Category: General

The website Limp Vellum shows off bindings from the British Library Catalog. These bindings were “offered at a cheaper price than the familiar full-leather options, and … were often created to serve a temporary purpose, designed to be easily replaced.” The introduction goes on to say:

… a young book conservator helping to assess the damage done by the Florence flood to the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze in 1966, noted that limp vellum bindings, text blocks laced into folded vellum covers, had not only survived the flood with more success than traditional leather-over-boards structures, but that even before the disaster they seemed to have been better protecting their text blocks.

See more here.

At book & printer’s fairs in Northern California, the San Jose Printer’s Guild always set up a tiny Kelsey or 2 for people to print a card and to see how letterpress really worked. A design firm in Rotterdam, Letterproeftuin, has a similar idea. They’ve built a traveling design studio to make small posters and books. See more about them .

There are several opportunities to see book arts around Santa Fe this fall. The latest is “Expressions in Book Arts,” at the Mesa Public Library, Los Alamos, Oct 1-30. The opening is tonight from 4-5:30. My pop-up book P&P is on display.

This is the time of year I get ready for the holiday selling season. My calendar is done, so now I’m making extra flip books, notebooks and coasters. I also start to think about gifts for friends. I ran across this candle the other day—it’s called Old Books and the scent is described as “Timber, White Tea, Dirt, Newsprint, Must, Leather.” They have an entire Book Lovers’ Series including Bookstore (coffee and a hint of leather), Sherlock’s Study (sweet pipe tobacco, cherry wood and fresh rain), Oxford Library (oakmoss, amber, sandalwood, with hints of tobacco and leather) and Pemberly Rose (fresh roses with a hint of lilac and hyacinth).

{ Seen here }

One of my favorite tasks when designing my calendar is selecting the colors. Too bad I didn’t run across Modulem’s book art photography for inspiration. She takes photographs of the ends of old paperbacks. Here are a few of them. See more here. She also has makes what she calls book art on paper

Pique-nique d’octobre (October Picnic)

Winter Lavender Blues

The cure for boredom