Venus and Adonis

This binding is done on a 1931 printing of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis by The Printing House of Leo Hart, with illustrations by Rockwell Kent.  I used one of these illustrations for the cover design.  I felt the image of Venus would look better for the front cover of the book so I reversed the image. To have the drawing fit the cover, I drew more leaves above the figures and completed Adonis's head.

I  chose a terracotta goatskin for the cover to accent the orange in the illustration. The top edge had been painted originally with a bright yellow gold, but I did not like the look with the leather so I airbrushed a darker orange gold over it. The other edges were left uncolored.

I began with the larger shapes and cut the onlays out of black and two shades of green. I decided to do the lines of the drawing with black line onlays.

I drew out the image on a 3 ply Bristol board and began cutting out the drawing. As I cut along a line, I then taped the pieces back together with a low tack blue masking tape. I first focused around the large onlay pieces.  

The drawing was placed over the trimmed and pared cover leather. Only then I could remove the piece of the bristol board where an onlay would go.  When the onlay was trimmed and edge pared to fit, I scraped the cover leather and used a paste and PVA mixture to adhere the piece in place.

When the onlays were all adhered to the leather, I back pared the piece and pasted it on the book. 

I continued cutting and taping the the drawing but left some lines uncut so the Bristol Board was not completely cut apart. I need to lift out sections so sometimes a line extended past the drawn line to join another so a piece could be lifted. To guide the tooling later, I used a red pencil to tell me were I stopped and started the line again.

I wrapped a strip of paper around the top and another strip at the bottom of the book so I could tape down the cut drawing at the top. That way the drawing could be lifted up to see the  tooling.  At the bottom, I used two pieces of tape to keep the drawing in place during the tooling.

All of the tooling was done with a single stylus.  I lifted out a section and with a warm tool, outlined the open shape. I lifted the drawing, and used a small brush to put water over the line. Then I tooled it again with the warm tool, creating a blind tooled line. This stylus is available from Talas; it is called the Ascona tool http://apps.webcreate.com/ecom/catalog/product_specific.cfm?ClientID=15&ProductID=23963

After more cutting and more tooling, this is what the two cover drawings looked like once the blind tooling was finished.

For the line onlays, I took very thin paired leather, pasted it out and stuck it to a piece of mylar. After it dried, the paste gave the leather some stiffness so I could cut strips thin enough to fit into the tooled lines.

 I began to glue the strip of leather by dragging it through PVA and then dragging it across the waste paper, leaving a small amount of glue on the leather strip. It was then placed in the tooled line and rubbed down with a piece of Japanese tissue to absorb any extra glue that might ooze out. 

Then to continue gluing the strip in place, I folded the strip back and brushed on more glue over an inch or two wide area. I rubbed it down in place and repeated that until the line was finished. With this image, you can see that I have the lines end away from the edge of the boards so they will not be easy rubbed out of place when the book is held.

Open Horizons

This binding was done  on the book Open Horizons by Sigurd F. Olson. It is about his love affair with the wilderness in Wisconsin. It is in the Guild of Book Workers 2012-2014 Traveling Exhibition, Horizon.

The inspiration for the design came from one of the illustrations in the book. I photocopied it to a larger size and reversed the image so the front cover would have more of the image on it. Then I made a line drawing of the image and began to plan what portions would be onlays, tooled lines, and painted textures and where the spine of the book would cross the shapes.

I made a drawing on Mylar of the design. This helps me when placing the different pieces and helps me keep the design in mind.

The edges were sponged to create the look of fallen leaves. I used acrylic paint and applied it by crumpling paper and dipping it in the paint which was thinned with water.

For the onlays of the trees, I used the crackled paste technique to create the bark texture.  I took thinned pieces of calf leather and brushed the surface with a cooked starch paste. It was a thick layer that will act as a resist to the dye. After they dried, they curled up.

To create the texture I pulled the leather over the edge of my table. This caused small breaks in the paste layers.  By pulling one direction, most the cracks in the paste will line up. I rubbed the surface with a spirit-based dye to make the dye seep into the cracks.

There is a youtube video by Paper Dragon Books on this technique

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cCA5fhjUMfA&noredirect=1#!

Also, Trevor Jones wrote about this technique and others in the New Bookbinder Journal vol. 13, 1993, Extending the Options: the Use of Spirit Leather Dyes in Bookbinding Design.

After the dye dried, I rinsed off the paste. I used several different colors of leather and dye so I would have a variety of finished onlays.

Using the Mylar drawing I blocked out the shoreline area and began airbrushing the sky and lake refection. I could then check the airbrushing by laying the drawing over it. I built up the color in several light layers of white and blue acrylic paint.

I went through all my leather scraps looking for browns and greens. I started with the rocks along the shore and the tree line on the far side of the lake.  I trimmed out the shapes and pared the edges and then tried different arrangements.

In a previous post, The Dreamtime,  I explained how a use a Sharfix to make onlays,

I made a lot of small shapes with the green leathers for the leaf shapes using my knife.

Before I started gluing the onlays in place, I laid out all the pieces. I then went back and pared more leaf shapes.

I added some color to the shoreline with a brush and stared gluing on the pieces. I glued down the first layer and then when pieces overlapped, I trimmed out the area so I could keep the onlay at one or two layers.

Before gluing down the onlay I scrape the area with a curved knife blade to roughen the surface. This makes the surface more receptive to the paste and PVA  mixture and makes  a stronger bond.

After everything was glued in place I back pared the leather to even out the thickness of the leather.

I brushed on more color for the shadows around the rocks and trees. After looking it over for several days, I decided to get it on the book.

As I began tooling in some of the branches I realized the lake was too yellow. I had wanted some color reflecting from the sky but this didn't look right. I masked out the shoreline and sky using thin paper I wrapped around the book.  I did not want to use tape on the previously airbrushed areas and by keeping the book closed, I could keep the paper tight around the book. I added little more blue and then I was happier with the look.

The Dreamtime

This binding was done on the book "The Dreamtime" by Charles P. Mountford, printed in 1968. The book is about Australian aboriginal myths and includes drawings and paintings by Ainslie Roberts.

I was quietly taken by the painting and the colors the artist used and built my design for the binding based on an illustration for the origin of fire story. I changed the shape and placement of the rocks and made a drawing of the design to size.



The book was bound in a green cloth case binding which I removed then disbound the pages.



The pages had 12 holes punched for the original machine sewing; I used five of the holes for three recessed cords and the kettle stitches for sewing the book. I used two pieces of 18/8 thread for the recessed cords.



After sewing I added several sheets of plain bond paper folded into two sections that were equal to the thickness of a leather hinge. A section was tipped in with PVA along the spine of the book in the front and back of the sewn textblock. They will be removed later when the leather hinges are pasted in. I glued up the spine with PVA and rounded and backed the book. The page edges were then sanded smooth.



Headbands were sewn with two colors of silk thread on a flax cord and the spine was lined with two layers of bond paper that I sanded between layers to give a smooth surface to the spine.

The boards for the binding were made of .080 Davey board lined with a bond paper to help stabilize them and were shaped by sanding the edge along the top, bottom and foreedge and were laced onto the book. I added a one on two off hollow and the final lining was a piece of Stonehenge paper with the edges beveled and sanded before being glued down to the hollow.

For the design I need to create a darkening sky so I started with a yellow goatskin from Harmatan and cut it to a rough size. Using the aniline dyes from Hewitt mixed with water I begin brushing the dye on the damped leather. I kept the areas broad without trying to worry about details at first. When the leather was dry the color was not dark enough so I repeated the process. Some areas of the skin did not take the dye as well as others so when the skin was almost dry I stippled dye over to darken these areas.



The design centered on fire leaping across the sky and I decided feathered onlays would give the edge quality I wanted for the flames. A feathered onlay is pared for the face of the leather scraping off a very thin layer with the edges broken up by cutting through the grain of the leather.

Previously when I had tried feathered onlays I used my paring knife to pare off the pieces. I had also seen a photo in Philip Smith’s books showing him using a spokeshave. I tried both and got random shapes but for this design I needed to control the shapes more.





I had also tried using my Scharf-Fix to feather onlays and I thought if I could raise the leather in the shape I needed, the blade would shear it off the leather. I took a sheet of Mylar and traced the shapes with a marking pen from my drawing. Using blue painters tape, I placed two layers of tape on the backside of the Mylar. I then cut out the shape with a pair of scissors.





I cut the yellow leather into one inch strips, the width of the cutting area on the Scharf-Fix and thinned them down to about .5 mm thickness (about half of the thickness of the leather). I peeled the tape away from the Mylar and put it on the back of the leather. Then with the flesh side up I ran it through the Scharf-Fix set at a height equal to the thickness of the leather. When it hit the tape the leather was pushed up into the blade.





I used a photocopy of the drawing and cut out the shapes of the flames to guide where to glue down the onlays. Using PVA and paste I glued the feathered onlay on the cover leather and put them under a weight to dry.

For the rock onlays I used the more traditional technique for onlays. I thinly pared light tan leather and using another photocopy of the drawing cut the shapes out of the leather. I then used the dyes to tone and shape the rocks. After they were dry, I edge pared the pieces and glued them on to the cover leather.

At this time I dyed areas on the cover to darken and to add shadows to some of the fire shapes so the image appeared more 3-dimensional.



After everything had dried I took the leather and using my spokeshave to back pare the leather so the onlays would recess into to the thickness of the leather and be level with the rest of the skin.



I went over the binding boards, smoothing down the areas around where the cords laced into them, notched the board corners at the head and tail and slit the tube for the leather turn ins. I then capped up the book and trimmed the leather to its final size and pared the edges.

I used paste to adhere the leather to the binding being careful not to over wet the front of the leather. After the leather was on and had dried I allowed the binding to sit out for a day to see if the boards pulled. I then added a piece of Iowa B9 flax paper in the inside of both board to balance the pull of the leather.

I dyed two strips of leather for the hinges and trimmed and pared them to size. I removed the false sections I had tipped in the front and back section after sewing and then pasted in the hinges. After the hinges had dried I trimmed them out. I had over pared the leather around the top headcap and on the back board had a gap at the turn in. I dampened the leather and lifted up the pieces and pared a patch to fit, then pasted everything back down.




When beginning the dark tooling I had a copy of the drawing near by and lightly marked the dry leather first with a small bone folder as a guide before tooling. This leaves a light impression on the soft leather and if I am not happy with the line it could be removed by dampening the leather and then letting it dry.

The tooling on the image was done free hand with my brass stylus, first the tool was heated and used on the dry leather and then the impressions were tooled again with the tool heated after wetting the lines with a small brush with water. Heat and moisture will darken the line and make it permanent.



S. A. Neff designed the brass stylus I used. There is another type--often called an Ascona tool--first used by Hugo Peller. He designed the tool to make a wide tooled line into which he could place a fine onlay of white leather. There is also a earlier description in 1892, Sarah Prideaux using a dash tool from a set of hand letters that she shaped into a stylus tool and used in a free hand manner.

I have an ascona style tool but prefer the Neff design. It can be made from a brass rod set into a wooden dowel handle. After shaping with files the edge can be smoothed with fine sandpaper and given a final polish on a leather strop and polishing compound.

S.A. Neff made a presentation of this tool and how he uses it at the GBW Standards Meeting in 2001. There is an article by Neff published in the GBW Journal in Vol. XXXIX No. 1 and also video available from Guild of Book Workers.

I took a workshop from Neff several years ago and now use this tool regularly.

I am holding the Neff stylus and below is an Ascona tool.



This shows the shape of the Neff stylus tip from two angles.

With the tooling done I used Hewit’s Leather dressing to seal the dyed leather.



The title was done with 14 point Garamond type using a hand pallet and done in gold leaf. I started with a paper pattern and then blinded in the title. Then I used B.S. glair and laid on the gold and tooled it in.



The endpapers were made from some paste paper I had made last year,





This book was juried into the Marking Time Exhibition sponsored by the Guild of Book Workers and will travel to several different locations over the next two years. The first location is at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the exhibition opens May 15 and runs until August 15. More information about the exhibit can be found at

http://www.guildofbookworkers.org/events/exhibits.php