Art Progress

Pait Bible

Just before Christmas I received this commission to rebind a well loved Bible. It was a great project to work on.

I had done a couple new testaments and one full Bible before and I love doing them. What more exciting project is there for a Christian interested in bookbinding. Also there's an exciting connection to the past since the preservation of scripture motivated some of the biggest advances in the field of book arts. But Bibles are a challenge since they have so many signatures (in this case over 40).

The cover is milk painted like the E1 journals (I was able to make a matching E1 journal to go with the Bible) but with a slight color variation. I used three, rather than two layers of color on the cover to hint at the original Bible's red leather cover.

I was asked to incorporate a favorite quote into the cover so I etched it into a zinc plate and inset it into the wood.

This is a great example of spine wrapping with a decorative mulberry paper. In a situation like this where I'm repairing an existing book the spine wrap does double duty as a patch between the two outside pages in a signature (the two most likely to be torn from use).

This photograph isn't great but you may be able to make out the Greek style variation on traditional coptic binding. This works well when you have so many signatures because you can split the book block into two more manageable chunks and then join them later. Of course the locking knot at the center of each sewing station on a greek binding makes a lovely addition to the spine as well.

As a side note, with 40 signatures, each of the bands at the head and tail of the Bible took about 10 feet of cord.

E1 Journals (rust)

I recently began working on a new series of journals. I'm calling them E1 journals. The E stands for environment-easy, economical. This pair are rust colored.

The pages in these E1 blank books are made of paper that is not only 100% recycled but also: processed chlorine free, "made carbon neutral", and both FSC and Green Seal Certified. It's a fairly heavy paper (70# text) and has a beautiful look and feel.

I used a coptic stitch to bind the sections together and the head and tail bands are sewn from the same Irish waxed linen used on the spine.

I made the covers from high quality plywood (Some are cabinet-grade Baltic birch and other are super dense plywood used for model building).

I painted them with milk paint (which is "The greenest paint there is") I also impressed the front cover with a tiny E1 stamp and waxed the painted covers to make them more user friendly--less susceptible to dirt and oil from handling.

One of these journals is a heavily distressed white and the other black over a rusty red.

Price per journal : 75$ + shipping (4$ to US addresses)

Let me know if you are interested in a custom journal.