‘Madame de Pompadour’ by Francois Boucher, 1756, As many of you who regularly check in with Book Patrol know, the representation of the book in art is one of the cornerstones of our foundation. Over at the British Library's Collection Care blog Christina Duffy looks at the value of books depicted in art as it relates to the history of bookbinding. Fueled by her week of studying European Bookbinding (1450-1820) at the London Rare Books School Duffy shows us how the "keen eye of the artist has captured precise details when depicting books throughout history, showing sewing structures, stitch types, supports, covers and even how...
Cardboard bound
"The streets are no longer paved with gold. Pizza boxes and delivery boxes from a well river in South America, crunch underfoot like beige snow" - London-based book artist Mark Cockram. He calls them Rubbish Books, and they are bound from the pulp of abandoned cardboard boxes that litter the streets of his neighborhood. And why turn cardboard into paper? Cockram says because it is "simple stuff." he immerses the side of a packing box in a vat of water for 15 minutes, then he is able to de-laminate the corrugations leaving him with a number of sheets of paper. No mashing, no pulping...
Paper and The Pleasure of Pattern
Claudia Cohen is one of the better bookbinders around. She has done work for the likes of the Houghton Library, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, Pennyroyal Press, Heavenly Monkey Press and the Whitney Museum among others. She is currently in the midst of a stunning multi-book collaboration with noted author Barbara Hodgson.Cohen also collects paper. Really cool decorated paper from all across the globe. Cohen then uses them to create covers, endsheets and box linings for her bindings and boxes.For the month of May, the Paper Hammer Gallery in Seattle has transformed itself in a...
Bound by Tuttle: The Amazing Bindings of Richard Tuttle
The Raven 10” x 12” One of Richard Tuttle's latest magical bindings is aptly called "The Raven." For it Tuttle takes a copy of the 1995 Folio Society edition of Poe's classic poem and binds it in some black goat leather boards. The boards and endpapers are then "feathered" to give binding the impression of flight. The book is able to stand alone for display.Here is a sampling of some of his other recent astounding creations:A copy of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World bound in lamb skin over boards that feature a drug dispensary motif with the titles and commentary...