2012 – Page 8 – Peachey Conservation

June 12, 2012February 17, 2019

Blank Book with a Built in Pencil Holder

A while ago I made this sketchbook, based on a nineteenth century design, that features a built in pencil holder. It is covered in natural linen and functions well, having a full 360 degree flexibility that landscape format sketchbooks should have, so that they are convenient to hold while sketching. Given the admittedly obsessive amount of attention that bookbinders give to the evenness of the squares, I never was quite satisfied with the size of the top square, to make up for the space of the pencil. Three large squares looked even worse. There are many solutions to this problem, often hiding the pencil in the spine or incorporating it into some kind of catch or tie.

But recently I purchased the account book below, which had a more clever, though much more labor intensive solution—recess the pencil holder into the front cover. The finger space to remove the pencil was similarly recessed. Not unimportantly, the pencil lead is protected when housed. Peeking into the bottom pocket revealed a lot of marks from the pencil being removed and inserted. About a third of the book is filled with pencil notes, primarily lists of food purchases from 1903-1909. The manufacturer of the book is Royal—even the paper has their watermark—and the advertisement on the front flyleaf appears from the turn of the twentieth century.

May 29, 2012May 25, 2012

Sewing in the Round

One of the advantages of the Nokey sewing frame is that it is easy to loosen, then retighten the supports to sew a book in the round. Sewing in the round is less invasive than flattening the original backing, then rebacking, and incidenally is quicker. However, thick books such as the one pictured take me a while to sew: I am no where near as quick as an experienced sewer in the mid-nineteenth century who could sew between two and three thousand signatures a day, according to “A Day at the Bookbinder’s” from The Penny Magazine Supplement Vol. XI, December 24, 1842, p. 380.

Three sizes of the Nokey are available here for purchase.

May 22, 2012May 25, 2012

Upcoming Lecture at Rare Book School, University of Virginia

Reconstructing Diderot: Eighteenth Century French Bookbinding

Monday, June 4, 5:30

Auditorium of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library

Rare Book School

University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

This is an image driven (150+), fast-paced, terse overview of the research I have been doing on eighteenth century French bookbinding. The extensive documentation concerning eighteenth century French bookbinding, as found in Diderot, Dudin, and other sources, form a unique starting point in the examination of the larger questions associated with the history of craft and material culture, the transmission of textual information, and, of course, the history of bookbinding. Book structures of the late eighteenth century stand at the cusp of one of the most radical transformations since the invention of the multi-section codex: by the mid nineteenth century, the machine made cloth case binding begins to dominate book structures. In this talk, I will illustrate the historical context of how these books were made and compare this with physical evidence of books from this time. Particular attention will be given to the tools and techniques used to produce these bindings.

This lecture is free and open to the public.