Friday, October 29, 2010

Making Books and Secret Belgian Binding


I became interested in letterpress printing because of my involvement in paper making and making books. This is a dos a dos (two by two) book that I made that depicts a bamboo grove at night and at early morning. The binding is known as a Secret Belgian Binding. It's interesting how the spine has a weaving effect. The handmade papers are made of Hollander beaten cotton rag and straw. No dyeing of the paper and I liked how the pages had rich, deep olive colors and sunny green hues.

7 comments:

  1. interesting, did you make this book? or is the discription of this book and you were inspired by it...in any case I love the vintage look of this...

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  2. Hi, Jelveh,
    Yes, I made this book. It's made with my own handmade paper. I have a Hollander that can beat cotton rags and plants, and I used my paper in this book. Thanks for the comments!

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  3. I love this. I wish I could find a local class for book-making!

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  4. This is beautiful, it looks very old and romantic... like there is an interesting story to be read inside :)

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  5. I have always been fascinated with process of making paper and with bindery - this is absolutely lovely! :-) I agree with OneCraftyFox... it looks to me like there's some lovely, romantic story just waiting to be read within those pages.

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  6. That looks like a delightful book to hold in your hand!

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  7. Thanks for visiting and commenting!
    Vicky, I'll post some great books for making books! I wanted to take classes, too, but there were none here, so I learned from some wonderful books and some small book exchanges with other book artists. We all used our handmade paper in the books,too.

    I'll share more about the story behind this book in another post. I suppose you could say it's my romance with the bamboo forest on Maui. More to come on that in a little while!

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