Twenty-five Years in Five Books
April 2022 marked my twenty-fifth year in the book arts. I present here five books that follow my path from early photo and accordion-based artists' books to fine binding, historical structures, instructional models, and my recent more minimalist work highlighting structure and materials.
Letter Home
My early work often touched on the agricultural Midwest. The flag book Letter Home presents a young Navy wife's letter to her family on the farm. She shares her excitement at exploring her new home in Italy even as she is reinventing herself. An alternate narrative on the verso considers her efforts to distance herself from her modest roots. One numbered and one display copy remain from the edition.
A Narrative of the Discovery of the Fate of Sir John Franklin
Concurrent with the more sculptural and narrative work, I studied traditional and fine binding. It's been an additional way to work with topics I'm interested in, and while the structures and materials are different, the hand skills and attention to detail are easily transferable. The binding on this antiquarian book concerning Sir John Franklin’s 1845 doomed Arctic expedition includes many luxury features: leather doublures, double-core endbands, hand-tooling, and inlays and onlays in a variety of techniques and materials. The design for this binding was inspired by historic and contemporary photographs, paintings and illustrations of sea ice, and polar exploration. The well-preserved wreckage of the first of Franklin's two ships was discovered as I was completing this binding.
Biblio Tech: Reverse engineering historical and modern binding structures
At some point I realized that to become both a better binder and a better instructor, I’d need a deeper understanding of the engineering of the book. This quest has led to additional study, making numerous structure models, and much written documentation of procedures. Biblio Tech is a set of twelve historical models spanning more than a millennium. The structures remain uncovered and only partially completed so methods of board attachment, sewing, spine lining, and endsheet construction are visible. The set is accompanied by a guidebook outlining key structural features of each binding. This spring I am completing the final sets.
Nevermore Again: Poe Exhumed
Now even my artists' books reflect my interest in binding, referencing period structure or decoration, and sometimes specific notable publications. The typography and design for Nevermore Again: Poe Exhumed are based on the first edition of Poe’s first published work, Tamerlane and Other Poems. Only twelve copies of this modest pamphlet are known to exist of the fifty printed in Boston in 1827. The text pairs twelve Poe stories with equally spine-tingling stories from the news. The deluxe and chapbook are almost out of print.
Fish Parchment and the Even More Simplified binding
I added something to my practice early in the pandemic: processing my own fish parchment. To use this material, I searched for small, fish-themed antiquarian books to bind using modest, conservation-friendly structures. I had the honor of presenting one of these structures at the 2021 Guild of Book Workers Standards of Excellence Seminar, the Even More Simplified binding. Elegant and much leaner than the Simplified or Bradel bindings, the Even More Simplified Binding is stripped down to only the essential elements: boards glued onto the flange of a separate spine wrapper. Unique to this structure: the sewing supports lace through the spine wrapper. A small gallery of some of my fish parchment bindings is online here.
