GBW Gear for the End of the Year

I think we can all agree that 2016 has been a hard year. So why not make it a little easier on yourself and the Guild of Book Workers by taking part in their end-of-year swag sale/fundraiser? Select any or all from this fun selection of GBW gear and support the organization that supports you!

Clockwise from the top left: Button, Mug, Apron, Tape Measure, and Desk Organizer – All essentials that you can’t afford to live without!

Interestingly, my favorite option to support the Guild is not pictured above or on the site. For only $5, Bexx Caswell, the Guild President herself, will write you a personal thank you! I certainly intend to take her up on this; I could use some appreciation…

But in all seriousness, if you have the means, and if the GBW has in any way been a part of your involvement in the book world (I can say with certainty that it has been for me, both professionally and personally), this would be a great way to express it, especially since you get something in return! And yes, a large portion of your donation is tax deductible, so don’t fret.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and vote! -I mean, support your national bookbinding organization!

Here’s the link: https://www.generosity.com/fundraising/guild-of-book-workers-year-end-fundraiser

 

Introducing: The Beachey Folder*

Even though as of yet I’m not quite equipped enough to work on books in my new home studio (I am (this) close!), I have been steadily making tools for bookbinding to take on the road with Jim Croft next month (more on that later). In particular I’ve been experimenting with riveting wooden handles on bone, and I think I’ve finally come up with something good.

The Beachey Folder. Measures 14.0 L x 2.5 W x 1.6 H cm

I based the design and name off of some paring knives I’ve seen made by an obscure late 20th/early 21st century New York-based bookbinder, independent book conservator, and toolmaker.* The handle is hickory, with epoxy and brass rivets fixing it steadfastly to the tool stock (elk leg bone).

The sturdiness and flexibility of the bone, ergonomic handle and 13 degree bevel angle all make it ideal for various lifting and scraping operations. Already I’ve used it to scrape a sale sticker off a desk lamp! I anticipate a revolution in the bone tool business very soon…

*****Please read the disclaimer below before you find something more interesting to look at!*****

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*DISCLAIMER: I make no claims to the design of this tool. It is more or less a direct model of Jeff Peachey’s (who is not particularly obscure in the book world) paring knives, which are the best on the market and worth every dime, incomparable in function and beauty. Though I was pleasantly surprised by this tool’s comfort and function, I primarily made the Beachey Folder and its companion blog post as an idle exercise in fun.

Home, Sweet Home (Studio)

It has been almost two months since my last post, and a significant portion of that is a result of my recent relocation to Bloomington, Indiana, where I have happily followed my wife as she pursues a new educational opportunity. It turns out that orienting a replacement, ditching most of your possessions, moving to your in-law’s for a week, driving several states, and starting a new life are not too conducive to book-themed blog posting regularity. That being said, those combined experiences are very exhilarating, especially when you get your own studio out of the ordeal. Here is a picture of cette studio, as it currently stands. Thanks Ikea!

From left to right: flat files and a little solid wood work surface, Francesca (see below), and a little Ikea drawer shelf thing and kitchen island  – a nice feature of which is the long semi-hidden shelves in the back which I will be using for rolls of leather, cloth, paper, mylar, etc.

Already since this picture was taken I’ve acquired a few more small ceramic crocks to hold my brushes and other small tools, cut and sanded some birch pressboards, and I’ve even gone so far as to order some stock supplies for when the commissions and orders start pouring in (a joke). But still, my pride and joy is Francesca, my little boardshear/lying press combo who actually made the move with me from Charleston.

Here stands Francesca, in all her radiance. Oh la la!

For such a tight little space I was really delighted to see how it all came together, from the abundant natural light right down to the lifting caster wheels I installed on Francesca so I can scoot her out at the beginning of the day. I also have an alternative workspace/tool and stock nook at the end of the hallway that is impossible to photograph, so you’ll just have to trust me.

This kind of space economy is crucial in a small studio, especially when your studio is the majority of your modestly-sized-at-best apartment living room. To give you some scale, the rug in the photo only measures about 6×8 feet (also a joke – that rug is ENORMOUS).

And for the record, I haven’t been entirely idle in my online posting – last month I was really excited to contribute to the intrepid Erin Fletcher’s Swell Things page on her website (which, with or without my contribution, is a great read every time). Here is a little teaser compilation image from the post, just to wet your palette. I love how she formats these things.

Images from the second half of the post. Now you have to check it out, right?

Happy Fourth of July; I’m on Instagram Now!

Hey everyone! A few days ago I decided to take the plunge and join some form of social media. Why? I’m still not sure. But I did it. So, if any of you who are following me on this humble WordPress site are interested in seeing a combination of works in progress, new bindings, quirky historic books that don’t quite deserve a full post, and the occasional picture of my dog, feel free to follow me @bhbeidler. Below is just a taste of what the Gram can offer:

Simple decorative pallet for gold tooling book spines, with highlights of the process along the bottom.

Happy Birthday America!

A Tale as Old as Time

From the chapter on ‘Fire’ in William Blades’ Enemies of Books:

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Source:

Blades, William. The Enemies of Books. 2nd ed. London: Elliot Stock, 1888. vii. Print.

Early Bookbinding in Charleston

Sometime last fall, the Library Society’s Curator and Historian Debbie Fenn showed me a letter from October of 1960 written by Hannah French and addressed to Virginia Rugheimer, then a librarian at the Library Society. In her letter, Hannah requested information ‘concerning binders at work in Charleston up to the year 1820,’* with the intent of eventually including this information in her 1986 publication Bookbinding in Early America (this is confirmed in a letter from 1976 that Debbie came across about a month ago).  From what I’ve been able to gather, and from the fact that no Charleston binders are featured in her book, Hannah’s inquiries did not result in anything substantial enough to include.

Inspired by this correspondence, and the fact that the Charleston Library Society is the second oldest circulating library in the country with some decent colonial holdings (it’s not all the Civil War here), sometime last fall I began searching through our card catalog for early South Carolina imprints in the hopes of digging up some early South Carolina bindings. Well, needless to say things got off to a promising start, with a ticketed binding[1]:

Upper cover of A Compendium of Latin Grammar, 1795. Measures 18.0 (H) x 11.3 x 1.5 (T) cm

Spine of A Compendium of Latin Grammar, 1795.

And on the inside of the front cover, a glorious, though far from golden, binder’s ticket:

Ticket Measures 6.7 x 4.6 (H) cm

Despite its significance as one of the only pre-1800 ticketed Charleston bindings currently known, and the fact that the ticket even tells us where David Bailey is originally from, there are so many things I love about this binding. Here is a short list:

1. As the identity of the binder is made plain, many of the structural and decorative elements of the binding provide a baseline that will hopefully allow me (or other researchers) to identify other Bailey bindings.
2. The funky bubble-feather helix roll used to tool the panels on the front and back cover. Who came up with that design?
3. The little ‘palmetto tool’ impression on the spine, which served as the inspiration for this year’s Standards of Excellence Seminar logo.

This book, along with the short but steadily growing list of other pre-1820 Charleston bindings I’ve located thus far, will be featured in an article on early bookbinding in Charleston that I’m working on for a future volume of Suave Mechanicals (If you haven’t already checked them out, the first and second volumes, along with pretty much everything the Legacy Press publishes, are incredible). I’m sure I’ll be posting a lot more about this project as it progresses – apologies in advance!

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*1820, though seemingly an arbitrary cutoff, represents the a huge nail in the coffin of the small craft binderies in the days of yore where every step of the process was done by hand, because shortly thereafter in 1827 William Burn invented the first true machine used in bookbinding: the rolling press. Over the next 80 years or so following this invention, virtually every aspect of bookbinding was mechanized and the once-small workshops replaced by large-scale factories.

[1] Mills, Thomas. A Compendium of Latin Grammar. Charleston: Timothy & Mason, 1795. Print.

‘Mouse-ear’ Corners

In general, historic trade bindings tend to stick to fairly consistent design aesthetics, so when you come across an anomaly it really sticks out. Look at the whacky corners on this little guy, which to me resemble little mouse ears:

Look how cute those corners are

This little odd volume is part of a larger set of military-themed publications (23 volumes total) that span about a decade across the turn of the 19th century. Interestingly however, the corners of all the bindings exhibit a fair amount of variation:

Corner variation clockwise from the top left: mouse-ear leather, straight leather, hidden parchment, straight parchment. The binding in the bottom right is a rebinding executed later in the 19th century.

I came across this eclectic series of bindings last summer while working with the great people* at the Boston Athenaeum under the FAIC’s Carolyn Horton Scholarship (more on her soon), and ever since have wondered at the variation exhibited by this set. From what I can tell, the volumes were all (barring the later 19th C. rebindings) bound within a short span of time as, in addition to the structural and overall visual consistency of the original bindings, all the different types of corners appear at different points throughout the set (for example the mouse ear corners appear on volumes 6,8, 19, 21, and 29).

Despite the fact that I’ve had almost a year to ponder these bindings, I am still no closer to explaining the corner variation, and my tiny brain reels when I think about the many, many possible explanations. At the very least I suppose it is a testament to the human need for variety, especially when one is faced with binding a bunch of two dozen volume sets…

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*A HUGE thank you to Dawn Walus and Mary Warnement of the Boston Athenaeum for their help in re-gathering the stats on the set. I somehow lost my notes when I returned home, but thanks to their efforts and ability to decipher my vague descriptions all was not lost! THANKS

Bookbinding: Little Ingenuity Required

Title page and frontispiece of volume three of  The Book of Trades, or Library of the Useful Arts, 1807 edition

Pictured above is one of my favorite books I own. I only have the third volume, but fortunately it contains all three book-related vocations: The Paper-Maker (my copy is missing this plate, which is why I could afford it), The Printer, and The Bookbinder, whose plate is featured as the frontispiece to the book.

“The man is represented in the act of cutting the leaves of the book; on his right, on the floor are his glue-pot and paste-tub; behind him are his tools for gilding; and on his right is the press, for bringing the books into the least possible compass.” pp. 95-6

The little three-volume series was originally published in order to inform the early 19th century youths of England with that great nation’s various trades. Included in this volume are trades such as ‘The Brick-maker,’ ‘The Callico-printer,’ ‘The Wire-drawer,’ ‘The Glass-blower,’ ‘The Cork-cutter,’ and so on. Each chapter averages about 6 pages or so, but manages despite its brevity to provide a pretty thorough summary of each trade’s history, processes (0ne of which I’ll be highlighting in an upcoming post), and economic considerations.

Though I probably got the most out of the author’s descriptions of the different trades’ processes, I really enjoyed reading their opinions on the economics of each. For example, they consider cork cutting to be ‘ one of the blackest and dirtiest of all the trades, and not very profitable either for the master or the journeyman,’ (p. 146) while in watchmaking ‘all the branches of this profession require a considerable share of ingenuity, and a light hand to touch those delicate instruments which are requisite in their trade…Few trades, if any, require a quicker eye or a steadier hand.’ (pp. 155-6)

The author seems rather indifferent towards bookbinding however: ‘The business of the bookbinder, in general, requires no great ingenuity, nor any considerable strength of body.’ (pp. 94-5) But despite the lack of required mental or physical prowess, journeymen could still pull in about 30 shillings a week (which based off estimates I found roughly equates to $150/week today). The only problem is, many of the bookbinders I know today still seem to be making about 30 shillings a week without the inflation adjustment. Regardless, they can’t be fairing as bad as those dirty hand cork-cutters. Just look at them:

Please note the little hourglass resting on the table in front of him – The Man’s little reminder that he’d better keep up or else he may not get to keep his miserable occupation. Also, in case you’re wondering, those things hanging above the cork-cutter are little floaties to help teach kids how to swim.

Book Repair Made EASY

I came across this sinister ad in a mid-20th century industrial bookbinding magazine* and shuddered as I began to envision countless miles of this stuff being produced and/or (god forbid) actually used before the company eventually went under. What really disturbed (but, given where and when the ad appeared, didn’t surprise) me about it was that this was a repair solution proposed by book people, for book people (in fact the magazine boasts that it is ‘the exclusive business paper of the industry’). At any rate, at least the product and company name both sound like they could have easily been transferred to other industries, such as band-aids or contraceptives (‘Transparent Protection Co.’? Come on!).  But regardless of what the tape moguls ended up doing after this venture failed, the moral of the story remains the same: abstain from tape!

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*Mend-a-Tape. Bookbinding and Book Production Apr. 1952: 66. Print.

 

 

Obsidian Scalpel Blades: Not as Cool as They Sound

Sometimes you think you’re onto something cool. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t. Vincent Van Gogh’s self portraits provide a good mix of these outcomes, though the jury is still out on his decision to cut his ear off. That aside, I thought I was onto something pretty awesome when I recently read that some archaeologists have been making medical-grade obsidian scalpel blades for certain types of surgery where even lasers couldn’t cut it. So, I thought maybe there could be some special use for it in my tool kit. Though pretty expensive (about $90 after shipping) on account of each one being hand knapped, I decided to take the plunge and give it a go:

Fresh out of the box. The blade is approximately 7mm long and 2mm wide, and together with the handle measures about 12.9cm.

A close up of the blade. I have a pretty average sized thumb, so you can use that for scale.

Stone-age technology epoxied into modern medicine. It was a profound moment, though not as profound as the next moment, when I went to make a tiny incision into a scrap of leather and the blade snapped off. (For the record, I was aware of how brittle obsidian is, but even with virtually no lateral pressure it still broke.) Fortunately, the company I ordered it from offered a prompt refund with no fuss, hinting that perhaps this was not an all too uncommon issue.

Regardless, it made me a little uneasy to imagine a surgeon fishing for little bits of obsidian in their patient, and decided that I get enough paper cuts already without the help of tiny invisible shards of scalpel.