Spalted Maple Wood: A Gothic Binding Story

I fell in love with spalted maple last year. Those gorgeous dark segments are caused by fungi. Rotting wood. Delicious. Click here for more on spalting.

I had a special pen made for my dad which featured spalted maple but never thought I would get a chance to work with the splintery substance myself. Wrong. So wrong.

North Bennet Street School is a great school. A great school with many different departments. Two floors up from bookbinding sits the entire Cabinet and Furniture Making department. Did some awesome dude mention he had scraps of spalted maple for yours truly? Not until I asked him. And bam. My adventure began. The magnificent cabinet and furniture maker cut the scraps down to my specific size and to work I went.

First I had to sew my text block. Double-flexible sewing on thick cords. Sweet. After plowing the edges smooth it was back to the spalted maple boards. Time to bevel the edges. Most folks in my class used oak boards, which they shaped and beveled with rasps and files. Not me. The spalted maple split too easily. The wood needed a delicate touch. Sandpaper on a block. So I perspired a bit and after an hour or two (maybe more) my boards were shaped. Enter Dremel. Holes were drilled, cords were threaded and hammered and wedged. More sanding happened. Yada yada.

Leather time. Most classmates used alum tawed pig skin which I thought would be a little thick for my binding. I also wanted the cords to show through the leather quite prominently. I used alum tawed goat skin which was a bit thinner and stretchier than the pig skin we ordered. On the goat skin went and dried.

The braided kangaroo leather headbands are a wild story summed up short -- I made a total of five headbands. Yes the book only has two. Yeah.

This gothic model is not a historical model. The sewing is accurate but the design is more modern and totally rad. Taste is taste.

I know the explanation might be vague and the commentary a little silly but I can't help it. Even discussing the beauty of spalted maple puts me somewhere else. On a different plane. Made of spalted maple. I love it. And that's fine.

DETAIL OF BEVELED EDGES

Devil's Dictionary - Fine Binding #3

The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce. Third fine binding. And I'm pretty proud.

I have had a couple of first quality black leather skins from Harmatan for quite a while. One had a smaller smoother grain which was flawless throughout the skin. I figured something dark and comical would fit this leather well. I used the tudor panel technique that Dominic Riley taught my class (see post - A Tudor Treat for detail) and spelled out DEVILS on the cover with layers of leather. As the front was full of texture I decided the back should show off the almost velvet-feeling leather hence the lack of tooling or design. I solid edge gilt the head to really make the board edges pop and thought an excellent challenge would be to sew completely white head bands. To those who don't know black leather --> the challenge is not smearing the headbands with purplish dust and pasty mess of the leather while covering.

FRONT

BACK

SOLID GOLD EDGE AND WHITE HEADBAND

DETAIL SHOTS WITH DIFFERENT LIGHTING AND ANGLES

Limp Vellum Glory

The first thing my dad asked when he saw this book was "Hmm, is that sturdy?" I don't remember how I responded but my answer to that question is, YES. Vellum is wonderfully strong yet can be rather difficult to work with. My short take on the process -- animal skin soft and wet stretched out so far and thin that the fibers are petrified and harden. Stiff, tough, awesome. I bound Jost Amman's Cuts of Craft-Workers. The book is sewn on alum tawed leather thongs which are weaved through the vellum case, which can be removed and/or replaced if need be. A rough edge gilt the top edge of the book. For rough edge gilding you must mix up all the pages very well and then apply gold solidly to the edge. Once the process is finished and the pages are placed in their original order the edge no longer looks like a brick of gold but instead shimmers gently and subtly. Pretty.

Fancifying Salinger

I so enjoyed my three little pocket book Salinger books, Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, and Raise High the Roof beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. While extravagant in their own right they physically lacked a certain Oomph. Everybody has these tiny books, shredded old copies, new shiny ones from the South Station book store in Boston, hard copies, rare copies. Many copies. I wanted mine to be unique. Fancy and unique.

From tiny fanned glue mass produced books, they were reshaped and reformed to feature round spines, false bands made with laminated strips of leather and vellum, navy leather, gold tooled lines and titling, and marbled paper, which I made myself.

I won't go into the gory details of this structure because the transformation process can vary from book to book. Just know that it is possible to give a simple book a fancy make-over. The only flaw is that I forgot to take before pictures so I had to borrow images from Google to show the pre and post surgery photos.

Please email if you'd like a makeover for any of your beloved books.

BEFORE

AFTER

I know.

Round Spine Box

Round-Spine Box.

I laminated bass wood to a piece of Davey book board for a super sturdy piece to plane and sand into a round. I made false bands out of Davey board, covered with chocolate colored leather from Harmatan, and gold tooled lines along the bands. Slick business. My box can now attend the Academy Awards. In no way will this box ever represent the film, The Box. Don't worry.

See An Awesome Tissue Repair for information on the book housed within this box.

Am I a part of History now? The story of how George Washington and I became BFFs

When you hear the name "George" who do think of?

I usually think of my favorite comedian, the late George Carlin. Sometimes I think of the dad from Father of the Bride, George Banks, and of course my mind can't escape the hunky and politically savvy, Mr. George Clooney.

But for the past few weeks a different George has had my attention. President George Washington. Let me explain.

By now you know that I adore constructing boxes. Small. Large. Leather. Cloth. I love boxes. I've made hexagon boxes and multi-compartment boxes. Boxes for photographs and boxes for fine bindings. My latest box project was different from all the rest in that it featured celebrity belongings. A historic celebrity. And you thought seeing Jaleel White in an LA yogurt shop was rad. (Oh yeah. That happened.)

Long story a wee bit shorter -- I was hired by the Boston Atheneum to construct 18th century boxes for some books. The books to be enclosed were owned by George Washington himself and kept in his library. They are now safe inside quarter leather boxes with italian marbled paper. I used handle letters and double lines on black leather to make the gold labels.

Who's excited? I'm excited.

Marbled Paper Year II

Regina and Dan St. John from Chena River Marblers came to North Bennet to give a paper marbling workshop. I discovered last year that the stone pattern was my favorite. Proof below.

Don't Look Now - The 2011 Set Book - My Second Fine Binding

Don't Look Now and Other Stories - A group of short stories by Daphne du Maurier. One might recognize her story The Birds. Scary stuff.

Set book - A group of binders receive the same text and are required to create their own design for the piece.

My Second Fine Binding - I back-pared brown leather on top of the yellow and then backed-pared the entire brown and yellow piece once pasted to the black background leather. I smoked tooled the DON'T portion of the title and gold tooled the rest.

Can you spot the bird in the woman's hair on the back cover? Spooooky.

An Awesome Tissue Repair

One of my instructors, the amazing and wonderfully talented Martha Kearsley, taught a simple and strong leather tissue repair. I toned a piece of kizukishi tissue paper to match the original cover leather and traced the appropriate shape to lie over the hinge.

BEFORE

AFTER

The Time Traveler's Wife - My First Fine Binding

Fine Binding - A full leather book where each step from forwarding to finishing is executed perfectly and expertly. Sewing, rounding, backing, edge decoration, board attachment, leather paring, leather covering, onlay, gold tooling, etc. Everything must be perfect.

Keep in mind -- this is my first fine binding. So perfectly and expertly will surely come with practice and time.

I was not ready to perform such concentrated tasks on a random book. The book needed to be special, motivating. The only book I thought was worthy of this process was my favorite, The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I took a shot and emailed the author, expecting no response. She did. I asked if she had any unbound copies left. She did. She forward my message to the right people and a couple of weeks later with tears in my eyes (I know, sounds cheezy) I opened the unbound copy of my favorite book.

Over a month later I have completed my fine binding. There were several obstacles to face in the very beginning because the sections had already been blown out for factory gluing and binding. I got around this by sewing extremely carefully and instead of attaching the boards with german tapes, I attached them with airplane cotton. Worked wonderfully. This being the first of many challenges which I won't go into, I have finally gotten through them all and the work is officially complete.

Of course now I have to make a glorious box to house this piece. Thank you Audrey Niffenegger for being my hero and making a dream come true. It was an honor to fine bind your book. Thank you again over and over.

"To world enough and time"

Doublures and Fly leaves. French split goat skin leather.

Detail of Cover