Moby Dick: An alum-tawed whale with details burned in.

Moby Dick: Bob Roberts & Jennifer McQuistion. Bound in blue morocco.  Blind tooled, with silver palladium fish.

Romaunt of the Rose. This piece was Jennifer's introduction to restoration. The textblock needed some mending and resewing. Jennifer did pretty  much everything but the tooling!

A few of the books bound with Jennifer McQuistion of the Brown Dog Bindery through a partnership with the Tennessee Arts and Crafts Association and the Master Artist Apprenticeship Program. After months of training, design, sewing, paring, trimming, carving, pasting, fixing, re-fixing, re-designing, painting, covering, and tooling, we finished the program with a three-day blitz of bookbinding to get these ready for the gallery deadline. It was a great experience! Jennifer has been a pleasure to work with and I look forward to future collaborations!

The MAAP program through TACA

It's been great working with Jennifer McQuistion, teamed up with me through a grant from TACA's MAAP MasterArtistApprenticeProgam. (Their website is here: http://www.tennesseecrafts.org/program-overview.html and includes more pics of us at work.) Jennifer is a painter/woodburner/book artist from Nashville and we're working on some projects for a September show, including bindings of a Bernard Middleton book on restoration, Moby Dick, The Romaunt of the Rose, two Bibles, and the Sermons on Job pictured in the last blogpost. Here are pics of Jen in the shop and other projects we're working on. Her website is www.browndogbindery.com and her blog with with more photos of us at work is at www.browndogbindery.blogspot.com

Sewing a headband

Cutting the book's edges using a traditional lying press and plough.

Paring leather using a great new tool, the Scharfix. It uses a double-edged razor blade in a vise that can be raised, lowered, and tilted for bevelling.

Jennifer painting panels for the Job binding

Jen sketching out designs for our "Restoration of Leather Bookbindings" by Bernard Middleton.

Sermons on Job

Outside cover tooled very simply in blind.

Jen painting the inner wood panels

Cutting flowers

Leather borders on and adding leather onlays. The flowers are first tooled in gold, very thin leather applied over the gold, and then tooled again in blind and then gold.

Leather onlays tooled

Front Panel finished and inset into front board. Turn-ins tooled in gold.

The finished rear panel

Rear panel inset into rear board, turn-ins tooled in gold.

Rear panel again

Closeup of rear panel.

We've just finished a copy of John Calvin's Sermons on Job, a facsimile of the 1574 folio edition published by Banner of Truth Trust. The Tennessee Association of Craft Artists has teamed me with Nashville book artist Jennifer Mcquistion for a Master/Apprentice program and this is one of our projects. We've bound the book in alum-tawed leather over raised bands and tooled the outside very simply in blind. Jen does wood burning and painting and she created the wood panels that were laid into a recessed panel on the inside of each cover. A black leather border was added to the paintings and then I've added floral leather onlays in white and red and many hours of gold tooling to fill in. It's currently in the Tennessee Arts Commission gallery in Nashville for a September-November show.

1566 Table Talk or Tischreden by Martin Luther.

Full Panel tooled

Closeup of tooled cover.

Headbands sewn and blended in.

Paring Leather

Tying up to form spine

Untooled

Page repair in progress. The filled in text at bottom right is from an earlier repair (one of the good ones.)

Newly washed and sized sheets drying

Mending and headbands complete, and lining up spine before applying the new leather.

Currently on our bench is a 1566 copy of Martin Luther's Table Talk. It was in a later case with a number of interesting repairs: some good, some bad. The first and last leaves were pulled, washed, resized, and mended before reattaching to the textblock. Headbands were sewn in period style and new boards cut and beveled. Bound in calf, it was tooled in blind: designs pressed or rolled into the leather with no gold. This was a common style of decoration, gold not in common use for perhaps another 100 years.

Paradise Lost & Found

1688 Edition with new label and outer joint repairs

Laced in and ready for leather

Tucking in a new inner joint

Drying after aging

Mended sections

An archival scanner

New frontis portrait

"Unaged" facsimile on right

Newly sewn textblock, after mending and adding in the missing plates

We've just completed restoration of 1688 and 1691 small folio editions of Paradise Lost, a complete first illustrated edition and a later printing missing the frontis portrait and most of the 12 plates that preface each "book". The 1688 edition needed only minor repairs but provided the source for our missing plates. We used a unique scanner where the book is hung over the edge, allowing us to capture deep into the inner margin without putting any stress on the binding. The scans were digitally cleaned, output on hand-made paper, airbrushed to lightly age, and sewn along with the newly mended text. Though heavily worn, we reused the original boards of the 1691 copy with their marbled paper sides, simply lifting the paper and inserting new leather for the spine underneath. The 1688 edition needed a new label and strengthening of both inner and outer joints.

iPads Finely Bound

We've been working on several designs for iPad cases: a "Full" and a "Slim". They are made to look and feel like a fine antique book with raised bands, gold tooling and sumptuous materials. The Full features a hardwood frame slotted for access to ports and switches, with a slideout tray underneath for storing earphones, cords, stylus, etc. It's the size of a large book and (compared to the iPad) fairly bulky.

The Slim is no larger than many iPad cases on the market but beautifully made of fine leathers and handmarbled papers.

At present (meaning until we get a large order from StuffMart and farm it all out to China), every case is built to order, with a variety of woods, leathers, and decorative papers available. The two pictured feature deep brown morocco leather spines and corners, the Slim's leather tray fashioned from olive-colored kangaroo. They can be titled however desired, personalized with name, company, or ostensibly clever phrases like "Luddite's Revenge" pictured above.

Literary Reconstruction

I've begun working on an important collection of several 17th and 18th century poets, or at least their literary remains. Currently on the bench are two 1674 editions of George Herbert's "The Temple" and a 1720 2-volume quarto edition of the poetical works of John Milton. A partially disbound copy of "The Temple" was pulled, mended, resewn, bound, and tooled in the photos above. A second copy needing no text repair was rebound in dark calf, the last picture above. (Pictured lying on "Walton's Lives", in for a reattachment of its boards. The Milton volumes below need new spines, having been rebacked in weak sheepskin sometime last century, those weak joints finally splitting apart. The original headbands were gone, having been replaced with a thick cord tucked into the headcap, so they're being resewn in the photos posted here. The new headbands will be age-toned to match their respective edges (top edges are usually dirtier than bottom) and will go unnoticed (as they should) when the new leather has been worked on. A cloth inner joint was visible and machine-made pastedowns had just been applied over the originals, so those layers were removed all the way back to the original leather turnins. The original leather has been treated with a consolidant, all later materials eliminated, and labels saved in case they're worth reusing. (That'll be decided when new leather is in place and the final results can better be anticipated.) More pics as we progress!