To my surprise I am working steadily towards my goal for this year as stated in a comment to Ellen’s blog: “Make a couple of books this year, and try making them something new.” I finished the book above this morning. It is inspired by this book by Amanda. I described the whole making here in this album on ipernity. The book combines a celtic weave with a packed sewing with some decorative stitches added. I wanted to make it an icicle, but that first attempt failed, and I preferred this two-coloured look.
This book was in a way a trial for a custom book I am currently making. So soon there will be more.
In einem Kommentar auf Ellens Blog habe ich geschrieben, mein Vorsatz für dieses Jahr wäre, mal wieder ein paar Bücher zu binden, und dabei was Neues auszuprobieren. Zu meiner Überraschung, klappt das ganz gut. – Eigentlich hatte ich ja befürchtet, gar nicht zum Buchbinden zu kommen, wo ich gar kein richtiges Arbeitszimmer mehr habe. (Mittlerweile habe ich in meinem “Turmzimmer” sogar einen Arbeitstisch aufgestellt. Einziger Nachteil: man muss darunter herkriechen, um ins Zimmer rein und rauszukommen. Aber das geht…)
Das hier ist eine Mischung aus einer Variante einer koptischen Bindung (Celtic Weave), und einer Bindung auf erhabene Bünde. Zur Entstehung des Buches, habe ich einige Bilder gemacht, und ein bisschen was geschrieben. Diese Fotoserie kannst du hier auf ipernity finden.
Das Buch ist in gewisser Weise ein Probelauf für ein Buch, das ich gerade im Kundenauftrag gestelte. Der Vorderdeckel ist schon fertig und trocknet gerade. Es geht also bald schon weiter.
Oh wow! Hilke this is a really beautiful book, and I am very honoured that you have found some inspiration from my work. I absolutely LOVE what you have done with the cover. I am off to ipernity now to check out your process there.
Now I’ve been to ipernity but I’ve come back here to comment as I haven’t joined there yet. So, I completely understand that you found the wrapped binding hard. For me, with the test book, it seemed easy because the book was so narrow, but it was a nightmare on the wedding album, and to be honest, the finished result was not completely to my satisfaction.
Also, I have a question. Where do you get your leather? Do you have to prepare it yourself or is it already sufficiently thin for use? When I used leather in the atelier in Paris in 2012, all the leather for the students was cut roughly to size and then sent out to an expert who prepared it beautifully for us at a very reasonable price. We only had to thin the fold-overs at the corners and I found that to be enough of a challenge!
Hi Amanda,
thank for you interest. It makes me very happy that you like the outcome! Maybe the thickness of the individual gathering added to my problem with the coiling, but I generally found it very hard to work like that. I like my support being properly under tension while I am working on it! Therefore I am thinking of doing the support binding and the Coptic piece at the same time “on the bench” I think is the correct term for the next book. I am still thinking on how exactly I want to proceed.
I am buying my leather already pared to less than a mm. The leather I used here is about 0.5mm thin and I didn’t bother with thinning it out at all, not even at the turn-ins.
The leather on the cover I am currently working with is a little bit thicker, 0.8mm, and maybe I should have thinned out the turn-ins. I do have a selection of paring knived, none very good ones, though, and prefer to work with a shaver which works great for me. However, as long as the leather is flexible enough so that I can turn it around the covers without it forming bubbles, I leave it as it is. The less refined look fits in well with the style of books I make, I think.
It would be different, of course, if we were talking about forming a hindge. But here we are only talking aesthetics. The work I am not investing in paring, I have to add while filling in, of course 🙂
beautiful stitch! Reminds me a little bit to the celtic knots!
Apparently the inventor (?) Keith Smith was also reminded of them and called this 2-needle Coptic variant “Celtic weave”. I never understood why he choose that name. Why Celtic? Apparently you share this associaltion, but I can’t see it…
Nice to see you “walking by” again!