Fancy, Shiny Books

My boss, Gavin Dovey, has spent the summer cranking out one incredible box after the next, but I think his latest one for One Hundred Years of Solitude is my favorite. The picture doesn't come close to doing it justice - it's just gorgeous in person, and the gold leafing positively glows. Since I'm just getting started with leather work, it's a bit premature to start fantasizing about precious metals, but I think I'm in capable hands, no?

Stacks 'n rolls

Around the bindery.

Peacocks and Nonpareils

I haven't been spending as much time at the bindery as I'd like but am keeping busy working on my own projects and spending as much time as possible at my current favorite place in the world, Center for Book Arts. I had the pleasure of taking a paper marbling class with the fabulous Lauren Rowland who was knowlegable and zany and hilarious and all-around awesome, and I'm pretty happy with some of the papers I made. It was a great group of women to work with and I'd absolutely love the opportunity to work with Lauren again!

Nerd Shoes

Check out these sweet Bookbinder Heels from Anthropologie. I'd totally snag a pair if I weren't a hundred feet tall (and if they weren't a hundred dollars out of my price range). I'm a size 10.5 - anyone feeling like Santa?

Pen nib dress

Here's a detail shot from an exquisite dress made by John Nussey and Steven Tai. They used nearly 800 pen nibs attached to tiny motors which make the nibs flick around like little fish - it's just astounding. Check out their page for a video of the dress in action or go here for more pics.

Just dying

I have a new arch nemesis and it is Yellow Leather Dye.  That stuff is potent! We've been dying leather for some of Gavin's boxes and the bindery is a glorious mess of pigment and gory spills, and I totally enjoy days like these because I feel all useful, scrubbing away. I mean, I'm still absolutely anxious when it comes to doing work that a client may see, and casing in gives me hypothetical hives, but I can clean up like nobody's business. I'm a trillion times more confident with a sponge than a bone folder, which is why I dive right in on the messy days and end up feeling efficient and necessary. Except for that yellow leather dye, because that stuff stains ones hands to the point of apparent leprocy, which is also called Hansen's disease, which I did not know. And now that wikipedia is involved, I realize that the allusion to leprocy is not only incorrect, but terribly glib, because leprocy is awful. But also, armadillos? And, fact - 95% of people are naturally immune, so phew.

Yes, gloves would be a terrific idea, but we're way past that. I'm offended at the mere existence of this evil stuff, that manages to stay on hands days, whole days! afterwards. And also, I always forget gloves until it is too late. Neon yellow hands look good on no one but big bird.

I'm definitely into pencils

When I was growing up, we lived in a lovely old yellow farmhouse with green shutters and a wide porch, and a big red barn leaned into the woods at the edge of the back yard. While the house hosted a rowdy family, the barn was my dad's domain where he puttered (and occasionally hid, I assume) and my sisters and I would either spy on him while he was in there, or we'd snoop around when he wasn't. One of the rooms hosted a rusted-out car, ladders, cans of paint, jars of chemical-smelling liquids, and various domestic debris, and the other was ringed with shelves and tools and work benches, and I remember so clearly the pencils hanging about that weren't school pencils, conically sharpened and fuzzy at the wood, but whittled to sharp shiny points. And this wasn't something I've thought about for years and years, until recently when I was gathering up all the pencils in the bindery, and noticed how they're sharpened in the same exact way, thoughtfully, with knives, instead of sharpeners.

And I've gotten used to this myself, quickly chopping pencils into wedge-shaped points with a utility knife, but it still makes me happy to come across them, to slice them up myself. I suppose this isn't even noteworthy, but I honestly haven't seen hand-sharpened pencils since my childhood, and this fact alone - the fact that its something I went years and years without noticing, and that suddenly I see them again - it's just so nice to be pleasantly surprised by an old memory. Ah pencils. They are so great!