When I was initially approached about binding an edition of the Uppercase Encyclopaedia of Inspiration, I couldn’t decide whether excitement or fear was the correct emotion to be feeling. However excitement soon overtook the fear and I started thinking about which binding to use.
I immediately decided that I wanted the book to be able to open flat, for ease of use, so after some research, I settled on the Secret Belgian Binding, which is so clever in the way that it allows the text block to move against the spine.
During Covid I had studied online with various binders, both in the UK and further afield. One in particular had an ethos based on recycling and reusing, and it became a habit to keep all of the offcuts from each project, no matter how small, in case they could be used in a future project.
I wanted my binding of Rag and Pulp to carry on the story of my book making journey, so decided to stick lots of these offcuts from previous books, onto sheets of handmade paper, and use that to wrap the grey board front cover, using buckram for the back cover and spine. I found that as I was sticking down the offcuts, the various book projects came back to me, so making the cover paper was quite a walk down memory lane!
I had decided that I wanted to try and pull together various skills learned during, and since, lockdown, such as paper making, marbling, gilding and modern calligraphy. I am still very much a beginner at these skills, but enjoyed integrating them into this project, with marbled handmade paper end sheets and the book’s title written in gold on the spine.
It had been quite a shock when the text block arrived; I had no idea how books were printed, so the huge sheets of printed text and photographs came as something of a surprise. The task of separating the pages and maintaining any sense of order initially seemed overwhelming. I was keen to retain the history of how the pages had been printed and joined, so opted not to trim off the joining tabs and colour registrations.
Once all of the decisions had been taken, I made my first prototype to iron out any problems. The sewing of the actual book was a joy and it was all completed much quicker than I expected.
I have attached a pocket to the inside back cover of the book for a colophon, to remind myself of the whole process in years to come.
My thanks go to Uppercase for donating copies of the Encyclopaedia, to Grant Newell for nominating me for this project and to Todd Pattison for his calming presence and support from across so many thousands of miles. We are truly a global tribe of bookmakers.
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Rag and Pulp Binding 