Tintern Abbey in the Autumn

Frontispiece printed on St.Armand Old Master paper.

Tintern Abbey is a summer poem, and we view it very much as a summer book, even though it was conceived in the autumn of 2008, work initiated on it in the winter of 2011 and the first copies were only available in the spring of 2012. Now, with September here again, goat skins and Japanese papers are in the talented hands of Christine McNair who is commencing work on the deluxe binding. Gathering materials for the deluxe edition was an education in understanding the distinction between goat skin and calf skin, and the nuances of Japanese paper.  And as the work carries on, I hope this book will bring the warmth summer with it, no matter how cold and stormy it may get in the months to come.

I intend to produce another dozen regular edition copies to satisfy orders and to have some available for the Merrickville Studio Tour, happening over the last two weekends of September.

So, September will be a month dedicated to Tintern Abbey, and things got underway with the printing of the suite of engravings from the book that will be included with the deluxe edition. These were printed in a run of 15 of each of the seven engravings on St. Armand Old Master handmade paper – really lovely stuff.

While I was cranking away, I printed another 20 copies on white Byronic paper, which will be sold singly, framed or unframed. The one very small engraving could have been done 2 up on a sheet, but I didn’t have another small engraving in book, so it got it’s own entire page.

It’s one thing to offer prints additional to a deluxe edition; it is another to house them safely and sympathetically with the leather bound book in its slip case. I may have seemed unseemly to pounce (as I did) upon a fine press deluxe edition brought to the OPG gathering a couple weeks ago, but it contained a chemise style wrap for the gathering of prints and I was keen to see how they had done it. Mostly, it was what I had in mind: an unadorned paper folded and scored to fit around the prints and slip closed through a cut slit.

For Tintern Abbey’s gathering, I’ll be using Canson Mi-Teintes, which is of a weight almost perfect for the task. My first attempt had it opening top bottom, then side to side, but this would show the flaps along the edge when seated inside the slipcase, so the final version will have it opening from the sides, which still works fine and will look neater along side the book in the slipcase.

 

Binding Tintern Abbey

Part One: Folding, Piercing, Sewing

When printing is finished, the press room converts into a bindery. A custom made table top is fit over the press bed providing more table space. It is difficult to make the conversion smoothly, since a press room and a bindery are very different environments, but one adapts.

The above photo show the aftermath of the first phase of binding. I have used the piercing cradle to stab holes in the signatures, then sewed up the signatures on tapes into book blocks. After this, I’ll glue on the endsheets which pretty much hold the book to the covers. Once that is done, they go under weight for a few hours, as below:

Signatures weighted between boards.

I use almost nothing that would be considered professional bookbinding equipment. Even the needles I use for sewing aren’t “official” bookbinding needles. I do use a bone folder which is a traditional bookbinder’s tool, and I own a nipping press… very handy for nipping the cases after cloth and/or paper has been glued down on them. But most everything else is purloined or conscripted from other purposes. The boards I’m using to press the glued endpages are thin plywood, leftover from a rough shelving unit; they are a far cry from the lovely hardwood boards that professional binderies stock. The weight I’m using is a container of lead spacing material for type.

I suppose my point is that everything in the studio must be prepared to serve in two (or more!) capacities, and this works pretty well for the most part. Sometimes I find it a problem when, after many months or even years between a certain conversion, I forget exactly what esoteric object I used to achieve a certain goal or effect. One begins to feel like McGyver.

What I miss most from a professional bindery are high tables that bring the work to just about chest height. In production binding, after many hours stooped over a regular height table, you begin to feel it. Sometimes I’ll drop a computer chair down to it’s lowest, but usually I set an old wooden tool chest up on the workspace, and set the work I’m doing on that, which helps my back and neck immensely!

The work show above is another ten copies of Tintern Abbey under way. the next step will be to glue up the spines, attach end bands and line the spines with mull (a kind of thin mesh) and paper.

 

OCAD Book Arts Show Triumphant!

There’s an old joke that floats around the letterpress and book arts scene: “You never sell books at a book arts show!” It’s not really a reflection of book arts shows, but rather the challenge of selling hand printed books in general. And this year I saw lots of books selling at the OCAD Book Arts Show, and even waved goodbye to a couple of my own. One of the things I love about the OCAD show is the very obvious presence of students exhibiting their work. It brings a raw freshness to the book arts, and I am always astonished at how many young artists are being attracted by old school books and printing.

The venue is quite striking as well, as I tried to caption in my first experiment with panoramic photographic stitching, early in the show. Crowds filled the hall for most of the day. (Click photos to make them larger).

The Great Hall at OCAD in Toronto, with the Book Fair in full swing.

A less distorted view from our table at the OCAD Book Arts Show

Tintern’s Binding

A lot of things go on here in the studio. My partner Holly Dean and I operate a kind of cottage-industry craft-based business, and I still do some freelance writing. Invariably, in the fall, the lines converge and we get totally smoked with work, which takes us away from our more artistic pursuits. So, in the rush of a very busy fall, I had to push Tintern Abbey far ahead. A few blogs ago, when I was about ready to set type on the project, I used the metaphor of a train about to leave the station. It left all right — without me on it! Nevertheless, we still carve out an hour here or there to do a little artwork or at least plan for the future.

Last week, Holly and I had the opportunity to visit bookbinder Natasha Herman of The Redbone Bindery for a tutorial on edition binding, and not a moment too soon. As I write she’s already in Amsterdam, where she’ll reside for a year of two, so time was of the essence. We met in her tiny, partially dismantled basement studio in the evening after she put her young children to bed for the night. So we brought a hastily gathered offering of pizza and wine and chocolate brownies, and by about 9 pm we all went into the bindery where Natasha stepped us through a two part case in binding with French groove. We took in alot — ways to make the binding straight, clean, tidy with a mind to “mass”production, i.e twenty or twenty-five at a go. It was an enlightening session that didn’t finish until after midnight, and gave me an insight into what Tintern Abbey will look like when it is completed. There’s still some question over the cover paper: I think Holly’s hand-painted papers would look ideal; she thinks papers decorated with my linocuts would be better. Well, we’ll sort something out.

The 2-step case binding, with Holly's painted paper for the cover. The top is half finished, with the inside left unglued for future reference. The two below have endpages but not covers, and show the sewing, the tapes and the structure of the spine.

 

Bookbinder's tools of the trade

Next 25 copies ready

Cover and spine labels for Graven Images

Today, I inked the press up and printed the cover and spine labels in order that I might finish off the freshly bound copies of Graven Images. Tomorrow I’ll cut them down, glue them onto the cover and spine, then prepare send off several copies to satisfy orders from late last year.

I intend to hand-bind several more copies using the hand-painted papers Holly made back when we thought they’d all be done that way. These are earmarked for special destinations. The two that I’ve already done worked out quite well.

Now on to other projects!

Ten (or More) Things I (re)Learned Printing Graven Images

1. Settle on a binding design from the outset, and stick to it. The binding of Graven Images has been something of a problem. I didn’t have a set plan from the outset, and that created headaches all through production. Originally it was going to be a handsome envelope or folder with the prints loose inside, and it grew on its own from there. Plans to bind the edition myself evaporated in face of time constraints, so the job was handed off to a commercial binder. The results were adequate, but still full of small disappointments.

2. Set limits. At one point, there was some discussion around the dinner table about creating fictional text to accompany the illustrations. I guess that was my line of death, but it would have been an interesting endeavour. The painted covers are covered below, and the final binding of the edition was a compromise imposed by money and time.

3. Use tried and true papers on big projects. There’s a reason so many private presses use only a certain few commercially available papers; there’s no need for further experimentation. Sigh. Looking forward to St. Armand, Fabriano, Arches Text…. and insolvency trying to pay for them.

4. Smoother paper = better halftones. Better impression generally. Canson Mi Teintes paper proved problematic, with one side being rough, intended for pastels. I lost my nerve, and declined to print a large halftone of the box of wood engraving blocks when I realized it would be printed on the rough side, and the last page after already printing the three other pages. I’m telling ya, this racket takes nerves of steel!

5. I’m happier when I can work on the production of a book beginning to end in a concentrated period of time. Because of much going on in my life, I knew that Graven Images would be spread over a long period of time. Two years, in fact. I planned it that way, breaking all the work into its parts, and it all worked out according to plan. But I didn’t like it as much as working on a book every day, continuously for six or eight weeks.

6. I’ve mastered printing type. Just in time to see the early signs of age and wear on my precious lead type.

7. Think twice, maybe three time before betting on a lot of art work for any book. Holly and I planned to have her paint all the covers for Graven Images. What were we thinking?! Trying to reproduce her painted covers using digital laser printing added another dimension of frustration to the job, for everyone involved.

8. I need storage for unbound sheets. At one point, I had the makings of 75 copies of the edition laid out flat in one box. Very heavy! Very big! Always tripping over it.

9. I need storage for bound copies. Graven Images is a big book, not just in terms of labour, but its actual size. And it is by no means even close to the largest folios done by some presses. Even binding up 25 copies a time requires some place to put them, when I even lack bookshelves for the books in my own collection!

10. I need to better organize my work area. Holly has caught me more than once this winter standing at the foot of my press, arms folded and staring into space. My space works very well indeed, but improvements can and will be made. Additional storage. Moving things further back that I seldom use; moving stuff I use frequently closer. A hanging wall cupboard is in the works. Perhaps some shelving.

11. I can print wood engravings. I can even print 130 year old wood engravings. It’s not as easy as it looks. And for the 130 year old engravings, apply lesson #2.

12. Promotion. Promotion. Promotion. I print books with the attitude that I would be happy to live with the entire edition until I pop off. But really, how sensible is that?

13. Live with the variables. There are far too many variables involved in producing a beautifully printed page to be able to control them all. So get over it, and find creative solutions.

14. I love printing, and there will be more books. Wordsworth’s famous poem Tintern Abbey is up next.

Hand binding postscript

Just a couple of bits and pics about my false start at binding Graven Images. In the end, I will bind 20 copies of the book myself, but without the aggravating pressure. I’ll get Smiths Falls Bookbinding to finish off the balance. It doesn’t look like there will be a deluxe edition coming out from the press, but customers who desire a finer binding can purchase unbound copies of the book and secure the services of a fine binder to do the work.

Relating to hand binding, I use a sewing jig and a hole template to perforate the signatures (sections).

After all the sections have been perforated, they are collated and sewing together.

I had begun making the hard cover cases before running out of time, using cover papers hand painted by Holly. (For the editions bound out-of-house, these papers were colour photocopied onto Williamsburg paper).

…Sew Little Time Indeed.

So little time, in fact, that I’ve sent 20 copies of Graven Images out to be bound at a professional bindery, namely Smiths Falls Bookbinding. They will be ready for next weekend, the final weekend of the studio tour. I think Allan thought I was a bit touched when I told him I had planned to hand bind the entire edition myself. He was able to accommodate easily some of the peculiarities of this particular structure, and I’m looking forward to seeing the bound edition on Thursday or Friday. Sometime between now and Friday I have to print labels for the cover and the spine.

The first weekend of the studio tour went well, both Holly and I had fair sales, although there isn’t the robust crowds of previous years, probably because there is a great deal more to capture the attention of the populace on any given autumn weekend. The studio looks spiffy, thought; I’ll get shots of it next weekend.

It has become traditional to have a guest artist named Jamie. In previous years, it was Jamie Brick, who has bowed out to do a show in another part of the country. This year, we have Jamie Carter, who has turned our rustic living room into quite a swish little gallery with his mixed media photography, which involves some kind of alchemical process to transfer silver nitrate onto canvas, and that’s just the beginning. (Photos coming, pending permission).

I have five new linocuts for the show, plus one that was used for the CBBAG (bookbinder’s guild) swap (nude at a window), so I printed an edition of that and combined it with a splash of colour in the form of marbled paper. Pictures later.