Secret Belgians

I took a workshop this weekend at the Center for Book Arts here for making Hedi Kyle's Secret Belgian Binding structure. The story behind this binding is delightfully nerdy and involves it being discovered and reworked by either Hedi Kyle or Anne Goy, depending on which blog you read. I'm on team Hedi myself - I have a major bookcrush on that lady. She designed the blizzard book, one of the very first structures I tried to muddle through while at my office job using xerox paper and stealing company time.

Here are some great clearly written instructions, if you want to give it a try, and this page has some good tips as well.

Patern is Movement

I'm beginning to feel like I'm treading water a bit, as the action in the studio has picked up a bit and there isn't enough down time for me to learn new techniques. Instead I've been playing around with papers and colors using the standard case bound format, and am pretty happy with how these have turned out! Because any time one makes books that aesthetically match ones rugs, one is obviously On To Something (eye rolling is perfectly natural and ok by me).

Anecdote time: My first day, as previously mentioned, was a self-esteem trial, but the one moment of shining hope was when Gavin asked, "What is the purpose of endpapers?" [For all y'all muggles, endpapers are the colored sheets at the beginning and ends of the books that make it all nice and pretty.] I responded enthusiastically "To prevent the boards from warping!"and he seemed pleasantly surprised (so far, this has been the only instance of such, but I'm still warming up! I WILL impress him again, if it takes all dang year!). "No one gets that right!" he said, and I immediately killed his buzz by confessing that the only reason I knew that was that I had read it on his blog. It's difficult, this compulsive honesty thing.

Truly medieval

 
Gavin and I are testing out different headbands to use for an upcoming project he's doing with the New York Public Library, and I'm fairly certain we're not going to be using these because they take a VERY LONG TIME to do. They're just so tedious! But also, very cool-looking, so I'm sharing them here. Keep in mind that these are super-prototypey and would look a lot fancier if we were using them for real, but then again, I'm totally into this rustic look. It makes me think of gladiator hair ornaments. Because that's a thing, right?

They're from the cutely/quaintly named (and book binderly-essential text) Headbands: How To Work Them.

Mothers Day book

 

Here it is! And I couldn't be prouder. It's a fairly simple quarter cloth case binding but it took alllll day to finish. Sprinkled edging, lovely lil' headbands too. This is actually the first book I've felt ok with gifting, so good thing its Mothers Day soon, right? Because Mom deserves the best!

Fancy schmancyness

I've just purchased the most beautiful paper I've ever seen! I've never spent so much money on a single piece of paper - a sheet of Atelier Flavio Aquilina (totally fancy, obviously) which is actually rather moderately priced (and can be purchased from Talas). I can't wait to use it. I'm feeling all swoony. I'm having the same dork-fest feelings of excitement that I do when getting a hank of really fancy yarn, except you can't get all feely with paper. You just kind of have to kind of look at it.