Dear Everyone ~
I have talked about my love of bookbinding many times over the years. I’ve also shared with everyone that I am enamored by simple stacks of paper. One of my favourite “bonuses” of teaching bookbinding is how many students spontaneously—and delightedly—discover that they find folding sheets of paper into signatures...to be (a) meditative, (b) calming, (c) soothing, (d) all of the above!
Taking a workshop requires attention and precision, but unless you’ve experienced it, you wouldn’t necessarily think that part of the process is so repetitive and relaxing. Students actually say, with some surprise, that they could fold signatures all day! I know that I am happy folding signatures until the cows come home. I truly love that so many students experience this same mesmerizing effect.
The shipping clerk’s knife is by far one of the most popular bookbinding tools in my online shop. My own shipping clerk’s knife has been languishing for lack of exercise almost since the beginning of the Shelter Season. I am thoroughly grateful to have been so busy shipping online orders...but I have so missed making books. When I started teaching workshops via Zoom in July, I was amazed (and relieved) at how much I enjoyed Zooming. I was also SO happy to be making books along with my students.
Last week, I taught a Coptic-stitch with soft cover workshop. I had sent my student, as part of her materials, a sheet of chiyogami, and I decided to experiment and cover my book with a pair of Serizawa calendar pages from October 1962. To say I was smitten with how it turned out...is a hilarious understatement. Actually, here comes the cosmic Coptic coincidence….
When my student first saw the calendar page on my table, she exclaimed that her birthday was in October, and that she had missed out on buying the buttonhole-stitch book covered in October back when I had offered my “Year of Serizawa.” She immediately asked if she could buy my Coptic-stitch homage to October...before I even put it up in my online shop! I realized that she deserved to have it, and so she shall. I’ve put my other recent oeuvres online. The photo at the top of this post shows them all, with the October 1962 (sold out) book at far right. At far left, you can see my inspiration book, covered in a January 1974 page.
A final aside about signatures: When Sonheim Creative was celebrating their ten-year anniversary this past April, Carla Sonheim asked if I had a favourite short clip from my bookbinding video to use as an enticement for future students. I decided that the sequence of me folding a full-size sheet of Stonehenge into four signatures seemed to be the perfect representation of me and my love of making books—and my love of paper. Folding signatures is my “signature move.”
Newest Hand-bound Books
Shipping Clerk’s Knife
On a bookbinding BonanZa, BZ