The Nation's Bookbinder

Here's an interesting article from October's Fine Books & Collections.

It's about the nation's bookbinder. I bet you didn't know we had one. I didn't either.

Wellesley College

Here are some long awaited pictures of the gorgeous campus that is Wellesley College. I couldn't tell you what any of the buildings are, but they are gorgeous. It's super easy to forget that you're on a college campus.

 

What I did over summer vacation

Well, summer is drawing to a close, classes started up again last week and I feel like it's time for my "what I did over summer vacation essay." Unfortunately for you  (or not??) I don't feel the need to write an essay per se. How do you feel about a bullet list instead?

• Spent 230 hours in class
• Made 9 books
• Ate a lot of pizza, biscotti, and pastry
• Saw the Tall Ships
• Saw the Queen Mary 2!
• Commuted about 250 miles on my bike
• Only had one flat!
• Worked two jobs
• Quit one of those jobs!
• Had only two weeks of actual summer 
• Went to Old Sturbridge Village
• Visited The Cape
• Got really sunburned
• Museum hopped
• Moved
• Watched several documentaries about plastics

Old Sturbridge Village!

The Cape. It was a gorgeous day for the beach.

The USCGC Eagle

Some of the Naval boats. A US one and a German one I think.

The Queen Mary 2. Maybe as close as I'll ever be to cruising on it.

Ethiopian binding, and three varieties of Italian paper bindings

End of class

Today class ended. I'm actually pretty bummed about it. The class was awesome. I made some new friends and met some great people. And I learned a ton. I forget how wonderful it is to work with my hands. I love bookbinding. I'm already looking forward to the next class that I can take. Sadly, it won't be for a while, but hopefully I can take some more classes while I'm here in Boston.

Wellesley

Remember the movie Mona Lisa Smile? And how it was about a conservative college for women--Wellesley? Today, for our last official day of class we took the commuter rail out there and visited the special collections, conservation lab, and book arts lab.

Wellesley is I think the most beautiful campus I have ever seen. There could be more beautiful college campuses out there, but I haven't them yet. I kept having to remind myself that this was a college, not a park. So gorgeous. And the architecture is fantastic. Such beautiful buildings. The insides were great too. The special collections and the labs we saw were stunning, very elegant. I can totally understand why women would want to go to school here.

We also had the opportunity to have lunch on campus. On Thursdays they have lunch for some staff group in the faculty club. It was a nice buffet, with nice dishes, that we enjoyed on the patio overlooking the beautiful lake. And the humidity managed to burn off a bit so that it was wonderfully pleasant to be outside.

It was a great day. Besides, we got to handle some pretty awesome books. There was one that was mid-nineteenth century prints of Italian countryside dedicated to Prince Albert, with some spectacular endpapers and endbands. We saw an awesome Parisian study bible that I think dated to the thirteenth century. And we got to handle a pretty nice incunable, and so many other great things. I do love field trips.

And the conservation lab and the book arts lab had windows! I know that sounds funny, but it is amazing what windows will do. It really says something about an institution that it cares enough about conservation to put the lab in a space with windows. And it is truly a beautiful lab. And I've never seen anything like their book arts lab. It's a far cry from the ex-grocery store/warehouse I learned the trade in.

I felt like such a tourist as I took pictures today. But I confess that I don't know when I'll have time to upload them. In the mean time, enjoy this picture I found online:

New Yankee Workshop

Today in class we worked with wood. Our Gothic model has wooden boards and so we worked on shaping them--making them fit into the shoulder of our text block, and also shaping the head, tail, and fore-edge in some traditional manner. I have virtually no woodworking experience (sometimes I envy the cub scouts that get to learn things like how to work with wood...) and so it took me most of the day to shape just one side of each of my two boards. It turns out that while I know enough about woodworking to know what dovetail joints, rabbets, and dados are, I apparently don't know enough to deftly use a rasp or a plane. While all my years of watching The New Yankee Workshop have taught me that: "there is no more important safety rule than to wear these--safety glasses", I guess it takes more than watching to actually be good at woodworking.

Gothic

Today in class we started sewing our Gothic book structure. So far it's pretty cool. We get to sew on a very quintessential looking stand. I'll try and take some pictures one of these days to share with you. But for now this is something like what we're making:

Class time is here again

This morning started my final course for the summer. It is a five week, intense, bookbinding workshop at North Bennet Street School. While it is located at NBSS it is actually taught by a woman from the Winterthur program at the University of Delaware. There are three other people in my class. Two kids from the art conservation program at Buffalo State University and one from the art conservation program at the University of Delaware. Which leaves me as the only non-conservation student. All three of the other people seem really nice, and one girl was actually in my other class this summer. I think it will be a fun five weeks.

I rode my bike down to the North End this morning. It was a delightful almost 7 mile ride. I know it sounds a bit pathetic, but it was the longest ride I'd been on yet. I looked pretty gross when I got there, but I think my classmates (and my colleagues at work later in the day) will just have to get used to me looking pretty awful.  My about 3.5 mile ride to work after class was pretty good, though if it hadn't rained for about half of it I would have liked that better. c'est la vie.

Bookbinding II

On Saturday I had another one of those all day bookbinding workshops. Though now that I think of it I doubt I blogged about the first one so maybe "another" isn't quite the right word... This workshop was a good one. It was a follow up one to the last one I took (which I suppose is a story for another day). This time we learned coptics, flat-backs, long stitch, and if we'd had more time we would've done secret-belgian bindings too--but she sent us home with supplies and instructions (yay!). Technically I already knew coptic and flat-back, but it was nice to see how some of her techniques differ from the way that I normally would approach those bindings. Some things I liked better and some I didn't. But I am definitely glad that I know more. And learning the long-stitch was good. That one and the Secret-Belgian were the two that I most wanted to learn. I've enjoyed these workshops I've taken. I really love bookbinding. I need to get my stuff out more often and work on projects more. Because I always forget how much I love it. I'm excited for my big workshop this summer.I'm very excited to get that kind of concentrated bench time under my belt.

Here's a random picture of a Secret-Belgian binding just for kicks: