More Sewn Board Bindings

(Also posted in my bookbinding blog).

When I moved up to Salt Lake City, a few of my new friends were “besmitten” (I think that’s the word Vivian used) when they first learned that my roommate Kohleen and I are both book conservators and bookbinders. I had been invited to teach a sewn board structure at BYU as a guest instructor, so I invited my new friends to come along for the demonstration. A few days later we got together for a bookbinding dinner party. It took us two sessions (spaced a couple months apart, whoops!) to finish, but here are the final books!

I had thrown together a text block for each of the girls. When I make this structure, I like to wrap each section in some kind of special paper, since the spine is exposed–I think it makes the book extra lovely. :)

The book pictured below was the one I sewed for the demonstration. The marbled papers are my own (I made them).

Kohleen put this text block together with her own paste papers and a cave paper cover:

Kathryn made this one: I’m not sure what the cover is–it’s just some nice heavy artist grade paper. The sections are wrapped in my own recycled papers that I made when I was probably 16 or 17 years old–it was nice to put them to use!

Shannon sewed this one up. The cover and insides are my recycled papers again.

There are two more books whose binders couldn’t make it to the 2nd binding session. I’ll try to get photos of the last two when they’re finished.