Covering Leonardo Part IV

          Oh so long ago, last year in fact, I promised to show fitting the ribbon ties and lining the flap extension of the binding of Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine. I had forgotten to take photos, dear reader, and so this post has had to wait until I got to that stage again with more bindings. So here goes.

          After the edges are turned in, corners made, flap blind-tooled and title blocked, the ribbon ties are fitted. On the left (top) board I had previously removed a thin layer of the board 8mm x 8mm to allow the ribbon to sit in. (The ribbon is 8mm wide, as is the turn-in. Adjust the size to whatever ribbon or tie you use.) When turning in this edge, this part of the turn-in is left free. A slit the width of the ribbon is made vertically in the leather of the turn-in and the ribbon threaded through. One end of the ribbon sits in the 8mm square well, and is glued in place with PVA, with the turn-in glued on top of it, being careful that the PVA does not ooze out and stain the ribbon or the leather. The ribbon for the back board, shown on the right above, is threaded through a similar slit in the flap, before the flap is lined. Note the guide lines, and measure the position of both slits carefully so that when the boards come together the ribbons are positioned exactly opposite each other and the ribbon is in the vertical centre of the flap. I position the flap slit about 1 mm from the edge of the board, which seems to work well. The ribbon is glued down onto the inside edge of the book board and will be covered by the lining leather.

         Before applying the lining, the edge of the back board that would normally be covered by the turn-in, where the ribbon is glued, must be built up with a thin piece of card or Bristol board each side of the end of ribbon to bring it up so that when the lining is in place the lining plus card is the same thickness as the rest of the turn-ins, and the end of the ribbon sits roughly level with the strip of card.

          The leather for lining the flap should be pared thin and I use a Brockman parer for this, as shown above. The Brockman parer is very useful for paring small strips of leather for this sort of application, or for title labels etc. You could also use a knife or a spokeshave to do the same job. The lining leather needs to be thin because otherwise the flap would be stiff and a bit clumsy. The function of the lining is to tidy up and finish off the appearance of the flap and secure the ribbon tie, it does not need to have tensile strength.

          For the lining I apply adhesive to the flap, and position the lining on top of it with enough leather to cover the strip of card, so that when it is trimmed to size, that edge is the same width as the turn-ins and the lining completely covers the end of the ribbon and the card. After boning lightly in place I trim the superfluous lining material with a sharp blade so it fits neatly and all the edges are flush.

          The inside covers are now ready to be filled with card flush with the turn-ins, so that all is level, and the end-papers go down onto a flat surface. In my next post I'll show how this should look and how the text-block is fitted with the vellum slips. Incidentally, you can also see that when I turned in the top and lower edges at the spine, I left a little puff of air at the edge, to serve as a little headcap. 

Covering Leonardo Part III

Following on from the last post I now block the title onto the front cover, using real gold foil and a magnesium photoengraved die, made for me by Owosso Graphic Art. The art work for this is the same hand-drawn lettering I used for the title-page, only a little smaller. I send the digital file (scanned to my computer from the drawing) and then mount the resulting die onto a block. The total height of block plus die is type-high.  

The block is then locked into the chase, then the chase is heated on a stove, and put into the blocking press.

As you can see I use an old (antique even) Mackay blocking press. The modern equivalent of this is the Kwikprint, but the old press is much more versatile, there are two chases, the smaller one (shown) is the one I use the most, but the larger one can take very large dies.

This shows the title on the book. I will show fitting the ribbons and lining the flap in my next blog post.

Covering Leonardo Part II

After cutting out and marking up the cover, it is pared at head and tail of the spine to allow it to turn in and lie properly, otherwise the thickness of the leather will be too bulky. On this cover I haven't edge pared the turn-ins as it will look better to fill in the 'well' of the inside covers and that will accommodate the ends of the slips so that they don't show as ugly lumps under the end papers. I have pared the corners so that when they are turned they will also lie flat.

The lines are guides to where the boards will be positioned and will be checked and adjusted before actually adhering to the leather. It is important to ensure that the spine width is exactly right and that the boards are square, otherwise the cover will not be square. 

          I mentioned blind-tooling the flap and it is easiest to do this before attaching the boards. For this I used a double-line fillet wheel which I had made in a small size and is the centre tool of those shown below.

The tool is heated on a finishing stove and rolled along the place where you want a line to appear. Blind-tooling is done without gold, the heat and pressure of the tool make a permanent impression on the leather and darken it. The other tools shown are a single line fillet (above) and a dotted-line fillet below, both also made to order for using on small books. The dotted-line fillet was made from a cog wheel for a clock.

   After tooling the flap the prepared boards are adhered to the cover, edges turned in and corners made. After a light pressing, this will now be ready for the title to be blocked on the front cover. Here is a view of the inside of the cover, before the fore edge sides are turned in.

On the left edge of the left hand board (the front cover) you can see a small square where I have removed an 8mm x 8mm piece, this is to allow for the thickness of the ribbon which will be inserted through a slit in the turn-in and firmly glued down. By removing a little of the board the ribbon will not make a bump in the turn-in. 

In my next post I will show how the title is blocked onto the front cover. 

Covering Leonardo; Art of the Book 08

Apologies for the long delay in posting, life intervened.
Having sewn the text block, the next step is to prepare the cover for "Leonardo Dreams"....
          In this binding the cover is made off the book, and laced on afterwards with the vellum slips. 
The first step is to make a template to use as a pattern to cut the leather. When the book is part of an edition I lay it out on the whole skin to make sure that I can cut enough covers to complete the whole edition. It is a mistake to assume that you will always be able to buy the same shade again as dyestuffs are sometimes discontinued or unavailable, as I have discovered in the past! 

          The template is marked up to show the turn-ins and the spine area. I usually cut one cover to make up a proof, and then when I'm satisfied that the binding works, I cut the covers for the whole edition. On this template you can see the projection on one side for the tab that will fold over the fore edge. This tab references the style of a portfolio and with the ribbon ties, protects the fore edge of the book. It will be lined with a thin piece of leather.

          On the cover itself I have marked out the turn-ins, the tab and the spine area. The shaded area will be cut off before I start to pare the leather. Leather for bookbinding, even on small books needs to be sufficiently substantial not to tear, so I don't use skiver leather. When the leather in the spine area is pared correctly it will fold over neatly at head and tail. The tab will be blind tooled with a double-line fillet wheel before the boards are adhered to the leather. 
          A note about book boards: binders board is hard-rolled and dense, and in the UK is called mill board and in the USA called Davey board. The boards need to be thick enough that they don't bend or warp when the leather is applied. I usually use not less than 1.6 mm thickness. Of course, for larger books heavier boards are necessary. After cutting the boards, on small books I often bevel the edges so that they look less heavy, but that is purely for appearance.


The Art of the Book 08 - CBBAG's 25th Anniversary Exhibition
          If you are anywhere near the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island between now and January 5th, be sure to check out this exhibition. It is in the McPherson Library, in the Maltwood Gallery, and is a juried international exhibition of books and the book arts. The exhibition is a five-yearly event staged by the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild, (known as CBBAG, pronounced 'cabbage') and includes fine bindings, fine printing, paper making, calligraphy, artists books, and  paper decoration. Entrance free - I highly recommend that you see it.


The exhibition opened in Toronto in October of 2008, and has travelled to many different venues across Canada, finishing at UVic. It is an extraordinary achievement, largely due to the hard work of two dedicated people, Shelagh Smith and Susan Corrigan, who have been organizing this for twenty-five years. 

Leonardo Sewn Up

          I decided to sew the book on vellum slips, strips of vellum, which are then laced into the cover giving a secure board attachment. In a previous blog entry I described how I dyed the vellum red, and when this was dry, cut it into strips about 3mm wide and 70 mm long (I use metric measurements because of the small scale).

          Before sewing the sections must be pricked up, that is, holes must be made along the folds of each section, through which the needle will pass. This is done using a needle mounted in a handle, or sharp awl or similar tool and a pricking guide. The pricking guide is a strip of paper indicating the exact position of the holes for sewing the slips, tapes or cords, and the kettle stitches which are used at head and tail of the book to secure each section to the previous one. 

I then taped two of the slips to my litho stone (a large piece of limestone originally used for lithography but often used by bookbinders for paring leather, as it is a soft stone that doesn't dull the paring knife). You could equally well tape it to the edge of a counter top, table etc. The slips must be exactly positioned according to the pricking guide that you used to make the sewing holes. The book was then sewn all-along, going over the slips as if they were tapes and including the 'made' endpapers. The spine was then lightly glued up and left to dry. 

Leonardo Dreams of his Flying Machine- the Binding. Ta da!

          As I'm in another time-crunch I decided to put some photos of the finished book up on the blog, and post the how-to steps when the opportunity presents. I just don't have the time to make a new web-page at the moment. Above is a view of the endpapers with two of Leonardo's sketches from his notebooks.
          I returned from the Miniature Book Conclave (highlight for me - James Reid-Cunningham's presentation) on Labor Day, having sold some books, and realized that I only have a couple of weeks to the Oak Knoll Book Fest, which I signed up for. So I'm making books for the next two weeks. I haven't attended this previously, it will be a new experience for me, which I'm looking forward to, - lots of Fine Press books, and maybe some artists' books. 
          Anyway, on to the book. I decided to sew it on vellum slips, as previously noted, dyed red to blend with the burgundy goatskin. The slips are laced into the cover giving a secure board attachment. I wanted to reference Leonardo's notebooks in the binding so extended the leather on the back board at the fore edge to form a flap, which folds over the text block and fastens with grosgrain ribbon ties. The flap is lined with a thin piece of leather and finished with a blind-tooled double line around the edge. 

         


 This design meant that there was really no need for a slipcase as the fore edge is protected by this extension. In turn this helps to keep the price of the book down, as boxes and slipcases are quite time-consuming to make. I used the same art-work for the title on the front cover as I had drawn for the title page, which gives the book a unity of design and the lettering is quite decorative in itself. This is a deceptively simple binding, as it involves quite a lot of work, which I shall describe at a later date.

Here are the details of the book:

Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine, 40 pages inclusive of blanks,almost 3 inches high by two and three eighths of an inch wide approx. It is a Limited Edition of 20 copies numbered, and signed by me, the poet Charles Anthony Silvestri and the composer Eric Whitacre, whose account of their collaboration also appears in the book.
          The book is printed on a special making of handmade paper from Griffen Mill in Ireland, using a Craftsman hand press and polymer plates, set digitally in Brioso Pro typeface designed by Robert Slimbach. The five full page illustrations were drawn especially for this book and transferred to polymer and printed on the press, onto handmade Japanese Bicchu Torinoko Gampi paper. Each illustration is individually hand-gilt and burnished using genuine gold leaf. There are five of Leonardo's studies of creatures that fly, from his notebooks, two as shown above, plus a bat, moth and flying fish. 
           This book is copyright Janet Kellett, and the words of the song are copyright Charles Anthony Silvestri, with the account of the collaboration being copyright Eric Whitacre. Please respect our copyrights.
           The price of this book is CD$450.00, which presently equates to US$425.00, plus shipping and insurance. Publication date was Sept 5th 2010, and the edition is half sold as of today. Please contact me through my website with your street address if you would like a hard-copy book announcement, or if you would like to purchase a copy of the book.
          I shall be attending the Oak Knoll Book Fest in Newcastle Delaware, on the first weekend in October, and you can see the book there, along with a few other titles of my books that are still in print.
I'll post at a later time with all the steps in making this binding. This book has been quite a journey and the discipline of writing this blog, trying to remember to take photos and explaining my thought processes has been also quite an experience. Thanks to all those who have followed along with me.  

In a (book) Bind

          I've been enjoying some fun family time and now I have to get down to serious work, if I am ever to finish this book before the Miniature Book Society Conclave in Lexington Kentucky. It takes place over the first weekend in September (Labour Day weekend) and I must have some books ready by then, less that four weeks to go! On the Sunday afternoon the Book Fair will be open to the public, at the Hyatt, Lexington. See the website for details. Hope to see you there!
          I finished off the last image, of the figure rising through the air towards the skies, using brass handle tools in the shape of a star and a dot. (They are really for gilding leather but also work well on paper.) The tools are heated to the right temperature to activate the adhesive on the foil carrier. This is a layer of real gold on a backing. The foil is placed on the surface to be gilded and the heated tool is impressed on to the foil, transferring the layer of gold to the substrate, in this case the paper. The shape of the tool appears in gold.

Here is the starry result. The next operation was to tip the five images into each book. This means that the image is adhered by a thin thread of glue or paste along one edge onto the page. I did this before trimming the pages, using the guillotine. In other types of binding (anything with a rounded and backed spine ) I would use a plough to trim the edges, but this is a thin book with a flat spine.
          After some consideration I have decided to bind this book by sewing on vellum slips. A vellum slip is a strip of vellum, and vellum is of course a piece of (usually) goat or calf skin that has gone through a special curing process to give it the particular qualities needed for writing or binding. It is very durable, and I adapted a traditional form of binding using the vellum slips when binding Old London Bridge. It enables the book to open well (which can be a problem with some forms of binding) and I like the appearance and the medieval reference to vellum bindings, which is probably what would have been on Leonardo Da Vinci's original notebooks if they were bound during his lifetime.
          I looked into my 'supplies store', well O.K., a drawer and found some vellum of a suitable thickness, that was dyed a tan brown colour, quite a good base to adapt to red, to tone with the leather of the cover. I used Fiebings Oil-based red dye, rubbing it into the surface with a pad of paper towel. It does not penetrate into the vellum, but rather sits on top, and takes a good few days for the dyestuff to oxidize and dry.Here's the before and after:

The vellum doesn't need to be an exact match for the leather as it will hardly show, it just needs to blend in. I have no idea why I originally bought this vellum, (twenty-five years ago at least) as it is much too thick for writing or binding a small book, but I was very pleased to find it, it's exactly what I needed for this job. The next process will be to sew the book, when the vellum is dry.
          I'm going to go 'underground' for the next few weeks as I'm really pushed for time to get some books finished, and also am preparing a presentation for the MBS Conclave, but I will be taking photos and will show all the stages in this binding when I return from Lexington.