The Binding makes the Book! - Part Three - Tearing Handmade Paper Pages

I thought it was time to continue my posts about some of the bindings used in book-binding. I'm a bit amazed to realise that the second of the two posts so far, was last September! It's really time I added some more about bookbinding and techniques.
For the previous posts see Part One here and Part Two here. 

So far I have written a little about:

• basic pamphlet-style books and variations on this binding,
• the traditional "case binding" - multiple sections, stitched together and then glued into a hard or semi-hard case cover,
• variations on back-stitched multi-section bindings - stitching over exposed cords, for example,
• longstitch bindings, where the book sections are stitched directly to the cover,
• chain-stitch binding, or Coptic style bindings, together with a little bit of bookbinding history.

I have planned a set of three posts, covering the creation of a set of pages - or Codex - made from a handmade paper, then turning these into a leather-covered book, with a Mediaeval style Longstitch Codex Binding.

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Part One of Three: Tearing Handmade Paper into a Codex

I bought some very nice handmade paper on Sunday, made with cotton rags. It's white and made in a hand-held mould, so it has nice little lines on it, from the mould's mesh lining, plus rough "deckle" edges.

A4-sized (297mm x 210mm / 11.75" x 8.25") handmade white cotton-rag paper.  

 I wanted to make a small book with this paper, by cutting it in half and folding it into pages.  Each sheet would make 4 pages, in 2 sections ("folios"). 

However, I didn't want to just slice through the middle with a craft knife, or even use my usual paper-tearing knife, as the cut edges would be too neat/ smooth (especially if I used a craft knife).

This is how I tear handmade paper, to get a more natural-looking torn edge:

Fold each sheet in half, parallel to the short edge, making a light crease with your hand

Take the first folded sheet and open it out.  Use a paintbrush to apply plain water along the fold. Let it get reasonably wet.  Then re-fold (water side in) and run the wet brush down the outside of the fold too.

Set each piece of paper aside and work through all your pages in the same way.

The water soaks into the paper for a centimeter or so, softening and stretching the fibres, weakening the bonds formed when the paper pulp was put into the mould, forming a sheet of paper.

* * *

Paper Grain and Handmade Papers

(a short digression, for an information session!)

Handmade paper typically has no/little "grain" or "direction" of fibres.  Handmade paper is made by scooping pulp out of a vat of water, placing it on a thin screen/mesh in a frame, shaking it to make an even layer of pulp, then laying this sheet to dry.

 

Because of this method, the fibres in the pulp are distributed irregularly, lying in all directions and criss-crossing over each other.  This creates a firm and quite strong mesh of fibres.

As they dry, the fibres fuse together, forming paper. If you hold a sheet of thin handmade paper to the light, you will be able to see these fibres. Sometimes there is a "direction" to their structure, but because of the way the paper is made and dried, this creates less stresses within the paper, so the "grain" is less pronounced - usually so little that we say it has none at all (!) 

Do the same for machine-made paper, and you will not be able to see any sort of mesh of fibres. You may see faint lines, running parallel along the paper. This is from where the paper pulp was run through a machine, passed over rollers and pressed to remove water.  The fibres form into a regular pattern, running in the same direction. 

Also, as the paper is moved through the machine, from wet new-formed paper, to dry-on-the-roller, many other factors introduce stresses into the paper and cause changes in its structure.

This is what gives machine-made papers a "grain". 

This explains how to check for paper grain and this is a more technical explanation of how paper grain is formed.

This slide-show shows papermaker, Timothy Barrett at work on his Western-style handmade Lokta paper and this video shows the making of Lokta paper in Nepal  (you may notice in one of Timothy Barrett's slides, he is holding up a sheet of paper, which has distinct lines on it. This is still handmade paper, although it is strongly watermarked. I would expect that this paper still would have little "grain", despite the lines). 

* * *

Meanwhile...

Take the first sheet that you dampened, open out the sheet and lay it flat on the table.  You can see the puckering where the paper is damp.   You could tear the sheet down the middle, but you might get a very uneven tear, so I suggest you do this:

Fold the sheet over again, then run your finger down the fold, creating a good crease.

You can see here, that there is now a definite "line" down the centre of the sheet.  This is your "tear line".

This photo shows the result of my folding the paper, creasing and then tearing it with my paper-cutting knife (a long, flat, very sharp blade). It has produced a tear, but it's very crisp on the edge - almost a cut.  Not what I had in mind...

This is more like it.  I have torn the paper by hand - as shown below - producing a more irregular, "deckled" edge, similar to the natural edge of these handmade sheets.

So!  To tear the paper...

Lay the sheet flat on the table, with the crease inside. Lay your hand flat on top, next to the crease, then slowly pull the other side, in a horizontal direction, to create a slightly irregular tear.  Move your flat hand down the sheet as you go - also move the hand that's holding the other side, if you need to. 

The paper should tear quite easily, as the fibres will be softened by the water. So, you don't need to use a lot of force.  If it all starts to tear a bit wildly, first try slowing down, moving your hand to support the tear and pulling more gently. You may also need to re-make the crease line (try a bone folder or the back of your fingernail to help you).  If it's still a problem, you could dampen it a little more (and let it sit for a minute), or close the fold and try gently tearing with the edge of a flat ruler. 

You should hopefully have edges that look like this.  They will still be wrinkly from the water, but they'll shrink back a little as they dry.

I prefer to put these hand-torn edges at the bottom of the book, as I like the "raggedness" of the natural edges. You may prefer them at the top.  I don't think it matters, but suggest you choose one or the other and keep them all uniformly at top or bottom of the pages.

Fold the sheets in half again, to make pairs of pages; then tuck these pairs inside each other, as many as you want to have per section. I had forty pages (twenty pairs) and I used four pairs per codex (section), to make five sections of eight pages in my book 

Sit your pile of pages somewhere for a while, to let them dry out. At this point, if you feel they are too "thick and bouncy", you can place a board or large book on top, with something weighty, to compress the pages a bit and make everything a bit more dense. 

* * *

That's how I tear hand-made cotton-rag paper.  You can apply this same technique to other papers - especially other hand-made ones.  If you are tearing a very light paper, such as a mulberry tissue, you won't need to fold the pages and wait for the water to soak in. In fact, I suggest that you are careful not to make thin paper very wet - it tends to stick to the table and produce ragged, uncontrolled rips, rather than just a natural-looking torn edge.  You can always experiment with a few scraps, to see what effects you like. 

Team Teal - Happy Birthday to Marti!

Many of my blog friends will know about Team Teal.  If you can't remember, then see this post on Deb Turtle's blog.  And this is my post from last 29th April!

Deb's lovely mom, Marti is 70 today, which in my view, deserves celebration.  The fact that she's been fighting to be well and also has a milestone birthday makes it even more worthy of a celebration!! 

So...

* * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Happy Birthday Marti!

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Many happy returns to you and may you have a truly special day!

XX

My Team Teal awareness band, sent to me by Deb.

Quick Update - More Books!

I am very much buried under books just now.  I don't mind, as it's exciting to have lots of orders and projects, but it's a bit exhausting (and the housework suffers!).

Tomorrow though, I will have a "Day Off", to go to Cambridge and meet two Special People.  More about this as soon as possible after the day! 

Meanwhile, I've been busy making.  These three are some of the latest things I've finished.  I'm also working on a project to make a large silk wedding guest album, with a storage/gift box to keep it in.   I hope to report on my box-making adventures in the near future!

A little picture gallery, of what I finished recently :

This Coptic-stitch book is for a friend, Melanie, who runs a stall at Farmers' Markets and fairs, selling wonderful hand-made herbal products - face & body care etc.  Her rose skin toner and rose & frankincense face ointment have really helped clear up the rosacea that bothers me sometimes.

Anyway, the label was not attached yet, so she could write her own words on it (and use the spare if it went wrong!).  The binding is in mousey-brown linen and the cover edgins are in a deep teal/golden brown shot-silk.

Back view.  This paper is by Cavallini and is called "Birds and Nests".  It does actually have those words printed in the design, but it's a very large design and those bits didn't come out on the part I used for this book.  (There's another in my shop just now, which uses the same paper on the covers and has the words on too!) 

Inside there is lovely natural-white smooth paper.  The covers are lined with Murano art paper, in a slate colour.  

This will sit on Melanie's stall and she will collect customers' comments. I took it to the local farmers' market last Saturday and delivered it in person (luckily she likes it!).

* * *

In the post this morning...

Another book in this lovely paper!  8" x 6" Wedding Guest Album, to hold polaroids, as well as the good wishes of the guests. 

Coptic binding, in turquoise linen thread.

It's very thick, as there are 50 pages (100 sides) of stiff paper, plus double-thickness spacers, to allow room for the polariod photos. 

I cut the second set of spacers from aqua marled Murano paper, to match the cover linings.  They are wrapped round each section (4 pages/sheets per section), over the top of spacers made in the same stiff, heavy-weight paper as the pages.

The bride chose a hand-cut label for the first page, to match the cover paper.

I wish them both a lovely Wedding Day and much happiness for the future!

 * * *

Two suede notebooks/journals, about 6" x 4" in size. They have metal buttons with wrap-round ribbon to fasten them - and add a bit of decoration.  

The teal & green book has green-designed end-papers and the red & bronze book has greeny-grey.  These are both scrapbooking papers, by My Mind's Eye.  They are just great for end-papers or linings.

I'm very pleased with how these turned out.  They're designed for presents (a certain BFF has a birthday this week...) and I hope they'll be well-received.

So, off to do some box-making!  I hope to have "completed" photos of the book and box very soon.  And tomorrow I'm off to Cambridge for a day out - excited...

Leather Love - A Bookbinding Day at Knuston

Cup-of-Tea Warning!  This post is quite long and has lots of photos - you may need a cuppa and a bikkie, before attempting to read it all through!
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A Bookbinding Day at Knuston Hall

I spent yesterday at Knuston Hall, on a bookbinding course and had a fab time.  The tutor, Doug, was a very nice person, who is a book conservator and restorer "in his day-job" and so knows loads about paper, leather, bookbinding methods and history.
It was a pleasure to be taught by someone who really knows his stuff and who was really interested and keen to see what his students produced.  There were seven of us altogether, which was a good number to have, as there was plenty of space for us all to work and to see the tutor's demonstrations.  There was a good spread of ages across the group too - from a young woman in her 20's, to two ladies who are retired and still busy - and Doug wasn't the only male member of the group, as there were male students too.

I think we were from quite varied backgrounds too - the two men in the group were engineers (I think, from the way they were talking to each other and jokes they made about measuring machines and special drills to do their paper-holes etc!), there was an upholsterer, someone who works at the council offices, people who sew and knit - and a bookbinder (guess who?).  I think we were a good group (I hope Doug would have agreed - I think we behaved ourselves and I tried not to be a smart-alec, as I was very aware that I most certainly did not know nearly as much as the tutor!!).


The course was to make a leather book, using a traditional Longstitch Early Codex binding method.  I had been looking forward to this very much and was a teeny bit excited... (perhaps I should get out more, but, you know...books...paper... bookbinding... well...).

So, we had some lovely examples to look at, which Doug had made:

Some beautiful details in these books - decorative stitching on the spine, lovely shapes cut into the fold-over flaps, interesting fastenings....

The last two photos are of a book with a vellum cover (that's vellum made with skins, not "vellum" paper).  It really was translucent and rather beautiful.  The fastening is made with two straps, that are attached to the fold-over flap on the front, then wrapped over to the spine, where they are fastened by pushing two hand-made vellum buttons through holes cut into the straps.  I think the design is based on original mediaeval bindings.  It certainly was rather impressive, with the fabulous stitching details and clever fastening. 

In fact, all the examples were lovely (I didn't photograph all of them... duh...). 

Inspiring - makes you want to make something lovely too!

So, we had some very nice leather pieces to choose from...

lovely paper for pages, and good instructions and demonstrations...

 

So, we made a spine stiffener, learned how to mark up the positions of the holes and how to mark the paper sections (which were already prepared for us by Doug-the-super-star!)...

Then we stitched our books... (for some reason I didn't remember to photograph that bit... too busy and forgot the camera, I think!)

...then spent some time making decorative fold-over flaps, fastenings and embellishments.

This lovely book was made by Katherine, whose table was facing mine.  She used a strip of the same leather, reversed to show its sueded side and made a wrap-round fastening.  The strip of leather wraps round a flower, which she made herself, from two short lengths of leather and a third piece that she wound into a flat coil and glued to the centre.  Isn't it beautiful? (I did ask her permission to photograph it and publish it on my blog - thank you Katherine!).

There were so many clever ideas and variations of decoration and fastening.  Everyone was really quite clever and ingenious.  I loved seeing what the other students all came up with - I think Doug did too, as he said he was leaving his example book unfinished (which he was making to show us the various techniques), so he could see what ideas we came up with for ours and maybe be inspired to do something new with his own!

And several of us began a second book, as we had some time left at the end of the afternoon and our tutor had brought spare materials (which we all paid him for, so he didn't lose out!)

* * *

I really had a lovely day yesterday.  And, being at Knuston, it meant that we were also very well cared for and well fed!  There was excellent coffee, homemade biscuits at morning break, cake in the afternoon (though we didn't go for our break... we were all too busy - but I know there were very nice cakes, because I snagged one on my way home - oink...).... and lunch was really yummy too - a proper cooked meal, with the choice of three different hot dishes, with rice or potatoes, or cold meats if we preferred.  There was a salad table too, with a great selection to help ourselves to.  And two different puddings to choose from also.  Amazing that we didn't all fall asleep after lunch - I think it was a testament to the tutor's excellence that we were too interested in our work, to even think of dropping off at our desks!

* * *

And me... what did I make?  Of course I intend to show off a bit, because I am proud of what I made, both yesterday and also an extra little book, which I made today:

Lizzie's Book One

Longstitch Early Codex Leather Binding - Buff-coloured calf leather, stitched with ivory hand-waxed linen thread.  Four sections of 14 leaves (28 pages/ sides per section - 56 leaves/pages - 104 sides in total), of  120gm cream-white smooth paper by Conservation by Design.  The paper was pre-cut and folded into sections, so I had only to bind it into a book (lucky me!).  Measures 20 x 14cm / 7.75" x 5.75" (almost A5 size).

I made a fold-over flap with integral tab, which is used to fasten the book, by tucking into a decorative leather bar on the cover.  I used a patterned stitched panel on each side of the fastening bar, stitched in matching linen thread. 

When I got home, I modified the tuck-in tab, by trimming the end corners, so it was more pointed and would slide through the bar more easily (the corners kept catching when I tried to slide it through - now it works very well).

Lizzie's Book Two

The photos are of the finished book.  I brought home a completed binding, with the cover and fastening not completed.

Longstitch Early Codex Leather Binding - Dark green sheep leather, with embossed false grain, stitched with ivory hand-waxed linen thread.  Four sections (56 pages/ 104 sides) of off-white Zerkall Butten 145gsm paper.  Measures 17 x 13.5cm / 6.5" x 5.25".

Once I was home, I added the red leather thongs, as fastenings - also to make a pen-holder inside the fold-over flap.  Even though I had fixed the ends of the folded strips, by glueing them inside, they still flapped and didn't sit very well, so I added some stitching to secure them and make nice, firm loops. 

I spent some time messing about with the other ends of the strips, tried adding beads to the ends, considered whether I should have some kind of button to hook the loops over and wrap the ends round... In the end, it was the simple solution that worked best - pass the strips through the loops, then double them round and tuck in on the back of the book - "simples", as the nice meerkat says!

Lizzie's Book Three

Today was "Scrap Club" day!  Two days out in a row - and Mr. LizzieMade didn't mind at all... he even made me a packed lunch (of course, it may be that I am impossible to live with and he was relieved to have some peace...but he hasn't complained and I hope that it's only that he is so nice and generous and kind, that he likes me to have fun!). 

Aaaanyhooo.... I spent part of the morning on this:

 

Longstitch Early Codex Leather Binding - Deep teal-coloured suede (calf I think...), stitched with golden yellow hand-waxed linen thread. The suede is lined with patterned paper (it's medium-weight scrapbooking paper). 

The book has 30 leaves/pages (60 sides) of hand-made cotton paper.  I used water to wet the folds, before tearing the large sheets into pages, so all edges are either natural deckle or hand-torn.  As the paper is quite bulky, I decided that only thirty pages, in five sections, was plenty for a small book (this measures approx 11cm / 4.5" square). 

I tried a variation in the stitching on the spine - having waffled on at length yesterday lunchtime, while wondering how "people I know" manage to make this particular stitching pattern.  I had thought it must be complicated and need two separate needles...

Of course it isn't complicated at all.  The basic stitching method is like a back-stitch, so there are two threads on each section of the spine.  The pattern is made by simply passing the needle beneath the previous thread, on the second and subsequent stitches. 

It really is very easy-peasy and I felt like a real twit yesterday, when I tried this stitching for my fastening bar, on the buff-coloured book, and discovered how very straighforward it is - after all my daft wonderings!  Sometimes I wonder how I've managed to live so long...  

Anyway, there it is, a nice crossed stitch effect in golden yellow.  I then stitched a deep yellow button to the fold-over flap (If I had been clever, I'd have done this before I stuck down the lining paper, then I wouldn't have had to tease it apart and re-stick it!).  The fastening is simply a piece of turquoise linen thread, which is passed through the leather from inside.  The thread wraps round the button.  That's it - nice and straightforward, for a change!

I really do like this little book and it was great to make one "all by myself", without an expert to hand, to rescue me if I messed up.  I didn't mess up anyway - just the little hiccup with the lining paper being stuck down, but that was just lack of experience, which meant I didn't think the whole design through before I started.  Next time...

* * *

So, this is what I made this weekend:

Three Longstitch Bindings, that I'm very proud of!

One or two things I need to improve on, but I think it's a very encouraging start.

Thanks to Doug, for a great day's workshop and for patiently bearing with my idiot ramblings about "difficult" stitching patterns.