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.

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.

Book Curses: Implicit and Explicit

In case your not familiar with them, book curses* are my favorite and perhaps the only non-physical way outside of basic human decency to protect your books from theft. I’ve recently acquired (through honest means) two books** that employ book curses, one blatant but rife with grammatical complications, and the other a bit more subtle but all the more menacing:

My as-is transcription: “Dont Steel This Book My Onest Frends for fear the gals Will be En(?)d”  – ‘gals’ I think is short for gallows, though originally I thought it was ‘gods’ – see below.

and

I had a really hard time transcribing the first and more overt of the two, but I believe it to be poorly spelled and abbreviated variation of the somewhat popular medieval book curse:

Steal not this book my honest friend

For fear the gallows should be your end,

And when you die the Lord will say

And where’s the book you stole away?[1]

The second of the two, though more of a borrowing limit than a curse, by employing a patchwork of bible verses at the very least hints at an unspoken ‘OR ELSE’  should the borrower not respect the heaven-ordained limit.

So, if you’re feeling adventurous, just let me know and I can lend it to you for 15 days and we’ll see what happens.

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[1] Murray, Stuart (2009). The Library: An Illustrated History. Skyhorse Publishing. p. 41.

*Here’s a nice article article I dug up that discusses book curses: https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/07/10/chain-chest-curse-combating-book-theft-in-medieval-times/

**Also, my two books containing the above-mentioned curses, in order of their photographs:

J. N. Select Lessons in Prose and Verse, from Various Authors, Designed for the Improvement of Youth. 11th ed. London: Howard & Evans, 1807. Print.

Hort, W. Jillard. The New Pantheon or an Introduction to the Mythology of the Ancients for the Use of Young Persons to Which Are Added an Accentuated Index. London: Longmans, Green, 1867. 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.

GBW Standards Registration Now Open!

As of May 1st, registration for the Guild of Book Workers’ annual Standards of Excellence Seminar, to take place September 15-17, is officially open. I am particularly excited because it is to take place in my home town of Charleston, South Carolina, and I am the Local Host for the event. Aside from an all-star list of presenters, there is also a great assortment of vendors and a Mentor-Mentee Happy Hour to help facilitate meaningful relationships between some of the top practitioners and those just entering the field. If you can swing it, I really hope to see you there!

Also, in case you are wondering, the inspiration for the logo (pictured above) came from a tool used on a 1795 Charleston binding, which is unique because it also happens to be the only pre-1820 ticketed Charleston binding I’ve come across so far (and believe me, I’ve been searching). I like the tool because it looks like a abstracted hybrid of a Palmetto tree, fountain, and pineapple, all of which are quintessential icons of Charleston. Here is a picture of it on the original binding:

‘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

Marbled Leather: Use with Discretion

Last month, there was a lot of discussion on the Book Arts List about marbling leather with the same (or similar) technique as that used to marble paper. I’ve never witnessed the process myself, but I was lucky enough to come across this early 20th century French binding that has seemingly employed this technique with some success:

Scènes de la Vie de Bohème by Henri Murger. For those of you unfamiliar with this publication, this is the book that the play was based on that the opera was based on that eventually inspired the Broadway musical ‘Rent’. Measures 12cm (width) x 19.5cm (height) x 3.2 (thick)

While I am impressed with the successful marbled leather, I have to say that as a whole this book is one of the ugliest juxtapositions of patterns I’ve ever scene. You disagree? Well then just sneak a peak at the endpapers:

So now for the full monty:

I rest my case, though I guess the designer/binder should get some credit for consistent inconsistency. Très charmant!

Trade Finishing

For the last six months or so, I’ve been working on trade finishing, where you apply paste wash, glair, a little bit of grease, gold leaf over the area to be tooled, and then proceed to tool the entire cover all at once. It has been slow going, especially in the post-tooling cleanup, but I have finally begun getting some results I can live with, and in the last month have even gone so far as to do it for a few actual projects.

Presentation Binding of Destiny and Power, for the author.

Historic trade bookbinding was what initially made me want to pursue a life in the book world, and it is still a source of inspiration today. I think what appeals to me most is what Hannah French describes as the ‘charming but completely unpretentious'[1] nature of these bindings, especially those bound before the 19th century. There is something about the combination of quirky compositions, crooked lettering, and wonky, overlapping lines with straight up GOLD that somehow makes a sophisticated, approachable, and very human book. It is the type of book that says, “Hey, I know I look good but you know you can use me without either of us feeling bad about it.”

Images of this book and a couple others are shown on my ‘Work’ page if you’re interested in seeing more. Also, it’s my birthday today!

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[1]French, Hannah D., and Willman Spawn. Bookbinding in Early America: Seven Essays on Masters and Methods. Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1986. p. 9.