A Passion For Handmade Books

And speaking of book artists..

Every once in awhile, a project comes along that sounds like too much fun to pass up. When a recent customer contacted our art department with the challenge of creating custom distressed leather hand bound books entitled "It Only Takes One,"  for the clothing company Cult of Individuality, we jumped at the chance to produce something beautiful.

You may not know that leather can be naturally distressed (i.e. if a cow had a scar, chances are the scar shows on the leather hide), or it can be distressed by hand. We honestly didn't know how difficult distressing leather would be! We started with this rich and supple charcoal leather.

In order to achieve the right look, our art director Alison went through some rough and tumble with the leather in our gravel parking lot.

This might not be the traditional leather distressing method, but the results were stellar:

Throw in a drill press, hand sewn binding, and French folded pages, and Voilà!

Needless to say, we were all very proud of the art department when the books were finished.

If you are in need of a custom leather book, or you're looking for some other examples of Distressed Leather Journals or Photo Albums, give us a buzz. We can't take on every custom project, but we're happy to listen and as always, happy to help!

Book Artists are alive and well

They live everywhere. They work with a set of utensils that, to the unknowing eye, appear to be unusual torture tools. They're book artists, and there may even be one living in your neighborhood.

Some book artists specialize in one of a kind books, while others produce small editions. Ranging from "objects" to scrolls to printed & bound editions, the art of the book has been around for some time. Experts on the subject credit English poet & artist William Blake with the origin of the form. Together with his with Catherine, Black wrote, illustrated, colored and bound his pieces, and in addition to inspiring potential book artists everywhere, he integrated the world of self-publishing & self-distributing with the world of text, imagery, and art form.

Book artists today work with many different materials, styles, techniques, and purposes. Because we're such fans of journals, and of excellent craftsmanship, here are a couple of book artists making beautiful pieces, and giving all of us bookbinders a good name.

photos courtesy of Teo Studio

photos courtesy of Serena Olivieri

 

As for us, we're happy we get the chance to create One of a Kind Leather Journals, as well as Leather Photo Albums, Fine Leather Wallets & Accessories, and the like, every day. We even carry a collection dedicated to the father of book arts himself; view our William Morris Paperblanks Journals.

 

Big thanks to Etsy & Design*Sponge for bringing these talented artists to our attention!

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Experience

Over the weekend, I was lucky enough to be invited to visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.  After almost a decade dedicated to her passion for art collecting, Gardner opened her museum in 1903 in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood; she insisted to her architect that the building be built to her exact specifications. Upon entering the museum, patrons are almost immediately transported to an extravagant 15^th Century Venetian style villa. The first floor contains a breathtaking courtyard and garden, complete with fountains and a tile mosaic floor.

The Museum's preeminent collection contains more than 2,500 paintings, sculptures, tapestries, furniture, manuscripts, rare books and decorative arts; Titian, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Manet, Degas, Whistler and Sargent are just some of the artists whose works are featured.  If you’ve heard of the Gardner Museum before, it may be due to the fact that one of the most famous art heists in history took place there. On March 18, 1990, two thieves disguised as Boston Police Officers entered the museum and stole thirteen works of art, including three Rembrandt works and a Vermeer painting. In the Dutch Room of the building, there are beautifully ornate, gilded and empty frames left to symbolize the artworks, which have never been recovered.

Perhaps my favorite items included in the collection were the rare books, particularly the ones that I found to be a bit, shall we say, stylistically familiar. Take a look!

Commisione of Doge Cristoforo Moro to Domenico Diedo as procurator of St. Mark, 1464, and our Paperblanks Gutenberg Bible Parabole Journal.

Commisione of Doge Francesco Donato to Girolamo Morosini as Captain of Brescia, 1547, and our Della Fattoria Leather Photo Album.

Commissione of Doge Giovanni II Cornaro to Giovanni Bollani as Podestà of Chioggia, 1718, and our Jumbo Nettuno Leather Journal.

Overall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has quite a collection. The walk along the line between genius and eccentricity varies between delicate tip-toeing and raucous marching, which proves for a truly unique and amazing experience. If you’re in Boston and you’d like to visit the museum, check out their website,  http://www.gardnermuseum.org.

For a closer look at the items Jenni Bick Bookbinding carries that are inspired by such works, check out our Leather Photo Albums, Leather Journals, and Paperblanks Journals.

Museum photos via.

Today: Free Sketches @ Occupy Wall Street

Breaking news from Artist Molly Crabapple:

SURPRISE: Free Vampire Squid Sketches @ Occupy Wall Street!

Dear comrades, today I’ll be doing FREE sketches at Liberty Park in support of Occupy Wall Street. Come by and get your signed drawing of a top-hatted cephalopod representing the banking class.

TODAY, Sunday, October 2nd
5-7pm (or until supplies run out)
@
Liberty Park (Broadway and Liberty.  Map here), NYC
near the Library (if you haven’t been to the park yet, its on the northeast corner)

Please bring blankets, food, tarps, or other donations for the brave folks occupying the park.  You can see what’s needed HERE

Please repost/RT.  Can’t wait to see you guys

If you’re not in NYC, you can find out about an occupation in your city at Occupy Together or Donate to Occupy Wall Street

Oh how I wish I was in NYC!

The chair you should be reading (in)

Bench of Thought (Banco del Pensamiento) 

by ALVARO TAMARIT, JÁVEA, Alicante, Spain

 

A sculpture and a piece of furniture at the same time, Bench of Thought has been carefully constructed using recovered books with wood as a structural reenforcement. Finished with a gloss varnish. Available with or without wooden arm-rests.

You could own this one of a kind original sculpture. Consider it at Saatchi Online

Mysterious Paper Sculptures, A Book-Arts Whodunit.

Those of you who don't keep up with Edinburgh's literary world through Twitter may have missed the recent spate of mysterious paper sculptures appearing around the city.

One day in March, staff at the Scottish Poetry Library came across a wonderful creation, left anonymously on a table in the library. Carved from paper, mounted on a book and with a tag addressed to @byleaveswelive - the library's Twitter account - reading:

"It started with your name @byleaveswelive and became a tree.… ... We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books… a book is so much more than pages full of words.… This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas….. a gesture (poetic maybe?)"

Periodically, other book sculpture gifts have been popping up all over Edinburgh, at libraries and book festivals.

I love the anonymity of these gestures, and of course, the work itself is wonderful, full of charm and imagination. In a world where digital words flicker across our screens, I believe we are sorely in need of this kind of homage to the printed word.

So, who is the mystery artist? I'm not sure I even want to know.

read more at Central Station

Art Student Hand-Illuminates, Binds a Copy of Tolkien’s Silmarillion

This German art student, Benjamin Harff, decided, for his exam at the Academy of Arts, to do something only slightly ambitious — to hand-illuminate and bind a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion. It took him six months of work. In very 21st century elvish-monk style, he hand-illuminated the text which had been printed on his home Canon inkjet printer. He worked with a binder to assemble the resulting book.

 

Incredible! Read an interview with Benjamin over at The Tolkien Library Blog

CAKE: BANDmade and Bound Away

This article originally appeared on Imprint  By Nicole Torres

It looks like CAKE is going far beyond the distance. The Sacramento-based rock band, known for their unique sound and front man John McCrea’s recognizable half-spoken vocals, not only released their sixth studio album early this year, but they also got their hands a little dirty with some handcrafted graphic work.

CAKE has been collaborating with BANDmade Books in San Francisco since June 2010 to publish Bound Away, an artfully handmade and visual book that will be released in mid-September. The small but ambitious Bound Away is actually from CAKE’s most recent album “Showroom of Compassion,” turned into a book, combining text (McCrea’s lyrics), illustrations by R. Stuhmiller, and music (as it also functions as a seriously cool CD case for the single).

CAKE met with Pam DeLuco and BANDmade Books to discuss the layout, storyboard and design for Bound Away.

BANDmade Books founder and creative director Pam DeLuco thought up the idea to work with musicians and turn songs into beautiful books about two years ago. She approached CAKE with the idea, after a year of trying to select the first band for the project.

“Musicians really are our modern day poets and I thought it would be an interesting project to take one song and turn it into a book. It would make you look at the song differently and it would make you notice the book as a form of communication,” said DeLuco. “I am familiar with CAKE's music and lyric sense and I knew that most of their songs could work as a book, so that's why I chose them.”

Xan McCurdy, the guitarist for CAKE, was arranging the wood type BANDmade Books pulled out to show as an example of what was possible to print. BANDmade Books noticed the word 'AWAY' arranged in an interesting way. They kept Xan’s arrangement and used it to print the covers.

The band chose “Bound Away” as the song for the book, because the process of making books the old fashioned way seemed to work well with the old fashioned feel of the song (which McCrea said had a “matte finish quality” that lent itself to the texture of handmade paper).

All of the band members worked with BANDmade Books during production— from making paper to hand carving linoleum to letterpress printing. Gabriel Nelson, CAKE’s bassist who was really involved in the design and print creation of the book, was the only one in the band who already had experience making paper by hand.

“I had never made paper before this project," said McCrea. "I really enjoyed it. I like the recycling aspect of the whole thing. Our music is handmade music that happens to get mass produced and distributed in various ways, but it is still a craft,” said McCrea. (Although he's had his share of experience with printing from printing up all of CAKE’s t-shirts and posters.)

Left: The band’s old cotton clothing. Right: The clothes were cut into 1-inch squares before put into the hollander beater where the fiber was beaten into pulp.

Left: John McCrea making paper from the band’s clothing. Right: The formed sheets are put under a hydraulic press to remove most of the water.

McCrea double dipped to make a two-toned sheet of paper using a mould and deckle.

Stack of finished handmade paper.

“When I retire from music, I plan on making paper again. In terms of finding a link between CAKE and making books by hand, I would say that since CAKE has always been a DIY band, this project was in keeping with our aesthetic,” said Nelson.

Bound Away fits well with CAKE’s go green advocacy (they even give away a tree at every show). The band used their clothing to hand make the cover paper for the book, and BANDmade Books collected jute coffee sacks from a local roaster to make the paper for the endsheets. And the interior was printed letterpress on 100% PCW paper that was manufactured with wind power. Stuhmiller’s illustrations were hand-carved linoleum, which, along with the metal type used for the text, seemed to fit well with CAKE’s other album covers that look like lino/wood cuts. DeLuco even handspun hemp herself for the binding thread, using beeswax from her San Francisco beehive.

“The book was always going to be completely handmade because as a craftsperson I make everything.  CAKE was definitely an inspiration for the choice of materials and processes used,” said DeLuco. “I knew they'd appreciate making a book with as many recycled/reclaimed materials as possible.”

Left: Close-up of the lock-up on the press. Right: Gabe Nelson showing off a sheet he just printed.

Once printed, the pages were trimmed down to size and collated according to ink saturation.

 

As far as the band’s hopes for Bound Away, McCrea said that they’d like to use a portion of each edition to help raise money for 826 Valencia, an organization that helps kids learn to write, and The Hamilton Wood Type Museum. And Nelson hopes that “people will enjoy the book and be inspired to look into doing something creative in their lives.”

There were 1,000 books published, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Library Archives also has a copy for those of you who can’t get your hands on one. “We realize that not every CAKE fan will get to own a copy of the book but we're hoping to get it into special collection libraries across the country and possibly abroad so at least people can have a chance to hold and experience the book,” said DeLuco.

 

Left: They aligned the book board that would become the front and back, along with a piece of recycled heavy card stock for the spine. They applied glue to the paper around the boards and carefully turned in the edges and corners to form the case of the book. Right: A sewn text block is being glued to its case.

The stack of finished books.

All images and captions courtesy of BANDmade Books.

Read more: CAKE: BANDmade and Bound Away — Imprint-The Online Community for Graphic Designers

For great design products, visit the online store: MyDesignShop.com

Bringing Bookbinding into the 21st Century

Although it began as a hobby at the age of 16, bookbinding has been Michael Chrisman's career for the past 30 years. Not only does Chrisman own and run Bookbinders Workshop, Inc. in Long Island, NY, he is also the newest member of the executive board of directors at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany. In addition to being added to the executive board of the German bookbinding museum, some of his outstanding work is also currently being featured on display in the museum. Take a look at the photos of some of his work below, including his amazing reproductions of the Gutenberg Bible, which was originally printed and bound in the 15th century, as well as some photos of Chrisman demonstrating his craft.

Although it's not easy to get your own Gutenberg Bible replica, we're happy to offer a great collection of Paperblanks Gutenberg Bible inspired journals. Check them out!

We're at it again...

Today, we received an order for 33 of our custom Santa Fe Journals - one of Jenni's most popular designs - Exciting! 

It's a good thing we just got a shipment of new leather! 

...Yes, this happens every time. We like to make sure the leather is versatile.