“La Charrue D'Érable” (The Maplewood Plough) Part Four: Embroidery and Covering
Finally the time had come for me to do the bit that I like the most - decorating the covering leather! The first step in the process was to cut out all of the leather onlays I needed to complete the design, including lots of lots of little leaves. On a couple of occasions I brushed past these loose leaves sitting on one of my benches and dislodged a few and it was a rather frustrating game trying to find their correct positions again!
When it came to the apples, I cut out a multitude of discs in different tones of leather and tried to spread the colours out as evenly as possible over the front cover.
Once all of the onlays were down, I went through my box of threads and pulled out a selection of greens, reds and oranges with which to start sewing the detail onto the cover.
Firstly I concentrated on sewing all of the ‘branches’ using a dark green thread. This also helped to secure each of the leaves onto the leather. Each leaf in turn was then further embroidered with little stitches all the way up in a contrasting green to the colour of the onlay. As the leaves on the front and back covers were mirror images of each other, I made sure to sew the corresponding leaves in the same coloured thread.
The apple blossom was attached to the leather using a double criss-cross stitch to look like the stamens of the flowers. I pricked the holes first with a needle pricker as the vellum inlays were tough to push a needle through.
Onto the end of each of the criss-cross stitched (eight in total for each flower) I tied a small French knot. These were done in a variety of different coloured threads to add variety.
The apples on the front cover were also embellished with a variety of coloured threads, enhancing the colour whilst also securing the onlays down.
The back of the leather looked like this once the embroidery was complete - a random scattering of coloured threads!
So, the time had come to cover the book, always a daunting task after spending so much time embroidering the leather beforehand. I laid a few layers of newsprint down onto my bench and got together all the tools I needed for the process: sharp scissors, teflon folder, scalpel, fine metal tools for forming the head caps and some cord, also for forming the head caps.
The front of the leather was spritzed with some water to prevent marks from forming on the front of the leather once it dried. The back was pasted out three times using flour paste, with time left in between each application to allow for it to absorb into the leather.
The covering of the binding requires all the hands and nerves I have so I often don’t get many photos of this part of the process! The leather went down well and the book was left to dry under weights between blotting paper for 24 hours, with the blotters changed regularly. The following day, I dampened the joints with a water pen and carefully opened up the boards. The leather joints were stuck down into position with PVA whilst both of the book boards were open.
I bought some 18 carat yellow gold sheet in order to add one gold apple to the front cover. This was pierced into shape using a jeweller’s piercing saw and holes drilled through it. One of the criss-crosses was sewn with metallic gold thread, the other had gold wire passed across it to physically attach the gold apple to the book board through small holes that had been drilled using my Dremel..
Small channels were cut out of the reverse of the board and the ends of the gold wire were bent into these to permanently fix the gold apple in its place. The insides of both the front and back boards were then infilled and sanded. The first layer was some watercolour paper, which was the same thickness as the turn-ins and the leather joint. The second layer was a piece or Zerkall, cut a few millimetres smaller than the size of the boards. This was then sanded completely flush to get rid of any lumps and bumps.
It was then time to stick the paper doublure down to the front and back boards. All of the pierced shapes had been filled with gold leaf backed onto Japanese tissue.
Once stuck down, I wanted to add extra detail to the endpapers and doublures. For the apples inside the front board, I cut out tiny criss-crosses from black paper.
These were then stuck down onto the gold using PVA glue.
For the blossom inside the back board, I used black acrylic paint on the end of a needle pricker and applied paint to each of the flower centres.
Finally, I wanted to add a little of the cover leather to the endpapers and doublures. I cut out small shapes from thinly pared cover leather and stuck them randomly amongst the branches.
The next, and final, blog post in this series shows images of the completed binding and wooden box that was made for the binding.
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“La Charrue D'Érable” (The Maplewood Plough) Part Five: Completed Binding
And so the binding was complete! I used a spare piece of the endpapers to create a title for the box. The words were pierced out using a scalpel and backed with gold leaf. The title was then sewn to the lid of the box through small holes drilled around the outside of the label.
I knew early on that wanted the container to be made from Maple wood to tie in with the book title and I was pleased to be able to source some. The inside of the box was lined with felt, with a ribbon lifter attached to help to get the book out of the box.
THE COMPLETED BOX
THE BOOK IN THE OPEN BOX
THE BOOK ON THE OPEN BOX
THE BOOK NEXT TO THE BOX
THE EDGE DECORATION
THE FULL COVER
THE PASTE-DOWNS
BACK COVER DETAIL
FRONT COVER DETAIL
THE ENDPAPERS
I was finally able to order the outer conservation box from The Bodleian Library a few weeks ago.
As well as adding a title to the spine, I glued into the inner lid of the box a map dating from 1910, showing the area of "St. Denis-Pontoise" in France, including the town of "Eragny".
The press was named after the Pissarro family's home village in Normandy, I will have to try and visit it someday!
“La Charrue D'Érable” (The Maplewood Plough) Part Three: Forwarding
The client wished to retain the gilt calf paste-downs if possible to include them within the new binding. To do so it meant removing them from the existing limp cover so I could mount them to new sheets of paper.
The leather of the limp calf cover had started to degrade, so I removed it by peeling it back carefully from the reverse of the paste-down. I was then able to sand the surface using a fine sandpaper.
Once sanded the paste-downs were mounted to a bi-folded sheet of paper and sewn to the textblock as an additional section on the front and the back. I wrapped a bi-folded strip of paper to this new section as a guard, the other side of which (as visible in the below photograph) was then tipped onto the endpaper section once that had been sewn to the textblock.
The sections were all then sewn together onto four tapes.
Once all the sections were sewn together, with the endpapers added on at either end, the spine of the book was glued up in-between the tapes with PVA glue and left to dry.
I then rounded and backed the book, and lined the spine attaching a one-on, two-off hollow and then sanded the top edge flush. I wanted to add some edge decoration and did so using watered down acrylic paints. I first applied a thin layer of dark green to match the paper I had used to mount the new paste-downs onto. I further built up the colour by dabbing on small amounts of white, peach and green paints on top to create an abstract pattern in colours to match the binding.
The foredge and bottom edge were left deckled so I did not need to apply edge decoration to them. The next stage was then to sew the endbands. I selected colours that I thought would work well on the binding.
I then created double core endbands using a mixture of these coloured endband threads. The larger core was made from a lamination of leather and a thin strip of vellum. The vellum side was paced pointing towards the top edge of the binding to try and keep a crisp edge where the endband silks wrapped over it. The smaller core was made by stiffening some linen sewing thread with PVA glue and letting it dry out.
The boards were then laced on and bevelled. The covering leather was pared in preparation for the next stage of the binding process.
The next post details how the leather onlays and embroiderd elements were added to the covering leather to build up the design.
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“La Charrue D'Érable” (The Maplewood Plough) Part Two: The Endpapers and Doublures
Throughout the book there were numerous wood cut prints so I decided to try out some lino printing to tie in with this. In order to transfer the design onto the lino for cutting I placed a sheet of carbon paper on top of the lino. On top of that I laid a line drawing of the design and then I traced the lines with a biro in order to leave a mark through the carbon paper on the surface of the lino.
I only wanted to print the leaves using the lino plate, so only marked these areas through the carbon paper. It was very clear to see what I needed to cut once I was done marking the lines.
I invested in some rather lovely new “Pfeil” lino cutting tools in a variety of cutting shapes. Each tool is made from chrome vanadium steel with ergonomically shaped hardwood handles – they made slicing the lino a breeze!
The sample board was done in the same manner, just cut on a smaller scale.
The cut lino was inked up with black intaglio ink using a roller.
The apricot Satogami paper was then laid on top of the lino plate and put into a press. Once printed they were pegged up and left to dry for a few days, I did extra copies so I could select the best ones for the final binding.
I chose to split the cover design so there were apples on the front and apple blossom on the back of the book. I wanted this difference to carry through onto the endpapers and doublures. To add another level of complexity to the design I decided to make it so that each of the flowers and apples on the endpapers and doublures would have gold leaf behind them to catch the light when the book boards were opened which meant cutting out each shape using a scalpel.
I glued some squares of gold leaf to Japanese paper in preparation using PVA glue and left them to dry.
I flipped both the paper-backed gold leaf and the pierced endpapers over and drew around the shape of the flower and apple clusters that I needed to back onto the reverse side of the gold leaf.
I then made a slightly oversized cut around the pencil outline so that there was enough extra to glue it onto the reverse of the printed paper to span the pierced void.
British Birds, Part Four: Leather Covering, Box and Final Photos
Spot the difference in the above! As explained in the previous post, the reason for me doing my sample boards is they are a test run ahead of working on the actual binding. In this case, I finessed the lapwing on the book by using a wider colour palette overall and also added feather outlines to the back of the bird which I felt made a huge improvement.
So, onto the covering stage of the binding process. I spritzed the front of the leather using a water spray in order to prevent stains appearing as a result of the pasting out of the reverse after covering.
The back of the leather was pasted out three times and left for the paste to soak in each time.
Thankfully the leather went on to the book well and I was able to turn in the edges and form the headcaps before leaving the book to dry for 24 hours. I regularly changed the blotting papers in order to draw out the moisture over this time.
Once completely dry I was able to open up the book boards and work on sticking the leather joints down. The leather joints had been glued into the endpaper before the book was forwarded so I took off the waste sheets that had been protecting the text block to free them.
I laid the book down on my bench with both boards open. I then cut bevels at the corners of the turns-ins and the leather joints so they would lie flush when the leather joints were glued down. I applied PVA glue to the leather joint and rubbed it down using my fingers before closing the board and letting it dry. Once dry the same was done to the other board, then the boards were infilled, sanded and the printed paper doublures were glued down.
Once the book was complete it was time to work on the wooden container I had planned to house it in. I wanted the title to appear on the lid of the box so carefully cut the letters out of the same colour leather.
Once they were cut out I backed the voids with gold leaf that I had stuck to Japanese paper (the same as I had done for the ‘highlight’ leaves on the paper doublures).
It was important to cut the letters out especially carefully as I wanted to use them to make a label for an outer conservation box I had ordered for the wooden box to live in.
The box itself was machined from tulipwood with a routed channel in the lid and base in which a decorated panel was fixed. It was lined with felt and spacers added on all four sides.
Finally, I will end with some pictures of the end result! More pictures of this binding and box can also be found on my website.
