41: It's beginning to hurt

The distribution of my Group 2 contribution to BAO Edition 4 is complete and copies are now in the hands (collections?) of those in my group.
41: It's beginning to hurt takes as its starting point the possibility that one of Sarah Bodman's stories has been recovered from its place of interment in a Danish forest and subsequently offered for sale by a London bookseller.
The work is housed in a simple drop side box and consists of a colophon, ephemera associated with the sale of the book and the book itself - much distressed with significant staining and water damage and evidence of insect attack.
For those who might be interested, more photographs and details can be found here.
The work is intended as a reflection on the hurt experienced by artists when their work is appropriated by others and used, often for profit, without consent and in a manner contrary to the artists' intentions.

Back from the bush

Back in the bindery again after three weeks off bushwalking in northern New South Wales and south east Queensland. Time on the track is great for reflection and I've returned with ideas for new projects; some thoughts on a way forward for started but stalled projects; and an offer of some teaching at a small contemplative retreat in the Gold Coast hinterland. Spent this morning tidying up in preparation for an anticipated burst of activity, including cleaning up some bench weights that I picked up from an old wares shop on the way to the start of my first walk.
Delighted to find two BAO books waiting for me on my return - A Subversive Stitch and Snow Falling in Daylight - both by Queensland calligraphic and book artist Fiona Dempster. Some wonderful photographs of these (and other examples of Fiona's work) can be found here.

The book's in the mail

The end of last week saw me finally wrap up my first title for BookArtObject Edition 4. I'd been putting off doing this until we rolled into May, which was the date I'd included in the colophon back in February when I sent the text off to the printer.
Eight copies of 41: It's beginning to hurt were packed into padded bags and posted to New South Wales, Queensland, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Very satisfying and I am now looking forward to enjoying the books from the other artists in my group. The first of these arrived a couple of days before my own mail-out, a magnificent tunnel book by the American collage artist paperworker. You can read more about this book here.
I'll post something similar about my own piece once others in the group have received their copy. Right now, I'm going to take a break for a few weeks before starting on my next project. Back in June!

15 Mountain Houses

I'm away from BEMBindery at the moment which means that this week's book is one from my back catalogue.
I'm taking a break for some bushwalking in the Australian Alps, one of my favourite places and somewhere I try and visit at least a couple of times a year.
15 Mountain Houses is about the Alps. It contains drawings from an architectural competition that aimed to promote new approaches to designing buildings for the Australian high country. The book dates from my very early days as a bookbinder and was, in fact, the first 'unsupervised' book that I produced. It is a concertina binding with paste paper covered boards trimmed with black goatskin. It has never been exhibited.

Floating Boards

Have just spend a very satisfying couple of days in a workshop with seven other binders exploring a technique known as 'floating boards' - a technique, developed by the Belgian binder Edgar Claes, in which the boards are connected to the spine by cords (or tapes) alone. While this structure is inherently weaker than bindings with leather, cloth or paper hinges, it is well suited for use with clean cut or non-traditional (eg metal) boards. For those of us doing the workshop, it was an opportunity to fine-tune some skills and working methods that will be needed for a series of follow-up workshop on French 'laced-in' bindings that are planned for later in the year. The workshop was run by John Tonkin, one of Australia's finest design binders. It was great to be able to pick John's brains, catch up with old friends, make new friends, exchange ideas and talk about the sorts of things that only bookbinders find interesting.

Backwoods and Along the Seashore

I'm back from the bush and definitely missing the small things that you notice in the absence of an urban cacophony - the processions of ants, the movements of birds, the stalking of a goanna.

Among my favourite authors are those who lovingly document such things - Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek), William Least Heat-Moon (Prairyerth), John Blay (Part of the Scenery) and, of course, Henry David Thoreau (On Walden Pond).
This week's book is a rebinding of Thoreau's Backwoods and Along the Seashore, a selection of extracts from The Maine Woods and Cape Cod. The design comes from an imagining of the author dressed in a cotton shirt, striped woollen trousers and braces. The binding style is French Simplified with capeskin spine and cloth covered boards with wool and nylon webbing onlays. The book has been included in exhibitions at Sydney's Gallery Red (2009) and Canberra's Civic Library (2011).

Slow progress

I am slowly working my way through the set-back described in my last post, one book at a time, one book a day with lots of days without the enthusiasm to manage even this.

A useful distraction has been PJM Marsh's book Beautiful Bookbindings - A Thousand Years of the Bookbinder's Art. Included in the book is the following tale:

In 1911, the London binder Francis Sangorski completed an elaborate, jewelled binding of the Rubaiyat of Omar Kajayyam which was sold to an American collector. The binding was lost when it went down with the RMS Titanic on its voyage home.

In 1932, Stanley Bray, a nephew of Sangorski's business partner, recreated the binding and placed it in a bank vault for safe keeping only to have it destroyed when the bank was bombed during the London blitz.

A third version of the binding was produced by Bray in 1982 and is now housed in the British Library.

The thought of Bray's persistence is just the spur I need to press on.