/karen/

A book for my father

Wednesday, 03 December, 2008

I know I haven't been posting much, and I do apologise for posting so much this evening, but I'm not sure when I'll get another chance to put these up, and there are lots of pictures and not much text, so hopefully it won't be too arduous for you to work through.

After Kathleen taught me coptic bookbinding, I went to a course on oriental bookbinding at Amazing Paper one Saturday morning. The woman who owns the store (I think she owns the store) has been doing bookbinding a long time, and she teaches all sorts of courses—from restoring old books to binding leather books to paper crafts, and so on. She also teaches at the College of Fine Arts UNSW one semester a year on the subject of artist's books. Anyway (<begin digression>) at the end of the workshop on oriental bookbinding, she was talking about the different possibilities of taking the techniques further, and she started talking about artists' books. I started telling her about the exhibition Kathleen and I had attended at the State Library of Queensland, and then she told us about this one that was just about to open at the Pine Street Gallery. I couldn't make it to the opening because of Bible study, but I did make some time last Friday afternoon to go along to see it before it closed. (I ended up doing the closest reverse parallel park I've ever done because I was stupid and misjudged the space, but I didn't damage my car or the ones around me so that's something!) Anyway, the exhibition was gorgeous and really intersting, and I wished I had had more time to read the books, or at least leaf through them, but the gallery was closing in an hour. As I was leaving, this lady started talking to me and I soon realized that she was minding the exhibition and taking attendance. We got into conversation and I found out her name was Sue Anderson and that she had had a book in that State Library of Queensland exhibition (it was Australia unfair). She told me that she was a writer who had become interested in bookbinding, and from there, artists' books. I bought a catalogue of the exhibition off her (because the exhibition was so cool) and she took down my details so hopefully I'll be notified about any future events. (</end digression>)

Anyway, after the workshop on oriental bookbinding, most of my classmates and I went nuts in the paper store next door. (If you've ever been to Amazing Paper, you'll understand why!) I bought some fancy paper, but I also got myself an awl with a wooden end (so you can hammer it), some proper bookbinding needles (very straight; won't bend!), some linen binding thread and some more cardboard. Unfortunately time got away from me and life tripped me up, and I wasn't able to do any more bookbinding, but I did manage to do a bit today. This A6 journal is for my dad for Christmas. It's done in coptic:

I went for slightly fancier paper this time—I was in the $2 shop earlier today, looking for a cheap paintbrush to spread the glue (I haven't taken photos of the first one I made because I botched the glue so the back is a bit messy, plus I punched holes in the wrong side so the back cover is upside down), and I found these visual arts diaries for $5 with 110 gsm paper (NB: normal photocopy paper is 80 gsm). Unfortunately once you tore the paper out of the spiral binding it was no longer A4 but I don't think it matters too much with this A6-ish size journal.

I also pulled a bit too hard on the thread when binding in the the last signature which meant that the paper tore a bigger hole, but you can't really see it unless you're looking really closely ...

Current:

Blinks:

Feeds

• Full posts
• Full posts and del.icio.us feed
• Excerpts only
• del.icio.us feed only
• All comments

Social media

• Flickr
• Last FM
• LibraryThing
• Listal
• Ravelry
• Twitter