Bookmaking.

Last week the students bought in some of the books that they had made during the previous session. The results are beautiful little books that are personal to each of them, it is really good to see the different interpretations and I thought that you might like to look at them.

Concertina Book with pockets. Heather McClure.

Handmade paper, stitch and insertions.

Another beautiful book from Heather. Flag book,

 constructed from the inside of envelopes. 

Flag book,

sorry I'm not sure which student made this, beautiful decorated papers.

Colour coordinated decoration, a lovely finishing touch. Shelia Russel.

                    Choices, choices! Keeping it natural, concertina book, Paula Allison.

Who wouldn't like to receive these beautiful little books!

This week we learned how to make a exposed spine book with stitched signatures. Signatures are groups of single sections, this means, one folded page is a single section, a signature is a group of sections placed one inside another.

Signatures with varying sized sections.

Don't these handmade paper pages look beautiful grouped together.

I hope that you have enjoyed looking at this work, most of the student have very little experience of bookmaking and have come up with these beautiful books, have a go yourself and I'm sure you will be pleased with the results that you achieve. There are some really good books on the market and plenty of information on the Internet. www.flickr.com/photos/katej/sets/72157625780349723/ www.papercurious.blogspot.com this blog is no longer active but is still available and is a good starting point.  Making your own sketchbooks and journals personalises your work even more and you get just what you want.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely on my imagination.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Knowledge is limited.

Imagination encircles the world.

Albert Einstein. 

bookmaking

This week my contemporary bookmaking workshops started, I really love books in all their forms but especially handmade books and artists books and altered books and.............well I had better stop as I said I love books! The image below is of a concertina style book, this type of book was  part of the first workshop session, however this one is very old. It is a palm leaf concertina, consisting of woven palm leaves which are then woven into a concertina  structure, beautiful isn't it!

The concertina book is a simple form which lends itself to experimentation, because of its simple construction it gives the maker opportunity to 'mess around' with it and play creatively, to experiment with the structure and stretch the imagination, in short, to engage with a bit of 'what ifing'. So, with that in mind I thought I would post some images of this book form and show the ways that a few artists have approached it.

Dianne Longley's 'Curious and Fantastic Creatures'.

'Quantified Asthetic' Angela Davies.http://www.angeladaviesartist.co.uk/

A beautiful piece made from a double concertina format.

Ed Hutchings 'Book of Stars'. 

Wendy Shortland's 'Bling Book'.

I hope that these wonderful books have inspired you to have a go for yourself. All of the images show books that are standing upright, bend the form back on itself and it forms a star, lay one end  flat and the other upright and you have a different form but that's another story! Have fun and see what you can come up with?

A book must be an ice axe to break

the seas frozen inside our souls.

Franz Kafka.