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‘bookbinding’ Category

  1. October // Bookbinder of the Month: Rose Adler

    October 1, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    This copy of Colette’s L’Envers du Music-Hall with illustrations by Jean-Emile Laboureur was printed in Paris in 1926. The binding was signed and designed by Rose Adler and executed by Emmanuel Lecarpentier in 1929 for the bibliophile Jacques Doucet. Bound in ivory calf, the dancer’s legs are highlighted with royal blue, red, beige and black calf. On the spine the author’s name has been tooled in aluminum with an inlay of royal blue calf for the initial, while the title has been tooled in both gold and aluminum with an inlay of pink calf for the initial and royal blue for the apostrophe.  

    Unfortunately there is not a lot written about Rose Adler. However, she is one of my favorite binders, working and living during one of the most exciting eras in terms of art and culture: Art Deco of the 1920’s and 30’s. Rose took on the profession of offering her design work as both a cabinetmaker and bookbinder. As a bookbinder she worked closely with her teacher, Pierre Legrain, who greatly influenced her design work and craftsmanship and much of her work was commissioned by Jacques Doucet.

    Rose was particularly fond of calfskin because of its smooth qualities. She masterfully designed bindings, carefully considering the book itself and the materials. Like many other binders at the time, she incorporated an assortment of other materials into her work like lizard and crocodile skins, agate and lapis stones, aluminum for edge gilding and tooling, and lacquer as a finish. 

    Rose was born in 1892 and lived until 1959.

  2. Bookbinder of the Month: Sybil Pye

    September 30, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    Even though this book is more heavily tooled then her other bindings, she keeps to the same rhythm of repeating her signature tools in order to create the design.  The same tool is used in each corner and lines are used to break up the already complex design. This edition of Francois Villon’s Ballades and Miscellaneous Poems was printed in 1900 by the Eragny Press and bound by Sybil in 1928.  Covered in red goatskin over 5 raised bands, the design also includes onlays of green and natural goatskin. This book can be seen in detail online at the British Library.

  3. Bookbinder of the Month: Sybil Pye

    September 23, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    Another edition of Thomas Sturge Moore’s The Little School, this copy was also printed by Eragny Press in 1905 (but on paper instead of vellum).  Unlike last week’s binding, Sybil didn’t bind this edition until 1940, much later in her career.  Covered in a turquoise goatskin with inlays of jade-green, light red, black and natural goatskin. Again you find the familiar shapes gilt in gold, anchoring the corners with the fat “o” tool, repetition in the stacking of the rounded triangle, and lines that run the full height of the book.

  4. My Hand…Fantasy & Nonsense Exhibition

    September 17, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    The University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library is hosting an exhibition from September 7th – November 4th showcasing bindings of the set book Fantasy and Nonsense printed by Tryst Press; my binding will be included in this show. If you happen to be in the area during the second weekend in October, head over to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts to see the Horizon exhibition, where my binding of Flatland will be on display. Both of these exhibitions coincide with the Standards of Excellence Seminar held by the Guild of Book Workers.

  5. Bookbinder of the Month: Sybil Pye

    September 16, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    Sybil Pye was a long-term companion to artist and poet Thomas Sturge Moore and throughout her career bound several copies of his book of poetry The Little School. This copy was printed on vellum by Eragny Press in 1905 and bound by Sybil in 1916. Covered in green goatskin with inlays of vellum and gold tooled with her familiar brass tools. Marianne Tidcombe’s Women Bookbinder 1880-1920 gives ownership to the Wormsley Library, but you can view this binding on the British Library’s online catalogue. 

  6. Bookbinder of the Month: Sybil Pye

    September 9, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    The British Library houses an immense collection of bookbindings. But if you can’t make it to London you can view incredibly detailed scans of their collection online. This binding of Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici, Urn Burial, Christian Morals and other essays was bound by Sybil Pye in 1940 and is owned by the British Library. Only the upper cover has been digitized, but we can see the book was bound in a black goatskin with 5 raised bands on the spine. The design on the cover has been implemented with onlays in a fair goat and tooled in gold with her signature brass tools. 

  7. Bookbinder of the Month: Sybil Pye

    September 2, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    In 1931, Sybil Pye bound this copy of Christina Rossetti’s Poems from Gregynog Press.  A full leather binding of dark green goatskin with inlaid shapes of bright green and natural goatskin.  Gold tooling is done with her custom brass tools.  This binding is owned by the Wormsley Library.  

  8. September // Bookbinder of the Month: Sybil Pye

    September 1, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    Last April, I had the honor of handling not one, but two bindings by Sybil Pye at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England. Her designs are striking with the use simple shapes and minimal color palette. Her execution is immaculate. Once a certified nursery school teacher, Sybil ran a private kindergarten from 1900-1903 until she fell ill.  During this time she began teaching herself bookbinding through the guidance of Douglas Cockerell’s Bookbinding and the Care of Books. Early on in her career she decided on a forwarding style and stuck with it; a rather flat back sewn on raised cords with simple headbands, she never trimmed her text blocks on a plough or guillotine (any necessary trimming was done by hand) and finally her endpapers were usually plain white (which held true to the two examples I saw in England).

    Her earliest known binding is from 1906, during this year she met poet T. Sturge Moore and artist Charles Ricketts, whom she kept as close friends throughout the years using them for design advice and occasionaly borrowing tools from Ricketts. Sybil used a small assortment of simple tools for finishing.  Many of which she designed herself, in Women Bookbinders by Marianne Tidcombe, her collection of tools are shown illustrated (taken directly from her bindings). Up until 1925, Pye had produced around 50 bindings, many included blind or gold tooling, while 18 of them contained inlay work.  At the time the majority of her works were bound in either natural or dyed pigskin with inlays of pigskin or vellum.

    After 1925, she began to work exclusively in goatskin developing the style she is known for today. Her designs are often mislabeled as cubist inspired, but in fact she took many elements from Byzantine art, Charles Ricketts and the architectural drawings of Michelangelo. Her designs appear to be symmetrical with the central axis at the spine, but in fact there are subtle differences between the upper and lower covers.  

    Pye documented every book she bound from the beginning to the end of her career (1925-58), this included a list of 164 bindings.  Her work was exhibited regularly from 1910-46. During the last ten years of her binding career, the quality of her work suffered due to an injury to her wrist that never healed properly. She died in 1958 at the age of 79. 

  9. My Hand…Little Birds

    August 20, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    In April 2011, I took my first trip out of the country to London.  While I was there I made my way to the Natural History Museum for their touring exhibition of Sexual Nature, a show on the sexual habits of various animal species from the praying mantis to rams to angler fish to humans. I was intrigued and shocked by the facts and imagery presented in the exhibit, particularly the Green Porno shorts by Isabella Rossellini. On my way out I perused the gift shop and decided on a whim to purchase two books by Anaïs Nin (Little Birds and Delta of Venus).

    Both books are a collection of short stories published in the late 1970s posthumously. Written in the 1940s, Nin and a group of writers were given the task of writing erotica for an anonymous private collector. Her erotic shorts deal with various sexual themes, some quite taboo (varying from pedophilia to lesbianism), all the while she maintains a focus on the study of women and her female characters.

    The cover design for Little Birds was taken from the title pages of the individual stories, a ‘V’ formation of sparrows. I chose a simple color palette for my simple design, red (the color of love and seduction), white (the color of purity and innocence) and gold (the color of luxuriance). The book is bound in full scarlet goatskin leather from Harmatan.  The sparrows are surface gilt in gold leaf with white suede inlays.

    I covered the inside of each board with a leather edge to edge doublure in the same scarlet goatskin. An edge to edge doublure describes a technique where a thinly pared piece of leather covers the inside of the board, stretching from edge to edge creating a seamless transition from the outside to the inside.  The doublure also stretches over the joint and onto the text block creating a very strong attachment. Along with the leather doublure is a sunken panel filled with white suede framed in surface gilt gold leaf. The fly leaf is a handmade Lokta paper from Nepal, printed with a pattern of white feathers on a natural base.

    The book is housed in a rounded spine clamshell box, using the same materials as the binding. The spine is lined with scarlet goatskin with the title hand tooled in gold.  The case and trays are covered in the same feather pattern Lokta paper and are lined with Hahnemühle Ingres in smoke.

  10. My Hand…Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

    August 6, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    This fine binding of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott was completed for the Guild of Book Workers National Traveling show ‘Horizon‘.  The show opened on June 8th at The Great Hall at the Margaret I. King Special Collections Library in the University of Kentucky and will soon be traveling to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City for the grand opening of the Standards Seminar on October 11, 2012.

    I choose Flatland (not only because it’s one of my favorite science fictions novels), but I wanted to challenge myself by creating a 3-dimensional cover for the binding.  Abbott’s novella is an observation on the social hierarchy of Victorian culture set in a fictional 2-dimensional world known as Flatland whose denizens are geometric figures which defines their place in the social ladder (women are depicted as lowly lines).  Readers are guided through the text by a Square who dreams of other dimensions and challenges the authority of the high class Circle.  As you move around the book, a sphere begins to emerge from the cover, illustrating the Square’s discovery of the third dimension.

    The book has been bound in white buffalo skin, while the shapes are tooled onlays of both goat and buffalo with palladium outlines.  A plastic lens was mounted to bass wood to give the right dimension for the sphere and adhered to the front board before covering.  The order of the shapes was taken from the hierarchy listed in the book, while the layout was greatly inspired by Art Deco bindings of the early 1900s.  The edges of the text block are gilt with Palladium leaf over a base of graphite; headbands have been sewn to mimic the color pattern created by the shapes.

    The title was tooled with palladium using a series of line palettes and gouges to create a custom font.

    At the beginning and end of the text block a pop-up of a cube is revealed representing another opportunity to transform a 2-dimensional object into a 3-dimensional one.  The book is housed in an elaborate enclosure, in order to protect the raised area of the cover a spacer was constructed with a circle cutout.  The spacer is lined with leather and white suede on the side facing the book and paper on the other.  A chemise lined with white suede encompassed the spacer and book.  All three components rest inside a leather spine clamshell box.  The title and an image of the Flatlander’s home are tooled on the spine of the box.

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  • My name is Erin Fletcher, owner and bookbinder of Herringbone Bindery in Boston. Flash of the Hand is a space where I share my process and inspirations.
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