Barwon Ballads and Bush Verses

Earlier this year, twenty Australian bookbinders were each invited to  prepare an unbound text block from the 1912 edition of James Lister Cuthbertson's Barwon Verses and Bush Ballads for exhibitions to be staged in Sydney and Canberra in early 2014. Doing something with my copy is the last project I need to get out of the way before the end of the year. The block itself is fairly uninspiring - musty, foxed, poorly folded, of awkward proportions and with the paper grain running in the wrong direction. Working out what to do with it has caused more than a little angst and I have little enthusiasm for starting. My first step has been simply to 'bind' the block with coarse jute cord and let it sit for a bit.