeship and mastery. Self-taught amateurs are like orphans among the hereditary nobility. Add to that that I'm crushingly shy about talking to strangers...

Of course, my fears were entirely groundless. Like any group of enthusiasts, the bookbinders were keen to talk to a fellow addict. I fell in with the Scottish contingent almost unintentionally, when I struck up a conversation with a woman from Aberdeen while touring the Reading University library bindery. Soon we had an accustomed place at the refectory tables for meals, and were chatting at tea breaks.

It was the first time I've ever had to listen to people talk about binding, watch demonstrations of bindings, and get a good in-person look at a few (very) fine bindngs. I even managed to buttonhole Mark Ramsden for some feedback on my green book. I'm still reeling a bit, digesting it all.

A few preliminary conclusions:

• I'm not so hot on forwarding (book construction) as I thought. This is actually a good thing, because it means I need more practice, which means I have an excuse to bind more books. Previously, I was more conscious of my need to practice finishing (cover decoration), so the effort of forwarding (while pleasant) felt like a distraction from the learning process.
• I have become increasingly conservative in my binding efforts. It's time to reverse this trend. My interest in a lot of the more adventurous structures and decorational techniques was reignited by the things I saw, and heard about, in the conference.
• I have a real taste for modernity in bindings. Most of my books on binding focus on the traditional styles, from about the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries through to the Arts and Crafts movement of the early 1900s. Some of these binding styles were very gaudy, and my taste runs more to simplicity. But until I saw some of the slideshows of modern bindings, I didn't really see how to marry that taste for simplicity with fine binding. Now my head is full of ideas, visions of simple, restrained bindings. They'll even cost me less in finishing tools!

I've been photographing my bookbindings for some time now. And after my (much more artistic) fellow binder Chris asked me the dimensions of some of my things, I've even been measuring them. So I've had a growing collection of photos and measurements clogging up my hard drive and my notebooks.

At the same time, I'm often looking to show people the work I've been doing. I usually have my small green book with me in person, and at work there's my big black and brown notebook. But anyone I know online has no way of seeing what I've been up to since the experiment last May.

And recently, since I've started doing more with the covers of my books, my learning curve has taken another steep climb. I find myself wanting to record the lessons I've been learning. I take a lot of mental notes about how my bindings go, but then I forget it all as other bindings get my attention. And since I've been giving much of my work away, I don't even have the books to remind me.

It's amazing that it took me this long to put the three issues together and make a gallery. But it's up now, with pictures of most of the bindings I'm willing to have seen by the public, plus binding notes on some of my recent works. And with a format is in place, it's going to be easier to record what I've been doing.

(Those who know me best may have a comment or two on the tone of the binding notes. You know who you are, and I know what you're going to say. But trust me. It's the flaws I learn from, not what goes right.)

Last year, I started up the Bookweb to document some of the bookbinding work I've been doing. After an enormous amount of effort, I created one small area, describing an experiment in spine construction. Then I got wrapped up in, erm, binding books.

So now I've taken a week or two to add some more to the site, and to impose a bit more structure on it. I've added book reviews, spurred on by my father's gift of four excellent binding books. And now I've finally got my information on equipment, describing how I have made many of my pieces of equipment myself.

Now all I need to do is add a gallery of my best work. If I can find the time between bindings!

Check it out!