Tags
bookbinding, encuadernacion, χειροποίητη βιβλιοδεσία, Βιβλιοδεσία, άλμπουμ εφημερίδων, reliure, ww2 newspapers
There has been quite the radio silence when it comes to this blog, but that is not to say it hasn’t been a busy year, on the contrary. And here’s proof: is the biggest binding that has been made in my bindery: an album to house WW2 newspapers.
And I say that instead of “that I’ve made” because it was a joint collaboration between me and two fellow bookbinders who came to pay me a long summer visit: Mia Heath and Jovana Ivezic. I couldn’t have made this without their help, skills and knowledge, for which I’m most grateful.
We also had a great time working together at the bindery!
The album is massive: once finished it measured about 70cm tall and weighed around 7 kilos.
It also proved to be very challenging, as everything works differently when you go very big or very small.
The pockets, in which the newspapers are housed, were made out of Mylar sheets.
Normally, if this was made for a museum, the newspapers would be placed in the pockets, then the air would be sucked out of them and lastly they would be sealed by ultrasonic welding. However I don’t own the (very specialized and expensive) equipment for such a process and the client also wanted to have access to them, so the pockets were created from cutting large sheets, folding and then hand-sewing them. This took a lot of time. A regular book takes about 30 minutes to 2 hours to be sewn, depending on size and number of pages, this took 20+. Let that sink in for a bit…
Because of its sheer size I had to make thick laminated covers to prevent warpage as much as possible, using MSK Natur board which is of archival quality.
Due to variation in the thickness of the newspapers but also because of the folds and sewing at the bottom of the pockets the stacked pockets were quite uneven resulting in a sloping spine. To mitigate the width difference brass washers were placed around the screws between every 2-3 pockets.
I also milled a recess around the holes on the boards so that the screw heads would protrude as little as possible.
This is just one of the projects that were made in collaboration with Mia and Jovana, more to be posted in the near future.
Dimitri's Bookbinding corner 