Interview with Kate Holland – Techniton Politeia

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Artisan Interview, book arts, bookbinding, Design binding, χειροποίητη βιβλιοδεσία, Βιβλιοδεσία, δερματόδετη βιβλιοδεσία, δερματόδετο, καλλιτεχνική βιβλιοδεσία, Kate Holland, leather binding

Summer is almost here and the Covid-19 crisis has pretty much left Greece, hopefully soon the rest of the world as well.

We return after a long pause at Techniton Politeia to talk with Kate Holland.

Before we get to the interview I would like to thank Kate who managed to find time while juggling a number of things amidst the chaos.
She approached the interview openly, with a “playful” attitude and as a chance to explore her own thoughts and introspect, thus making it feel less “formal” and more like I was there at the bindery, having an interesting conversation with a fellow binder. It was a pleasure.

When asked for her artist or artisan statement -I tend to use both terms because people sometimes prefer one over the other- her reply was:
Artist or artisan, that is the question. But what about artistan? I think we can be both.

I’d always loved the visual arts and I studied Mandarin Chinese at university with the vision of becoming a contemporary Chinese art dealer but a stint of unemployment (or fortuitous circumstance) led me to take on the role of manager of a prestigious London antiquarian bookshop. I had grown up near the book town of Hay-on-Wye and had always loved books so this was a wonderful job, handling some of the world’s most important and valuable books. It never ceased to amaze me that all our civilisation, so far, was contained between these covers. I started a morning class in bookbinding at City Lit (an adult education establishment) with Flora Ginn as a way of learning to refurbish and repair the books and I was immediately hooked. From there, an HND in bookbinding at London College of Printing (now Communication) and stints with Jen Lindsey back at City Lit and Mark Cockram at Studio Five before setting up on my own. All while raising three kids.

My work is fairly evenly split between artist bindings, either on commission or for exhibition; the whole book, either my own artist’s books or one-offs and limited editions for clients, supervising typesetting and layout, printing and binding; and teaching, currently at West Dean College, Shepherds or in my own studio. I was elected as a Fellow of Designer Bookbinders in 2015 and am a regular binder to The Booker Prize. I have books in The Walker Library of the Human Imagination, British and Bodleian Libraries, National Art Library at the V&A, as well as numerous other public and private collections.

In 2018 you had the honor of being chosen to bind one of the six shortlisted books, Mars room by Rachel Kushner, which was then presented to the author. BBC’s The One Show featured your work in a lovely 5 minute video giving us a bit of insight into the creative process behind that binding and bookbinding in general.

I was wondering: what is the Man Booker prize and how does a binder get chosen to bind on of the shortlisted books for the award? Can you tell us a bit about your experience with this binding and maybe share the author’s reaction upon seeing it?

The Booker Prize is the foremost literary prize awarded annually to a work of fiction in the English language. Past winners have included such luminaries as Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Iris Murdoch, J M Coetzee. A longlist of about 20 titles is announced in July and then a shortlist of 6 in September Each of the shortlisted titles is bound as a design binding for presentation to the author at the awards ceremony. Only Fellows of Designer Bookbinders are eligible to apply to bind these and we are chosen on a rotating basis. We do not know which title we will get until the shortlist is announced. On that day a mystery package of unbound sheets arrives. We have between 4-6 weeks to read the book, come up with a design and bind it. These are expected to be full design bindings with all that entails – sewn headbands, leather joints, doublures etc. so it is incredibly intense with lots of late nights but it often throws up some really interesting and exciting responses.

I was really pleased to get “The Mars Room” as my book. It touched on one of my favourite themes – that all humans are born equal, or at least in theory. I am fascinated by how circumstance – where, when and to whom you were born – can affect the path you take and the choices you make. How does a girl, like Romy, from a ‘nice’ middle class background become a sex worker, imprisoned for murder? Throw in an abusive mother, an absent father, early sexual abuse, rape at a formative age, a drug habit to numb all those feelings and a predatory stalker and maybe we begin to understand. In my bindings I seek to explore the yawning divide between the haves and the have-nots. I have covered topics such as illegal immigration, homelessness, drug addiction, rape, asylum seekers. I chose to write on the endpapers of The Mars Room some of the grim statistics about the abuse that sex workers suffer on a daily basis, about the mass incarceration with which the US chooses to manage its population and the number of women who are stalked. 

In the video mentioned previously you also talk about the continuity of our craft and how our tools and equipment have remained practically unchanged through the centuries – along many of the techniques we use, if I may add. You also bring up the bonefolder saying it’s “man’s earliest tool”, which is fascinating if one stops to think about it…

What are your thoughts in regards to this continuity: why is it important and how does it affect your mindset towards your work?

I love the fact that a bookbinder from 500 years ago would recognise the tools, the techniques, the equipment that I use today. Though I would hope my aesthetic and sentiment have evolved. Tools of polished bone, used to scrape hides and make leather, have been found in Neanderthal sites from over 50,000 years ago. That the bone folder I use every day, is one of man’s earliest tools, is an exciting connection to one of the most integral parts of what makes us human – our ability to use tools. And we humans have gone way beyond ”just” using tools and can aspire to stupendous levels of craftsmanship.

I came to bookbinding via antiquarian bookselling handling some of the greatest books ever printed. The codex form has been used to transmit the wonders of civilisation for centuries, whether science, literature, travel, art. It works well. The pages open and you can read the words, the covers protect the pages. Why fix it when it ain’t broken? But this all sounds like I am wedded to the past. Far from it. It is imperative to respect tradition and all that has gone before in order to be able to push the boundaries and move forward. My son is currently studying design engineering and together we are exploring ways of integrating the most cutting-edge technology into one of our oldest technologies, the book. 

Your bindings often feature alum tawed skins and various dyeing techniques – to great effect I must add. Your Paradise Lost and Regain’d bindings come to mind.

What is it that makes this creative option so appealing to you and what would your advice be to fellow binders who would like to try their hand at leather dyeing? Any suggestions when it comes to the materials and techniques used?

I suppose my love affair with leather dyeing came from my need to have a wider palette to work with. I didn’t want to be restricted to just the colours available in ‘off the shelf’ leathers or my bindings to be identified by the number on the colour chart of the tannery catalogue. If you can dye your own leather then you have an infinite range of colours, textures, subtlety and intensity to hand. I tend to use fair or alum tawed calf or goatskin, generally sourced from Hewit’s – the fair gives a more nuanced, warmer colour and the alum tawed a starker, brighter colour being a whiter base. I use either Hewit’s Aniline dyes in powder form or Selladerm dyes available from Leather Conservation Centre. I buy only red, yellow, blue and black and mix accordingly.

I am currently particularly fond of graduated colour schemes such as in “Paradise Lost and Regain’d”. I think most people assume that this is airbrushed but, in fact, the colour is built up in thin washes incredibly gradually over several days to give a much more subtle and sophisticated finish. Always remember to fix the dye as well before covering! I use Dyefix or Tinofix which are the respective fixatives for Hewits and Selladerm.

Silly question but I’m really curious: what’s with the dot fascination?!
Many of your bindings feature dots as a recurring decorative element. Is there something to it?

Early in my career I made two books for the annual Designer Bookbinders’ competition – Elizabeth David’s “Book of Mediterranean Food” and H E Bates’s “Through the Woods”. Both of them wholly featured dots as the design motif. And they won respectively Second Prize Set Book and First Prize Open Choice and Mansfield Medal for Best Book. Around the same time, some well-meaning person had advised me that, in order to become a successful bookbinder, you had to have a recognisable, signature style. I had had no artistic training, only being allowed to study needlework at school not art, and I struggled massively with my self-confidence and my ability to design. Dots seemed quite easy so, I guess, I thought I was onto something.

That was until a well-known dealer commissioned a design binding from me saying, “Just do your dots thing.” I did, but, it was a huge struggle as dots were so wrong for that book. I vowed that I would only produce designs that truly reflected the book’s contents, not just another iteration of a previously successful, but now hackneyed, motif. One of my greatest compliments recently, was that my bindings looked like I had actually read the book!

While reading about your binding on Doors of Perception I thought about Huxley’s use of psychedelics and how many artists have used them as a means of searching for inspiration or expanding their creative expression. Bookbinders, at least to my knowledge, can’t benefit from that: bit hard to use a paring knife while tripping… That said if a design binding is to live up to its name it does require of the binder to be immersed in the book’s story to some extent. I believe your words “When I’m working on the books they become my whole life, I live and breathe them…” represent this in a very poetic manner.

So, how do you experience that immersion? (In what ways do you live and breathe in/through the book you are working on each time?) Are there any steps or guidelines you follow to facilitate it? Is it a purely positive state or does it also come at a cost?

I can testify that I have not yet found a stimulant which helps in the actual process of bookbinding! Hand-eye co-ordination when handling sharp tools or delicate leather requires absolute concentration. I immerse myself utterly into the world of the book I am working on, reading it, taking notes, re-reading if necessary, researching the times in which it was written, artistic fashions, societal upheavals, political tensions, historic events. All these affect the writer and the writing and I aspire to be able to reflect them equally in the binding, but hopefully with a contemporary twist.

I usually have about five or six books on the go at any one time, in different stages of research and development, experimentation and materials gathering, then actual execution. Any more than that and my head would explode. My process, if you can call it that, is to consume as much as I can find intellectually and then let it percolate for a bit – I find walking and swimming incredibly helpful for emptying the mind and working through these creative conundrums. I also use my insomnia as an excellent time for reflection and problem solving. Though my husband might not agree!

Bookbinders gradually diverged from classic decorations that were purely ornamental in nature and started viewing their bindings in a different light: a complex, multilayered, functional object offering limitless potential as a medium for artistic expression. Design bindings came to be known as the modern face of bookbinding.

“[…]Though there is absolutely no inference that this is to disguise a hedonistic lifestyle like Dorian Gray’s but purely a comment on the contemporary pursuit of the preservation of youth and beauty. ” Kate Holland

I consider your binding on Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray, with its stricking covers and unexpected endpapers, a perfect example of what a Design Binding can be: not just a creative representation of the book’s content but also a commentary that expands beyond it and becomes a reflection on society, posing questions that challenge us and our views on the story they came from.

Isn’t that what art is in its essence – making connections between a thought or realization, a creation based on that thought and our world, redefining our perception of all 3? And the amazing thing is that this fermentation, taking place in the mind of someone witnessing a piece of art, can potentially have infinite outcomes.

What were your thoughts while making this binding? How did you end up with this design and endpapers? And how do you view design bindings in general?

I had always held Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray” in mind as a potential title to bind having seen photographs of a collection of Dior dresses with a fabulous peacock feather design of highly embellished beading. However, it wasn’t until I read an article about the world of extreme plastic surgery that these two, seemingly disparate worlds, collided in my head and, along with a long-held love for the artwork of Aubrey Beardsley, I came up with this design. It just goes to show that you never know where inspiration will strike from and you have to soak up anything and everything around you to get to it.

Bookbinding has traditionally been one of the applied arts, a merely decorative and protective covering to the bookblock, albeit a highly technical and exacting one. It rarely referred to the contents within, save the title. Generally, any tooling would be to a prescribed formula, whether a house style or to reflect the owner’s taste and wealth. With modern design binding came a move towards a more fluid style and a decorative response to the text within. I would argue, though, that there is still room to push bookbinding one step further into the “art” world, by drawing analogies between classic texts and contemporary issues, whether to make a political statement or as a simple emotional or intellectual stimulus. I’m increasingly drawn to the term ‘artist binding’ over ‘design binding’.

My lack of art education means that I’ve always struggled with calling myself an artist. I felt there was something rather egotistical about going to art school and being an artist. I always referred to my space as a workshop not a studio. I always called myself a craftsperson not an artist. But very recently an artist friend of mine described me as an artist bookbinder and I thought I’ll take that. In a way, though, I feel liberated by my lack of art education – I have no rules to follow, I just have to try and achieve what I envisage in my head and see what happens – so more of a happy accident than anything.  Now that I feel relatively (and I use that in the loosest sense) at ease with the technical side of making a book, I am free to explore the intellectual exercise of confining my ideas to the book form. I worked out that there are 13 planes on which to express yourself creatively, not including the box, which gives such wonderful scope, how they work singly and interactively. 

What’s interesting about design binding, though, is that, unlike most other artforms eg painting, sculpture, you’re not starting from a position of zero. You’re always reacting to someone else’s artistic output ie the author, the illustrator, the typesetter, the printer etc. I have recently been questioning binding the work of others and wanting to be in control of the whole book so I am currently looking at printmaking and letterpress printing though I feel I must keep this under control and concentrate on the binding alone. It’s an ongoing internal argument.

An excerpt from a 1918 manual (see image) describes bookbinding as an excellent therapeutic aid for various disorders.

It is a testament to the many and diverse benefits our craft has to offer. I would kindly ask you to share your personal experience on the matter, given that you recently had the privilege of seeing all that in effect.

One of my particular passions is teaching and converting new people to the joys of bookbinding. I have seen the immensely therapeutic benefits of it when working for the charity ‘Bound by Veterans’ which teaches bookbinding to wounded, sick and injured ex-servicemen and women. Also to children with learning difficulties and on the autistic spectrum. There’s something so wonderful when you are “in the flow”, your head and hands working together, you forget all your cares and the sense of achievement and growth in self-esteem is palpable. I’m thinking of one particular girl who had just been diagnosed with Asperger’s and told that she wouldn’t be able to work in the “real world” and that she would require lifelong care. On day 1 she felt unable to attend the bookbinding course, due to her social anxiety but by day 5 she was fully immersed and loving it. She now has a skill which means she can work from home and hopefully make a modest income.

My local medical practice in Frome is at the forefront of the social prescribing movement, where patients with multiple health issues, who are struggling with their mental health and well-being, are being prescribed access to a wide range of resources, whether it’s park runs or talking cafes. The decrease in GP appointments and hospital admissions there has been dramatic. Together with a GP friend of mine, we are looking at getting some qualitative measures of the therapeutic benefits of bookbinding and other crafts, so that we can eventually look at applying for NHS funding to provide these.

As it happens this interview is taking place amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.

The outbreak has brought the entire world to a halt, changing or taking away many of the things we took for granted and imposing a new reality. It made us sceptic of the future that awaits us in the aftermath and has put a questionmark on various aspects of our lives.

I’ve been talking with a few fellow binders and here in Athens – we’ve been in lockdown for a while now. Some felt creatively numbed and took a step away from our craft to reevaluate it’s importance in a situations like this, others told me the exact opposite – that it provided a way for them to remain active and creative during self isolation and took the opportunity to explore ideas previously left in the backburner.

How has the Covid-19 outbreak affected your relationship with bookbinding? What was its impact on you firstly as a professional binder and secondly as a creative maker. Please share with us your experience and thoughts so far.

(Click on the photo and zoom-in for a detailed look in HQ!)

Wow, what interesting times we are in right now. I confess I am really enjoying them, though I feel terribly guilty saying that. My eldest children are back from university, my youngest home instead of school and my husband off the daily commute hamster wheel. We are incredibly privileged to live in the countryside and have a garden. We have both been able to keep working so we have some income at least. My heart goes out to those trapped in flats with no outside space or forced to go to work at great risk to themselves and their families.

I have spent much of my time helping to set up and maintain Mask Force, a community of volunteers making fabric facemasks for key workers and the most vulnerable. As I write, we have donated around 2500 facemasks and now have 8 satellite groups around the country. I have also been working with the #Masks4All movement, a group of activists who have been instrumental in changing public and political thinking worldwide about the importance of wearing facemasks to stop the spread of the coronavirus, though the UK government is still proving a hard nut to crack.

I have been bookbinding, though, interestingly and unwittingly, I have chosen to concentrate on the jobs which don’t require too much creative input. I have a huge typesetting and layout project to work through which involves lots of mind-numbing screen time and several commissions for relatively straightforward bindings, for which, I luckily manged to get all the materials gathered before lockdown.

I frankly haven’t had time to explore ideas left on the backburner. I wish I had. There are so many.

” It cannot be overstated how important it is for all of us to work with our hands on some level. It should be made compulsory in schools. “
The above quote from you resonates with me a lot. I remember back when I was at school wondering why everything is geared towards “doctor – lawyer – IT”. Why did noone ever mention I could be a woodworker, a machinist, a jeweller, a bookbinder…?

For 99.9% of your existence as a species we had to work with our hands and,  although it still remains essential to our civilization, it almost seems that somehow handcrafting has faded into obscurity in our lifetime.

What has our negligence towards learning to work with our hands caused? Why do you think it should be a part of our school curiculum? And last but not least, do you have any thoughts on how it could be implemented?

Humans are the only great ape who have evolved not only opposable thumbs but tiny bones within the thumb which allow us to manipulate tools to create really fine and delicate work. The further we move away from making for ourselves, and into the world of consumerism and globalisation, the sadder we are. I teach undergraduates who cannot thread a needle or tie a knot. This is shocking.

Too many children are spending their learning lives in front of screens and not exploring some of the most basic skills and there is far too much emphasis on STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) here in the UK curriculum with the Arts subjects being sidelined. Bookbinding used to be taught in primary school here. It covers so many basic skills – measuring and estimating, calculating and cutting, folding and manipulating, fine motor skills such as threading and sewing. It can be taught as a supplement to any of the academic subjects – English, Modern Languages, History, Geography, Design Technology, Art. Children who struggle to engage with the written word in manufactured books, relish the idea of putting their own words into their own books. I have had the chance to speak about this to the APPG (All Party Parliamentary Group) on ‘Art in Education’ on the importance of bookbinding and making in general. And I am cooking a plan to fund a “Bookbinding Bus” which will go to schools, festivals, city centres, inner city estates, anywhere to spread the joy of bookbinding and hopefully impart some of those basic skills.

The importance of using the creative ‘right’ side of our brain as well as the logical ‘left’ side cannot be overestimated. Creativity is problem solving and invention as well as expression and feeling – where would we be without those? And making with our hands is so much a part of that creativity. Hopefully some of the backlash to the onward march of technology will be an increased resurgence in making by hand and a respect for the handmade. We must appreciate the handmade, the artisan, the crafted for its integral value to mankind and not just as a marketing tool.

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Be sure to check Kate Holland’s site and also IG account!

Closing I would like to thank you for visiting the blog and reading our talk with Kate Holland. If you enjoyed it consider having a look at the blog section for Techniton Politeia, where you can find more interviews.

Till next time!

 

Interview with Hannah Brown Part II – Techniton Politeia

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bookbinding, Design binding, embroidery, Hannah Brown, Βιβλιοδεσία, δερματόδετο, καλλιτεχνική βιβλιοδεσία, leather binding

Welcome back for the second part of this interview with Hannah Brown.

If you missed the first part you can read it here.

What is the first thing you observe when you examine a binding made by someone else and why?

Definitely the overall visual aesthetic of the design and how it works across the covers, as well as how the design concept is carried through to the doublures and endpapers, plus the edges and the box. As I have never had any formal bookbinding tuition (I have learnt through observing, doing and partaking in short courses) my forte has always been the design of a book cover – it is just now that I feel my forwarding skills are catching up! The designs of my book covers are often quite literal, so I really admire binders that work well conceptually or in an abstract manner as that is very different to how my mind works.

On a similar note, which is according to you the most important aspect of a good forwarding and which of a good finishing?

Having learnt through doing, I have made mistakes along the way with some of my fine bindings and have endeavored to rectify these in each proceeding binding. For example, not quite adding enough paper layers and infills on the inside of the boards before the doublures get stuck down and seeing bumps underneath is a past nightmare of mine! Or not-quite-square squares!

I think attention to detail is absolutely key in both good forwarding and finishing. I have always been told that you have to perfect every step of the way with your forwarding as every mistake made will be magnified as you continue through the process. I have learnt from having my work critiqued on a number of occasions how small adjustments can make what would otherwise be a mediocre binding a fantastic one. When it comes to finishing it is also important to know when to stop too – a trap I often find myself falling in to!

I would like to focus on two aspects of your bindings: endpapers and bookcases.
You favor a particular style of wooden box with lid. Could you explain why is this your choice over the more “bookbind-y” ones, say a leather/cloth slipcase with chemise or a clamshell box?

During my time working at the Victoria and Albert Museum I spent all my time in the workshop making mounts for a huge variety of objects. These were made from a variety of materials including steel, brass, perspex and wood. I was surrounded by some very talented colleagues (everyone in my department seemed to have a crafty sideline of some description!). One particular colleague of mine was a brilliant woodworker and held a keen interest in my work so we often used to talk about options for boxes. He taught me how to work wood with the equipment we had in the workshop to make impressive boxes for my bindings and the habit stuck.

I love the way that the wooden boxes can become an extension of the binding and I think the look and feel of wood is wonderful so that would always be my preferred option to offer clients. I have the ability to make more “bookbind-y” ones though, just little need to do so! I always order pre-made cardboard conservation boxes to house the wooden boxes in for extra protection too on bookshelves.

Your endpapers really stand out by always being imaginative and an integral part of the design, while the cases appear as a discreet extension of it. There’s also often a playful attitude when it comes to both, as if they veer a bit off the strict planning required by your elaborate designs, lending themselves to various experimentations (f.e. feather painting in “British Birds”) or quirky little details (f.e. the bird figures in “Fables of Aesop”). Do you view them in this scope as well? Tell us a bit about them.

Yes I do! What I love about the whole bookbinding process is the amount of design scope a book allows you to have. Not only are you decorating the covers but you have the endpapers, doublures, text block edges and container to play around with too – it is a truly three dimensional object. To date all of the bindings I have made have had paper doublures, I have never chanced leather ones but that is on my list of things to try! I would love to learn some more print-making techniques to adorn my endpapers with, there are endless possibilities.

I find that I usually have to think about the endpapers design first as this has to be finalised before the book can be forwarded. The endpapers have to be made up and sewn to the text block before it can be rounded and backed etc. so they need to be completed early on in the process. I think the most complicated endpaper design I have attempted to far was the ones I did for “The Fables Of Aesop”. The reason for this is that I wanted to print a net that ran across from the front to the back endpaper, across the front edge of the text block, so this had to be meticulously planned so that it would all line up which was rather a headache!

Let’s get a bit dramatic: a major apocalyptic event or socio-historical period looms heavy upon humanity and threatens to -god forbid!- erase all your work. If you could only save 3 of your bindings, which would those be and why?

That is a very tricky question! If I had to choose I think I would go for the following:

The Fables of Aesops
I absolutely loved working on this binding. It was to a tight deadline as it was for the Designer Bookbinders 2017 International Competition on the themes of “Myths, Heroes and Legends”. I was doomed from the start having typed the wrong postcode down on the website I ordered it from so the text block went missing for a while – argh! I remember taking the partly embroidered leather and all my threads on a family holiday with me to France and sitting under the sun umbrella sewing away trying to get it done in time for the deadline soon after our return.

(Click on the photo and zoom-in for a detailed look in HQ!)

What I loved about this binding was the scope for the design. Given the number of fables to choose from I couldn’t just focus on one which is when I came up with the idea of choosing six, one for each of the following: front cover, back cover, front doublure, back doublure, the endpapers/front edge and the box. I had at the time been coveting someone’s work on Instagram (@paperandwood_ ), and this inspired me to make some little three dimensional birds to accompany the book. They were carved out of tulip wood before being painted then I added paper and gold feathers and little brass eyes.

I decided I needed to make these birds removable (I mean, it wouldn’t have been practical to actually read a book with little birds permanently sat on the top book board edges!) so I devised a way to add rods into the lamination of the book boards so that a pin on the bottom of each of the birds could be slid in to stand them up for display. I also had a lot of fun making the container for this one adding a removable row of “perches” for the three birds to sit on!

All in all this was a total delight to work on, from the heavily embroidered wings on the cover to the edge decoration that I had to match up with the endpapers (as mentioned in a previous answer) this binding had many challenges to overcome.

(Upper binding made in 2016 and lower in 2012)

Flowers From Shakespeare’s Garden
It is a bit of a cheat to choose this one as I get two for the price of one having made two versions of this binding! It is rare for me to repeat a design (and I only did so with the permission of the owner of the first of the two bindings) and did so using a different variety of coloured leathers. In fact this was another binding that I did for a competition, in this case is was for the Designer Bookbinders 2013 International Competition on the themes of “Shakespeare”. I love flowers and purely for that reason alone I would like to save these two!

The Somme: An Eyewitness History
I think I would have to save my first ever design binding! In fact, this is the only binding I still have in my possession. There is so much wrong with it but I had no inhibitions in those early days of learning how to bind a book and just did what I thought I should do! I love looking at this binding to remind myself how far I have come since 2007. It was this binding that I was working on whilst I did a gold tooling course at City Lit in London with Tracey Rowledge. It was she who suggested I made sample boards to practice on so this binding will forever be the first sample board in my series!

Concerning Kelmscott Chaucer.

Before getting to the question I would like to take a moment and thank you for painstakingly documenting and chronicling the creative process behind this binding. To read how it came to be is almost as enjoyable as seeing the finished book, perhaps even more so; instead of just introducing us to your binding “child” you take us through its entire childhood step by step, sharing the techniques you used and the challenges you faced, the meticulousness and care you devoted to every detail.
  It’s ironic how bookbinding is one of the most ancient crafts, and with such an important goal, and yet there are so few documentaries or articles about the  process and its artisans in the public sphere. I certainly hope that you’ll keep sharing your work in this way and perhaps encourage more binders to do so.

So, to put it in your words: “The commission of a lifetime!“. Your 8-part post (links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) is a fascinating read I’d recommend to anyone, bookbinding-savy or not!

How is Chaucer different from the rest of your bindings?

When I was asked to take on this commission I was rather dumbstruck, how could I possibly do justice to the inner wonders of William Morris? I admit I was a bit worried, knowing that this text block had quite a value to it before I took it apart elevated it to a level of book I had not worked on before. The provenance of this actual copy had been traced back to 1934 – never before have I known such history of book I have worked on. This was all documented in the “The Kelmscott Chaucer: A Census” by William and Sylvia Petersen.
Also, they are rare and there are not many available for rebinding so it was an honour to be chosen for this commission.

I always try and do as much research as possible ahead of working on commissions, in this case I read up about the Kelmscott Press, visited the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow and arranged to view some Morris objects at the V&A Museum. The prestige of this binding however made it different to the rest. I was really lucky to see two of the pigskin bindings, bound by the Doves bindery during a trip to the Wormsley Library. This was very timely as I hadn’t yet received my copy so was able to get a sense of the scale and grandeur of the book beforehand.

It was also rather humbling to think that William Morris had likely thumbed his way through the pages of this and all of the other copies that were printed – I hope he would have approved of the binding I did on it!

In which ways has it helped you to evolve as an artisan?

I was genuinely proud of the binding I did for this book. My initial reservations about the size of the binding and how I would forward the text block were overcome and I am very pleased to have added this binding to my sample board collection! Looking back at all my previous bindings this has probably been the one with the most “rigid” design but that is what I felt would work best to try and do this book justice.

And, now that a year has passed and the dust has settled, tells us which things have stayed with you from its making?

The grandeur of the book lent itself to a grand design. If I were to bind this book over again would I change anything – probably not! The design evolved along the way and I was really pleased with how the different floral and butterfly elements all came together. During the making process, after hours and hours of sewing, I definitely thought to myself, “why did I decide to do it like this again?!” and my fingers were very sore but this was a small price to pay to create such an elaborate work.

To wrap things up: what is that you’re most proud of after 15 years of bookbinding?

The thing I am most proud of is the way I have developed my bookbinding work to the point I am now a self-employed bookbinder. What started off as a hobby has become a career, albeit I do it alongside many other things. The fact that I have recognition within the world of bookbinding and have managed to form a “house style” to the point that my bindings can be singled out as a “Hannah Brown” binding is very satisfying.

Having never formally trained as a bookbinder I am also proud that I have overcome my lack of forwarding knowledge and have developed a way of working that suits me. I still have so much to learn but I am getting by with what I already know.

And if you could enter a time machine, meet yourself back in 2004 and manage to avoid the time-paradox, what advice would you offer Hannah based on your experience so far?

Just to be confident in what you are doing and learn from your mistakes. I would encourage myself to share my work as I have had such a positive response from doing so. I would also probably say don’t underestimate how long it takes to bind a book and don’t set yourself unrealistic deadlines!

–

I would like to thank Hannah for taking the time to share her story, bookbinding insight and of course her work with us through this interview.

Be sure to check Hannah’s site:
http://www.han-made.net/fine-bindings/2019-2/la-prose-du-transsberien/
and most importantly her blog:
https://han-made-bookbinding.tumblr.com/archive
where she chronicles in depth the creative process behind each binding.

If you enjoyed reading this I’d invite you to have a look at the blog section for Techniton Politeia, where you can find more interviews.
Till next time!

Interview with Hannah Brown Part I – Techniton Politeia

Tags

Design binding, embroidery, Hannah Brown, χειροποίητη βιβλιοδεσία, Βιβλιοδεσία, καλλιτεχνική βιβλιοδεσία, leather binding

Welcome to another Techniton Politeia interview. This time we have an interesting talk with bookbinder Hannah Brown.

This is an extensive interview and will be divided in two parts. This is part I.

Hannah graduated with a BA (Hons) in Three Dimensional Crafts from Brighton University in 2004 and began studying Bookbinding during evening classes at Brighton University the same year. She won first prize in the 2008 Designer Bookbinders Competition and was also awarded the Mansfield Medal for best book in the same competition. She has since won the same competition twice in both 2011 and 2013 and has also won two Distinguished winner awards in the Designer Bookbinders International Bookbinding Competition in both 2013 and 2017.

She specialises in fine bookbinding and other bespoke commissioned works with a particular focus on embroidery on leather. She works with a variety of materials and objects, creating unique and hand-crafted pieces from scratch from her home studio in Somerset.

Undeniably, Hannah’s work is instantly recognizable. One could assume it’s because of her lavish designs, executed with painstaking attention to detail – and that would certainly be true to a great extent. However, a closer look reveals another reason that makes her bindings truly stand out: the immensely imaginative use of a thing as small and simple as a colored thread…

Lets unravel it slowly together with Hannah to see how it all comes together…

Whenever I happen to see a binding with embroidery, even if it’s used to a much lesser extent compared to your work, the first thing that comes to mind is Hannah Brown. This might certainly be unfair to those fellow binders but it goes to show how much of a statement your bindings make through this distinctive element; One could perhaps even go as far as to call it your trademark.

So, why embroidery?

From the very first fine binding I worked on (my entry for the 2007 Designer Bookbinders Competition, ‘The Somme: An Eyewitness History’) I introduced embroidery. For this first binding it was just a simple red line that I embroidered through the covering leather with my sewing machine. In fact, this wasn’t a decision made because I wanted the “look” of an embroidered line, simply because I didn’t at that point know how else to apply colour to the surface! What began as a single red line on that first binding has indeed developed into a an identifier for my work, I can’t think of one binding I have done without any on it.

(Click on the photo and zoom-in for a detailed look in HQ!)

Where lies the origin of your passion about it?

I studied at Brighton University and did a BA (Hons) Three Dimensional Crafts, this was nicknamed “WMCP” standing for “Wood, Metal, Ceramics and Plastics”. Over the three years of the course we were taught techniques for how to work in all of these materials. I specialised in Ceramics and Metals in my final year and went on to make jewellery for my degree show. Throughout my degree I remember always wanting to find new ways of adding alternative textural qualities to what I was making. For example, planning ahead through the making process I would pierce holes through the wet clay before firing with a view to weaving threads through these when finalising the piece. I could then add extra colour and patterns in addition to the glazes.

How did you decide to combine it with bookbinding?

I guess I have subconsciously always liked adding threads to what I make and to me, with bookbinding, it was a natural choice to sew through the leather to create a design and add details before covering the text block.

On the same topic, I admittedly haven’t seen many binders use embroidery on their work, even more so on a regular basis.
Why do you think it’s so?

It is hard to say, to me it came naturally however it is very time consuming so perhaps that puts people off. The majority of my time is spent working on the leather before it gets stuck to the text block so there is a lot riding on the covering process, it can be nerve wrecking!

Perhaps embroidery is seen to be quite vulnerable on book covers. In all my time doing it I have developed ways to try and make it more durable.

Also, throughout all the bookbinding teaching I have done to date it generally seems to be females interested in the embroidery side of things!

Which would you say are the difficulties involved in adorning one’s work this way and what would you suggest to fellow binders interested in trying it?

There are definitely some difficulties with this technique, as follows:

TIME
Depending on the extent of the embroidery work it is a very time consuming process. There are ways of speeding up the process, for example if I am working on a design with lots of linear detail I do all of this using my sewing machine and then hand-whip over these lines by hand.

DURABILITY
You need to consider how the book it going to be handled. You don’t want the threads to be loose and able to catch easily on anything. I take care to loop down any long threads and take extra care when I have embroidery across the board joints (I tend to try and avoid this but it is not always possible with some designs). You also have to be careful not to pull too hard on threads whilst sewing as it is always possible to pull through the leather if your holes are very close to one another.

SEWING MACHINE
If using a sewing machine you have to be careful not to make the holes too big and perforate the leather. For example, I always get asked whether I use a leather needle in my sewing machine (one that has a triangular point at the end) but I don’t. I have never found this necessary, perhaps because leather that is prepared for bookbinding purposes is soft enough not to need a needle such as this to get through it. I feel that these needles pierce too large a hole in the leather and can look unsightly. If using a sewing machine it is advisable to do some test runs on scrap leather first, the feet on some machines can leave marks on the surface of the leather which you probably don’t want!

FINGER STAMINA!
It is tough on the fingers! I usually pre-prick holes in the leather through a template – partly so I know where I need to sew the threads and also so that the leather is already pierced before trying to push the needle through the leather with my fingers. I have never worked with a thimble before (another question I regularly get asked) but would probably recommend this to anyone starting out as it is also very easy to prick the end of your fingers.

” Throughout the whole process of working on the onlays I had to be pretty organised and keep them all separate so used zip-lock bags to hold the images of each flower along with the leathers used for each, plus the chosen embroidery threads. “
” I developed different ways of holding the leather to make it possible to get to the areas I wanted to sew through. “
The above quotes are just a few of many illustrating how experimentation and problem-solving are a big part of your work.
Do you simply go for what you have in mind and challenges come out of the blue as you work or do you intentionally choose to try things that will present you with a challenge?

I would say I go for what I have in mind and challenges come out of the blue as I work. I have an idea in my head of how I hope the end result will look and I overcome the challenges that appear during the process. The good thing about the way I work is if, for example, the piece of leather that I find has a natural mark somewhere on it that I don’t want to be visible I can generally work the design so that it is covered in some way with onlays or embroidery. As I make a sample board for each of my fine bindings, this is a great opportunity to test out design elements and techniques in advance ahead of doing them directly on the binding so that helps a lot. On a couple of occasions I have made up small maquettes of books too to test out structures in advance, all this pre-planning can help to make the whole binding process happen more smoothly.

Is it always a thrill, or can it turn into a thriller too?

Ha! I haven’t really thought of it like that before. The only thriller moments are really time constraints. I often find I am pushed for time at the end of the making process, working to a deadline for a competition entry or exhibition submission can be stressful. So in that respect it is not always a thrill!

And lastly, given that everything we see from you is amazing, would you mind sharing a “failure”? An idea, big or small, that you really wanted to do at some point, tried a lot, but couldn’t make it work.

To be honest I haven’t yet had the time to be experimental enough to have anything I would class as a failure! Time is very tight as I am doing my binding work alongside having two young children, keeping on top of housework, correspondence, plus I do two roles for Designer Bookbinders. I have many many projects in my head that I would love to try out, these may become failures when I get a chance to work on them. Top of my list is trying out a binding with wooden boards, I think this will be a difficult task to work out to maintain the aesthetics of the embroidery I do on leather bindings, this may therefore lead me in a very different direction with my work which could be very exciting.

I would like to turn the spotlight to blogging for a moment.

 To speak for my part, blogging has been really important: it has kept me active and focused, it allowed me to showcase my work to people from all around the world and has contributed a great deal in my livelihood.
Blogging has also other, less personal but perhaps equally substantial, benefits as well: it raises public awareness for our craft, it helps bookbinding enthusiasts in many ways and brings new people in the community. Furthermore, by being able to see each other’s work we discover new techniques and ideas as well as solutions to shared difficulties.
All that said, upon stumbling on an informative and helpful post it’s often easy to overlook the fact that blogging requires work – a lot of it!

 Your posts always include an impressive amount of high-res photos and details about the binding process. To be honest I can’t think of many blogs out there on par with your thoroughness when it comes to bookbinding! 
Could you share a few words on why/how you began blogging and some “behind the scenes” of a post?

I am always very pleased to hear that people actual read my blog posts(!). In fact, I didn’t set out to write a post about each of my bindings, it just naturally morphed into that. The reason I initially started writing a blog is that my husband and I moved to the South of France for 18 months in 2014. We did a house swap with a couple and spent one and a half years living in their converted farmhouse in Provence. I mainly started the blog to document our time there so our friends and family could read about what we were doing, it was so idyllic and I have fond memories of our time there.

What started off with posts about nighttime frog choruses, vintage tractor fairs and sunflower fields has now become a step-by-step guide of my making process. I have no idea whether I would have thought to write up about my bindings if I hadn’t started a platform writing about our life swap – perhaps this was a happy accident! The feedback I have had about my posts has been brilliant so that also spurs me to carry on with it, I don’t believe in keeping any of my techniques a secret and I am pleased to hear that reading about my making process has inspired some binders to try out new things.

Obviously the most key thing when it comes to blog writing is to take as many photos as possible. It is so very easy these days as my phone usually sits on my work desk however I do often forget to take photos at key moments, plus more often than not I need two hands to do certain steps with no third hand to take a photo so some steps go undocumented.

I must admit, my computer is in disarray and really needs to be sorted out. I have two young girls so half of the photos on my desktop are of them, the other half work! The photos I take on my phone automatically sync onto my computer and I periodically sort the relevant images for my blog posts into a labelled folder on my computer. I then work through them and discard images that I don’t feel are relevant or are bad quality. Next I edit each of the making photos in Photoshop (cropping, brightening, resizing etc) and give them file names and numbers so I know what each photo is and to get them into the right order.

Once the binding is complete I take photographs of the finished book and add these to the folder once they have been edited. I am then ready to upload the photos onto my blog site and draft the text in line with the images. It is often the case that when writing out the process I need to backtrack and take a photo of something I have forgotten (for example an image of the design drawing or the sample board) so that gets added later.

Hannah’s sample boards: she makes one for each of her fine bindings to test the design ideas.
Click on the photo and zoom-in for a detailed look in HQ!

It is a labor of love. From the very beginning of my bookbinding career I got into the habit of making my sample boards for each binding and now I am also into the habit of writing up about each project, to the point I feel I can’t miss a binding any more! I do however think I will be eternally grateful to myself to keep it up, this is an invaluable tool to me to remember tips and tricks for future work. At present my blog posts are held on a separate Tumblr site, my website is in desperate need of an upgrade as I have completely outgrown it. As and when this happens I will have a dedicated blog section on my new site.

Both of your sites showcase wonderful design bindings and the creative process behind them. Does this amount to a 100% of your work, or is your bench also occupied by more humble binding tasks?

I am lucky that my practical time is largely filled with fine binding tasks. I would say 70% of the time spent in my workspace is spent doing fine bindings. The other 30% is administrative work, blog writing, prepping for teaching etc. But this fluctuates week on week depending on the projects I have on at the time.

In case of the former, was this your goal from the beginning or something that came along the way and how?

When I began bookbinding it was only ever as a hobby, I was doing it alongside full-time employment at the Victoria and Albert Museum as a Mount-making Technician. Initially was just doing speculative pieces for myself or bindings for competitions. I didn’t at the time imagine I would ever become a self-employed bookbinder, or for that matter that the majority of my time would be dedicated to making fine bindings.

When I won the Mansfield Medal for Best Binding in the 2008 Designer Bookbinders Annual Competition was a turning point, the binding sold as a result of being exhibited in the competition exhibition and I took on my first commission as a result of it. Through becoming a Licenciate of Designer Bookbinders and exhibiting with them raised my profile and led to more work.

In case of the latter would you share a few examples of simpler projects?

As mentioned above, as the majority of my time is spent working on fine bindings there is little time for simpler projects. I have however recently branched out and taken on some alternative work that is slightly out of my comfort zone. This includes making some cloth-covered bindings for a fashion company however I have been commissioned to do these as they wish to have embroidered elements on the front of them – there is no escaping it!

–

At this point we reach the end of part I.
You can read part II here.

Be sure to check back next week for part II where Hannah and I talk about her favorite bindings, her views on what makes a good forwarding & finishing, her magnum opus Chaucer’s Works and more!

In the meantime you can have a look at Hannah’s site and -most importantly- her blog where she chronicles in depth the creative process behind each binding.

 

Interview with Jemma Lewis – Techniton Politeia

Tags

Ebru, ζωγραφική στο νερό, μαρμαρόκολλα, Jemma Lewis, marbled paper, Marbling

Welcome back for another Techniton Politeia interview!

I have a deep affection for marbling papers and consider myself quite the hoarder. My personal collection, though perhaps not the most extensive, is amongst my most prized possessions and I always hesitate to use the papers (“this is not the right commission for this paper, think I’ll save it…” anyone?!?)

Marbling may appear very simple on the surface -pun intended- but is actually a big fascinating world on its own once you get to know it.
So, in order to get an insight into this mesmerizing craft we visit the studio of Jemma Lewis and talk with her about marbling.
Jemma Lewis Marbling and Design was started in 2009. Initially it was run by Jemma and her father David. However when he retired her husband Craig came to work with her full time. 

The studio produces hand marbled papers in the Traditional way using a substance called ‘Carragheen Moss’ and Gouache Paints. The paints are floated onto the viscous substance and using tools and stylus’ we can create a huge amount of different patterns, both traditional and modern. Jemma and Craig work from a log cabin studio at the bottom of their garden in the County of Wiltshire in the U.K. They produce marbled papers for bookbinders, interior designers, furniture restorers and retail outlets who stock the designs. 

On to the interview then!

 I initially planned of describing what marbling is in the interview’s intro but I believe you are far more qualified to properly introduce our readers to this peculiar art!
 To make it even more interesting; could you give us a strictly technical definition and then a purely personal description based on your own perception of marbling?
‘Marbling’ is the name given to the creation of decorative papers by floating paints onto a viscous surface (‘size’) made using an Irish Seaweed called ‘Carragheen’. Patterns are then created using tools and intricate combs. 
 A sheet of paper (treated with a watery substance called ‘Alum’ which acts as a mordant; making the paint ‘stick’ to the surface) is then laid onto the surface of the ‘size’ then gently lifted off to reveal the pattern – now transferred to the paper. 
 Part of the charm of creating marbled papers is that each application of paint to the surface produces only one sheet of marbled paper – so the same processes have to be carried out multiple times to create sheets that are similar, though never exactly matching. 

One of my favourite books in my marbling library is ‘The Art of Marbled Paper’ by Einen Miura’. His description of marbling is much more eloquent and reads as follows, and I quote…
“In the 16th century, a new way of decorating paper was introduced to Europe from the Middle and Far East – designs that resembled the veins in marble. This effect was created by throwing or dripping inks on to a size (a mucilaginous solution), where they were allowed to float freely or were sculpted into patterns. A sheet of paper was carefully placed onto the surface of the size and the design lifted off. The general term for this process is marbling”

So how did you become a marbler? It must be quite something whenever you have to introduce yourself to someone new – god knows I’m having trouble explaining bookbinding and it is considered far less obscure!

 Trying to explain to people what I do ‘for work’ or what paper marbling is always a challenge, although with an increasing trend in the marbled look within fashion and interiors I am noticing more people becoming aware of it as a craft. 
 When I first came into contact with marbled papers, seeing them as endpapers within antique books at the bookbinders I worked at, it never really occurred to me that making these would be someones job, or indeed that anyone even made them these days! 
 After working at a bookbinders (Chivers-Period, based in Bath then Trowbridge) for several years I was given the opportunity to go along and learn marbling from a local lady, Ann Muir who was looking to retire. After 7 months of learning in her studio, mostly under the tutelage of her colleague Julie a series of unfortunate events happened that led me to where I am today. 
 Sadly Ann passed away and the bookbinders went into administration within a couple of months of each other and I found myself un-employed. It was my Father who suggested we set up a marbling studio so that I could carry on learning and making. 

Marbling; Art or Craft? If “both” wasn’t a possible answer, which of the two would you choose and why?

 In my opinion I think that Paper Marbling is considered to be more of a craft than an Art Form. 
 I would personally actually put it into the category of ‘Decorative Arts’ though! 
Decorative Arts are arts or crafts whose object is the design and manufacture of objects that are both beautiful and functional – and I think marbled papers fit perfectly into this.

Marbling has a certain allure that is difficult to define. According to you which is the element that sets marbling apart from other arts and crafts?

 I think one of the big draws with marbling is that it has an air of mystery surrounding it. 
 There are not many people that still practice marbling and until you actually see it being done its hard to envisage how these designs are created.

Marbling, especially if practiced for a living, involves a lot of repetitiveness. Although the end result is never quite the same a certain degree of similarity is required when producing a specific pattern. Furthermore the process is more or less the same across most patterns as far as the maker is concerned and it can be repeated dozens of times in a single productive day.
Some people would find this relaxing while to others it might feel suffocating. What is your view on this aspect of marbling and how does it affect you?

  A day or even several days producing the same pattern (especially for very large orders) can become very repetitive and the body has a certain degree of muscle memory so our arms carry out the same movements over and over again. 
 It is more relaxing though as we don’t need to keep re-mixing paints or concern ourselves with the challenge of constantly swapping from one pattern to another which can be very time consuming. 
 After doing the same pattern for more than 50 sheets i’m always desperate to see a change of colour and pattern!

Would you give us an insight into a marbler’s day?
Besides standing above the marbling tray and actually making the papers what other tasks are there for the marbler to tackle?

  Our days generally form the same structure. 
 Craig takes down the previous days marbled papers from the drying racks and gives them a light iron before putting them under the press. During this time i’m usually catching up on admin and emails. We then both have a coffee break and catch up on enquiries, discuss what we need to do that day and maybe do some filing, invoicing or accounts work. Afterwards we pack up any Marbled Papers or products that are ready to go and this can often take a couple of hours if we have a lot of papers to ship. We start marbling just before lunch, when we return its full on marbling until we either fill the drying racks or complete what we need to do that day. Its easy to forget that a creative business is still a business and although I would like to spend all my time producing there are still all the other elements that make up running a business.

Could you share with us the most demanding aspect of being a marbler and also the most enticing and rewarding?

 The most demanding aspect of marbling is usually getting all the materials to work together correctly and achieve the correct result required. paints / ‘size’ / Alum / and other materials just not co-operating with one another can be frustrating. Producing certain designs are always more tricky such as those that use oils or other compounds which can take a lot of time, trial and error to get them co-operating with the “size’ and paints.
Most rewarding is hearing the lovely feedback we get from our wonderful customers who always spur us on to keep creating and coming up with new ideas and products.
We also love working with clients who wish to Licence our designs as it means we get to see our designs gracing album covers, packaging, fashion and even cruise ship restaurants (not always in the flesh though!) 

Bookbinding and marbling go a long way back. Marbling has been the standard for endpapers, and in many cases covers (quarter bindings for example), for a few centuries and the symbiotic relationship continues to flourish.
 What is it that makes marbling so fitting for bindings and books in general? Is it just a visual habit, relic of the long pre-modern era of bookbinding, that has cemented itself in our subconscious regarding how we expect the “archetypal” binding to look like, or is it something beyond that?

Working for a bookbinders was where I first became properly aware of marbled papers and was amazed at the variety of colours and patterns. It was also interesting to see that although the outsides of the books, often gilded leather bindings, were very worn, the endpapers inside looked fresh and bright. I always love opening up an antique book to see whether it might have marbled endpapers!
 
I think we have now long associated books as having marbled endpapers or sides though these days it is seen as more of a luxury to add marbled papers. 
Frequently publishers and bookbinders are looking for custom marbled papers that fit in with the title or theme of a book so for example we have produced papers that look like a glistening river for Wind in the Willows and papers that look like sandy dunes for Lawrence of Arabia. 

Last question.
What is the status of marbling in our days? Is it a fading practice or is it being rediscovered? Where does it fit in the modern age?

 When I started marbling it still felt very much like the domain of the bookbinder and I felt this would be my sole customer base. 
 Over time marbling has seen an increased popularity thanks in part to practitioners being able to share what they create through social media and other designers using the concept of marbling within their work which in turn brings it into the public eye, increasing its popularity. Traditional crafts have themselves seen a resurgence so those that were once seemed a rather outdated and old fashioned are gathering more interest. We have found that our papers are being used now for many varied uses, book binding is still a key area of use but we have produced papers more recently for a very broad spectrum of uses including; fashion, packaging, interior products, stationary, gift items, the music industry, branding, social media, and for other arts and crafts producers to use on products. Most recently one of our designs was used on edible paper!

Hope you enjoyed the interview!
If you’re interested in Jemma’s papers you can visit her shop; Jemma Lewis Marbling and Design

Yoy can read more interviews by visiting the blog’s page Techniton Politeia.

Till next time!

 

 

Techniton Politeia – Interview with Robert Wu

Tags

bookbinding, Design binding, χειροποίητη βιβλιοδεσία, Βιβλιοδεσία, δερματόδετο, καλλιτεχνική βιβλιοδεσία, μαρμαρόκολλα, leather binding, marbled paper, Marbling, miniature bindings, Reliure D'Art, Robert Wu

Welcome to another Techniton Politeia interview!
This time we get to talk with Robert Wu about his Reliure d’Art, marbled papers and miniature bindings.
Wu is a Taiwanese-Canadian bookbinder and paper marbler located in Toronto. He makes one-off or small editions of books, presentation boxes, leather fine art bindings or jewellery boxes and decorative papers for individual collectors, libraries or institutions.

He holds a Masters degree in Architecture and also a Bachelor degree in Architectural science. He has also studied classical painting techniques for 3 years at Toronto Academy of Realist Art.

Wu Started bookbinding in 1990s through CBBAG in Toronto with Don Taylor, Betsy Palmer Elderidge and furthered his training in bookbinding with Masterbinder Monique Lallier & Don Etherington at AAB (American Academy of Bookbinding) in Colorado USA, where he was awarded the “Tini Miura Scholarship”, selected by the masterbinder herself. Later on he received full-time intensive private training in French reliure d’art technique with Tini for more than a month. He also attended a workshop at the Center for the Bookarts in NYC with Masterbinder Luigi Castiglioni of Italy.

He has taught several workshops at CBBAG and participated in Designer Bookbinders International Competitions UK twice, with his submitted bindings  chosen for the touring exhibitions. In 2012, he had the honour of being invited to participate in Album Amicorum – an International marbling exhibition in Turkey, USA and Europe.
Collections of Wu’s marbling art and bindings can be found worldwide in private collections or libraries.

Last but not least in his own words:
“Besides bookbinding and marbling, I also occasionally do letterpress printing with a floor model antique Gordon treadle press and an antique Sigwalt tabletop press for printing stationery, invitations or business cards. In my spare time, I enjoy playing the piano and the cello with a local orchestra. Phew! Where do I find the time to do all these!“

 We live in an age in which speed and efficiency matter a lot, often in expense of quality. Almost anything can be instantly found and bought from a shelf, be it a garment, a furniture or appliance, a car. Custom handmade objects on the other hand take a lot of time to be made. Bookbinding is definitely a good example of this; a book may take weeks, months and some times years to be finished.
  Can you explain to us why a binding may take so long to be completed? Which was the longest time you had to work on a binding? What are the requirements of such lengthy commissions and what are the problems a binder could encounter?

It’s true a lot of things are made to be disposable nowadays. I prefer the care and quality of things made in the past, where they were made to last. I made a clear decision at the beginning of my career to focus on the French design art bookbinding technique. So I went to study at AAB (American Acadmey of Bookbinding) in USA to further my training in the French technique with masters who studied in Paris.

A full fledged French art binding has about 100 steps to complete and design takes time to nurture. I would work on a bunch of books at the same time up to the same stage. But when it comes time to do finishing/design, I prefer to focus on just one binding at a time. I usually give my clients about 1 to 2 years of waiting time to complete a commission.

 Bindings can be works of art. However, unlike most art objects which will sit safely on display high on a wall or behind a piece of glass, bindings have moving parts, must function properly and must endure the wear and tear of handling for a long time. That’s quite a lot to ask from an artisan and people tend to forget about these aspects of bookbinding. I believe one reason is because most don’t often -if ever- get the chance to handle a fine binding. We’re used in seeing still-pictures of them and therefor lack the sense of their “materialness”.
 You often accompany your bindings’ photos with videos where you take them out of their protective cases, display them from various angles, open and page through them. I’ve seen this done by a few other binders as well. I believe such videos are important because they highlight the material nature of a binding, its volume and tangibility.
 Please share a few thoughts on this aspect of our craft; the demand to produce a sound and long lasting and yet pleasing, both to they eye and touch, object. How can a binder balance between functionality and aesthetics? How does this dual task affect you personally as an artisan?

Art bookbinding is considered as a fine craft rather than fine art because it is essentially a book that needs to be read in the end. Unfortunately we couldn’t compare our work to fine paintings or charge our work accordingly even though a design binding might take just as long to complete as a fine painting! But I still think book-art is more interesting and rewarding than a painting or sculpture as you can touch, feel and smell a binding and enjoy reading the text and images. A book engages all senses and it tells you a story in many ways!

I also think that music is an important aspect of my work. So whenever I create or design a binding, I want the viewer to experience that aspect when they handle my bindings. Videos are a good way to include that and show all details of a binding that you couldn’t see in pictures. And off course, handling a fine binding in person is a totally different experience! I became hooked on fine binding after I first held my teacher Tini Miura’s binding in my hand. It was a magical experience. A binding like that has soul.

  Your work is often characterized by sumptuous covers and it is evident that you don’t shy away from combining various decorative techniques on a single binding.
 If you could only pick one what would you say is the most important element of a design (any design) – the defining characteristic? Something which always plays a key role during the initial stages of planning and comes to bind -pun intended- everything together afterwards.
Furthermore, once you’ve settled on an idea about the design how do you choose which decorative techniques to use? Can you give a few advices on how to make different elements and techniques come together for a design without it looking “noisy” or “overdone”?

Good question! Personality wise, I am a hopeless romantic. To me, LESS IS LESS and it’s BORING. I love a complex design. At the same time a complex design doesn’t have to look busy. It’s a fine balance. I admire the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright, Carlo Scarpa, George Barbier, FL Schmied, the music of Chopin. They are all masters of composition and details. God is in the details. I want my designs to look spontanious and dynamic. Since I am trained as a designer (architecture), I can usually work out my designs or ideas down on paper very fast, within the hour, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I would refine and change minor things but I believe in the importance of trusting your vision or intuition or inspiration – whatever you call it!

Let’s focus on a particular piece from your work. I was absolutely enamored with your binding of “A Voyage towards the North Pole”, I couldn’t find something I don’t like about it, even if I tried. More specifically, although the “Faux Ammolite” emulating the northern lights is particularly impressive, the eggshell panel for the ice-covered mountains stole the show for me – so fitting!
Please share with us some behind-the-scenes stories about its making; why did the pages require such an extensive treatment and what did it include? How did you come up with its design? What was the most difficult part of making the decoration? Can you tell a few things about your “Faux Ammolite”?

  The Arctic binding was a commission from a library. I was given the task to create a design binding on a 17th century book. First, it was a very moldy and dirty book. I advised the client that I had to wash the book before I could make an expensive design binding. It was a neccesity.
The design was inpired by the beautiful etching images in the book. I wanted to capture the grandeur of the North pole and came up with a new idea of creating my “Faux Ammolite” panels to represent the mysterious northern lights! I was very happy with the effect and overall design of this binding with eggshell panels. I love Art Deco. So I enjoy incorporating materials like my creations of “Faux Ivoire” or “Faux Ammolite”. It’s necessary to push the boundaries, to get out of the comfort zone and try out something new! It’s rewarding.

  One of the things that stands out amongst your work is miniature bindings. You’ve made quite a few of them and they boast a dazzling variety. Some are slightly larger than a big coin, yet they have almost all of the characteristics that can be found on a normal-sized binding.
 Why miniature bindings, what makes them so fascinating to you? Can you explain to the readers the intricacies and difficulties of making such a small, often tiny, binding?

I started getting interested in bookbinding via origami. I was folding little origami books out of one sheet of paper. But I couldn’t really write much in it so I came across a little bookbinding manual in a bookstore to see if I could make my own journals. At the beginning it looked so difficult with all the tools one would need to make a properly bound book. So I started making a tiny properly bound blank book by following the instructions in the manual and used whatever simple craft tools I had. After that, I was hooked on bookbinding and wanted to learn more so I started taking workshops with CBBAG.
So just like anything in life, one starts small and your interest grows, and you start to have bigger ambitions. It’s just a natural process. Miniature bindings are a great way to learn all aspects of bookbinding in a smaller scale so it’s more managable for beginners. But a masterpiece in miniature requires the reverse process and it’s definitely more difficult to do than its large counterparts.

  On to another topic; it is obvious that marbling holds an important place when it comes to your creative identity. Your marbled papers have a distinct character and almost all of your bindings feature them.
 How were you initially drawn to marbling and what kept you to it? How did you go about learning it? And finally how has such an asset -being able to make your own marbled papers that is- affected your creative approach when it comes to binding books?

I am mostly self-taught in marbling. I did take a beginner course in marbling with CBBAG. But it was very basic. I started to marble because I could use my own marbled paper for my own bindings. Like anything, the more you do, the better you get. I experimented for a long time and it eventually evolved into marbling art which I call “Marbled Graphics”™. I love compositions, regular marbled papers don’t satifsy me, so I started creating marbling art with my own compositions. The general public appreciate my marbling as art but most people are not that creative so they don’t know what to do with regular full patterned marbled paper for bookbinding or craft. They think they are just fancy wrapping papers, lol!

 Many of your marbled papers -especially those used as endpapers in your bindings- seem to be inspired by classic western marbling, yet they veer off in a very different, very personal, direction. They are often abstract, sometimes almost free of pattern, but instead of looking like “mistakes” or failed patterns they have an air of confidence. As if having crossed some boundary and being bold but at the same time relaxed about it.
 Does this come naturally to you when marbling or is it a result of meticulous care? Can you define the elements that contribute to the uniqueness of your marbled papers?

I love details and compositions. My marbled paper or marbling art also reflect that. I like finess in everything I do. Doing regular marbled paper for store orders is very difficult because if I make a mistake or get an air bubble in my paper, I can’t sell them to the store. Doing edition marbling for store orders is a challenge because consistency is hard to achieve and when you have to do a couple of hundreds of sheets at a time for a couple of months, it takes the fun out of marbling. Being meticulous is a must for doing professional marbling or fine binding and it’s not easy!

 No matter how talented a binder is, or any artisan, he/she can only learn and become adept in certain aspects of a craft. Our time is limited and, since our skill-tree translates itself into the identity of our creations, we must choose wisely which skills to learn and improve along the way. Many, I’d even dare to say most – given the immensity of our craft, will be left out or acquired at a very basic level.
 Is there some particular skill or technique/s, within the vast horizon of bookbinding, that you’d like to try your hand at or feel you haven’t explored as much as you’d like?

I guess I am lucky to have discovered the art of French Design Art bindings at the very beginning. I was pretty focused to seek out training in the French techniques after I had read my alma mater, Tini Miura’s book “My World of Bibliophile Binding”, where she talked about the French technique being the most perfect and sublime. Finesse is everything in reliure d’art. I share that sentiment. We were lucky to have Tini in USA and teaching at AAB because one gets to learn the best technique from one person without having to travel to many different places and study with many different masters in Europe. Tini told me that when she was stuyding in Paris in the 60’s, the best master binders worked behind closed doors. But being a female, she was not deemed as a competitor to them so she was never refused or denied lessons. Her male counterparts were not so lucky.

I believe that if you possess good techniques, perfected through centuries and passed down from masters, you really don’t need gimmicks to stand out. I try to focus on good designs and develop my own style and still keep an open mind to new techniques to compliment my work.

You can see more of Wu’s work at Studio Robert Wu.
If you enjoyed this interview there are more you can read at my blog section Techniton Politeia.
Till next time!

 

Techniton Politeia – Interview with Jin Hu

Tags

bookbinding, Design binding, Huhu Hu, Βιβλιοδεσία, δερματόδετο, καλλιτεχνική βιβλιοδεσία, Jin Hu, leather binding

Jin Hu or, as most people have come to know her, “Huhu Hu” is a bookbinder based in Quzhou, China. I have been watching her work continuously evolve and forming a distinct personality through the years, with impressive results. She has been self-taught to a great extent, something which I admire and speaks to me on a personal level, but also managed to learn a lot and improve next to renown binders. Last but not least her handcrafting extends beyond binding books into some quite interesting leather sculpting…
  For all the reasons mentioned above I believe she is definitely an artisan to keep an eye on and so invited her for a talk about her work, the experience she’s gained so far and her next steps.

Jin Hu started as a self taught bookbinder, practicing on her own for several years with Kaija Rantakari (Paperiaarre)helping her through the internet. During that time (2007-2013) she tried and practiced several techniques through online videos and articles as well as books on bookbinding.
  She learned various leather decoration techniques from Sol Rebora and then travelled abroad to attend seminars by Monique Lallier, Luigi Castiglioni, Susana Dominguez and Zigor Anguiano Calzada.
  From 2015 to 2017 she has also taken part in 5 exhibitions:
-Nobel Museum Bookbinding Exhibition featuring the novel by MoYan.
-5thWorld EBRU day
-’Open.Set’–design binding exhibition by American Academy of Bookbinding
-‘International Copetition Heroic Works 2017’—by DB UK
-Xtra small Miniatuurboekjes in Museum Meermanno

Many aspiring bookbinders do not have the precious opportunity to attend courses and learn from established craftsmen and institutions. That is usually for two reasons: absence of skilled binders or craft-academies within travel distance or the very high cost of participating in seminars abroad. Thus, in many cases they have to learn the craft on their own, through trial and error.
 Things have changed for the better in that aspect, with the rise of the internet and the abundance of educational material available through it. Still, it is nowhere near as efficient as the experience and knowledge provided first-hand by an experienced binder.
 You’ve been trying to learn bookbinding on your own for several years. Being self taught can be extremely demanding but at the same time very rewarding and offering a unique sense of accomplishment, hardly found elsewhere.
  Could you describe your personal experience on being self-taught: Did you go about a certain way in learning bookbinding, or was it more random? Did you set specific goals and then went on completing them or did you follow some other course? Which where the best and which the worst parts of being self-taught?

  At the very beginning self-learning was more of a random process. I would look into everything I could find: books, online tutorials , videos, and then I practiced a lot. Being a novice I knew little about the elements and functions of a binding’s structure. As I gained enough knowledge I managed to form a more complete understanding of what there is to learn. I made a detailed list writing down all the skills I needed to have or structures I wanted to master, f.e. such as bradel binding, clamshell box, marbling, byzantine binding, etc. I then made a schedule which I followed strictly.

  
 The best part of self-learning is that I am able to understand the process more comprehensively, my approach is not restricted in some fashion and that allows me to invent new methods. To give you an example: I have learnt at least 4 ways to cover the corners and I am now using one that I created by myself, which is easy to do and produces a very fine result.

Jin Hu – earlier work

 The worst part would be how painstaking it is as there is much more time spent in making mistakes. When it comes to the higher level of bookbinding, such as a full leather fine binding or French binding, one can never accomplish a really fine result simply by self-learning. That’s why I travelled abroad to learn from master binders.

Textures

Your bindings are full of personality and already exhibit a distinct identity, something which many artists and artisans (myself  included) strive to accomplish for a long time – if ever.
 Is this a result of conscious effort? How do you approach the creation of a design binding? Do you as an artisan rely on good planning and preparation or is your creative process guided more by instinct and chance?

Thank you so much for your encouragement! Although I believe I still need practice to improve my bindings, as I am not satisfied with all of them.
 I am very conscious regarding my approach and efforts when it comes to design bindings. For my early bindings I didn’t really make very detailed designs, sometimes I just drew a simple sketch. Back then I would refer to the process as ”randomness under certain control”. Recently however, I started to improve my design process: I do a very thorough planning before starting the binding, such as making sample boards or drawing the covers, editing the color combinations with a pc. This can take many hours up to days or even months.

Minimalism, harmony, and inventive use of colors and textures – these are often present in your work, gracefully representing the Asian Culture’s core aesthetics.
Given the very long history of Chinese art and its distinct style how would you describe your culture’s influence on your work? Has it affected you and if so which of its elements appeal to you the most? Is their presence on your bindings on purpose -an homage to your culture- or is it more of a subconscious source of inspiration?

 I think that Chinese culture did not play a significant role in my bindings up till now. I designed the books according to some basic guidelines of graphic design. However I came to realize that Chinese Art has affected me in a more subconscious way. 
 I recently read a book series on Chinese Painting wrote by James Cahill, which totally changed my mind about Chinese art. Before reading these books I thought Chinese painting is similar with Ukiyoe art from Japan. Instead Chinese painting is a very abstract art, but one needs to learn its “language” to admire the paintings, otherwise you can only see mountains, hills ,rivers and rocks repeating themselves, you won’t be able to feel the emotions within the lines. That is one reason why Chinese painting is not as popular as Japanese painting, which is less abstract and more decorative. I realized this is an asset for me as a Chinese, so I am now making some trials in combining features found in Chinese painting with design binding.

  China is a world on its own and so we don’t often get the chance to talk with a bookbinder situated there… Can you please tell us a few things regarding the Chinese bookbinding scene:
What is the bookbinding community there like?

 There isn’t currently a bookbinding community in China, most Chinese people view bookbinding as “book cover graphic design” or similar to industrial made books…

What kind of work do the professionals focus on?
The bookbinders mainly focus on Chinese thread binding.

Is the public familiar with bookbinding as a craft/art?
Not really, but people are slowly getting more and more familiar with western-style bindings. They can appreciate bookbinding as a craft but not art.

What kind of opportunities are there for someone interested in becoming a bookbinder?

 There are some craft schools which teach Chinese style binding, but if someone wants to be a well rounded bookbinder he/she has to go abroad as I did.
 In recent years there are few studios which provide simple western binding courses but not in a very professional way – at least in my opinion. So I believe workshops for bookbinding or stores selling bookbinding materials and tools will be popular in China in the near future.

Who would you say are your main customers? Have you followed some particular course to acquire your clientele or has it simply grown over time?

My main customers are book collectors of western-style bindings. Since they have some knowledge on bookbinding they are willing to order from me. Many people also find me through articles I write at an online column, where I try to introduce the aspects of bookbinding to the public.

  Apart from bookbinding you make some amazing leather sculptures, for example scarabs and that extremely cute Minotaur. I must admit I’d hardly ever notice the black scarab isn’t real just by looking at the photo you’ve sent me – it’s so lifelike!
Has this been an old fascination or is it something you’ve discovered recently?

I know that some artists make bugs out of metal but I haven’t seen anyone making leather beetles so far, so it is basically an invention of my own. Each part of the bug is build separately and then put together. I’ve spent a great amount of time developing it and I still need to make many more leather bugs to improve the whole process.

What is the story behind the Minotaur? 

  The Minotaur is a collaboration with my husband and it is also a test product for our new leather sculpture brand named “HG Art”. While the leather bugs are made with thin vegetable-tanned leather which can be shaped easily the Minotaur was build with thick and hard leather which required very accurate shaping, just like when making clothes but in a more complicated way. We also designed the Minotaur with movable hands and legs.

And finally, what other ideas do you have in store when it comes to this kind of leathercrafting?

Apart from leather bugs we are now in the process of making an owl and a whale. We plan to design more sculptures this year, not only  animals but imaginary species as well – such as those found in ancient Chinese fairy tales.

Last but not least, would you like to share your future goals, both short and long term, regarding bookbinding?

In short term, I plan to finish some fine bindings in 2018, which involve trying new design styles and new methods of decoration. 
 In long term, I wish I could exhibit more of my bindings internationally. Also, to make books which are more like art pieces and not just craft work. I am also planning to develop more methods on leather decoration and dyeing and, hopefully, teach these in workshops around the world.

You can see more of Jin Hu’s work at her FB page.
If you enjoyed this interview there are more you can read at my blog section Techniton Politeia.