#design bookbinding

Design Binding Commission - Singapore through 19th Century Photographs

Back in March this year, I started working on this commission for a dear customer, but my life went into a whirlwind of an upheaval. It was difficult to manage having a clear mind to work on a design binding, and having to sort out the toughest months in my life thus far. So I decided that I should pack it up and do it when I am at my best and my mind is clear.

As promised, I will show a weekly update of the work in progress, as my customer enjoys watching his book come along. And also, this is a chance for me to share about the process of how a design binding is done. 

It is not often that the textblock comes nicely in folded sheets, unbound, from the printers. It almost always comes already bound, in the factory, by a machine. Then it takes some precision work, effort and a lot of slow careful heating to remove the factory binding. First the case comes off by gently cutting away the board endpaper, then with slow heating, the fly leaf comes off. I learned a very hard lesson to not pull off the tipped on fly leaf because it takes a whole chunk of paper off from the first folio of the first section. It will then be a tedious task to repair that. So instead of a heated tacking iron, I used a hair dryer to slowly heat it bit by bit, and ease it off slowly from the first folio. I enjoy looking at the textblock after all the nasty adhesive has been removed, and I have a nice clean spine to work on. 

My initial idea for this book was to use rather bright colours in a kaleidoscope kind of way, but through these months away from my bench, I decided that this book should not have such a loud cover, for such an amazing collection of photographs of my country from the 19th century. I have decided to do something more 3 dimensional, almost as though the photographs are coming out at you. But subtle.

So first things first, the endpapers ideas have to be sorted out, endpapers decorated, prepared and then sewing will begin. 

Design Binding Commission - Week 2: Sewing Up The Maquette

In all of my design bindings, I will always make a maquette. A maquette is described in Wikipedia as “a small scale model or rough draft of an unfinished sculpture. An equivalent term is bozzetto, from the Italian word that means "sketch". It is used to visualize and test shapes and ideas without incurring the cost and effort of producing a full-scale product.”

Creating a design binding involves a lot of experimentations, testing of various binding structures, covering applications, design ideas and such. To just do it directly on the actual textblock might lead to a rather costly mistake. So all tests should be done on the maquette. And of course, to keep costs down, a smaller scale model is made. 

My maquette for “Singapore through 19th Century Photographs” is exactly 1:2 of the actual textblock. For the design of the binding, I have decided that I want to create a photo frame with a 3-dimensional photograph inside. And this will mean that there will be a lot of weight on the front cover. The binding structure has to be able to take such a stress and that it will not cause the book to warp, or the cover to fall off. Therefore, the decision is made to sew on tapes, and a hybrid binding using a leather spine lining, just like a Western Asian (commonly known as Islamic) binding. 

I do not often sew on tapes, but this is one rare occasion that my sewing frame comes out of storage. This sewing frame was beautifully made by my husband, Louis, of Kjung Woodwork, and he has been rather disappointed that I have not used the sewing frame much. To mark out the sewing positions, I used a Greek Gauge, which was also incorporated into the sewing frame. But since this maquette is much smaller, I had to draw the Gauge and extend its end so to match the height of my small scale model. 

For the maquette, the tapes are jaconette, whereas the actual book will have vellum tapes. After the textblock is sewn up, I lined the spine first with jaconette, followed by a piece of goat leather. I then slit the leather to allow the tapes to come through to the back, which will then be used to lace into the boards. 

As this is a maquette absolutely to test the binding structure, I decided not to add the design elements in until I am sure that this binding method works. If it does not, I have to think of a better structure that suits my design ideas. As for now, it seems to be going quite alright. 

Islamic Bookbinding Workshop 

I have just returned to Singapore after a week in the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur for a workshop in Islamic Bookbinding with Dr Karin Scheper. Dr Karin is the leading conservator specialising in Islamic books and completed her PhD research in the structures and techniques in manuscripts that were made in the Islamic world.

It was an amazing week, meeting book conservators from Australia, Japan, Malaysia and the Netherlands, as well as my home country, Singapore. Needless to say, I am the only bookbinder there. I am happy that I was able to go for this workshop, made possible by the generous sponsorship of my life partner, Louis. He felt that I was losing my “fire” and drive and needed to be learning again. I travelled up with a good friend and paper conservator, Mariko and even shared a very lovely apartment just 15 minutes walk away from the museum. 

We tried our hand at making a model of one of the most typical Islamic bindings, making endbands, paring leather (very slowly with a scalpel, I did not want to risk losing my leather paring knives at the customs) and finally putting our book together using beautiful Ebru marbled papers by Dr Karin’s friend or using our own made during a Ebru marbling workshop held on Wednesday by The Craft Crowd. 

I would not dare say I am good at Islamic binding but I now know how the structure is built the most basic way, the misconceptions of what the Western bookbinders see of it and the large possibilities and inspiration for my work in design binding in the future. I have already amazing ideas for a book that is waiting for a design binding and I see myself doing some amazing exploration.