Dear Everyone ~
Introduction to Drop-spine Boxmaking via group Zoom debuts on Saturday, May 6, a scant two weeks from today. This past week, I shipped kits to all the students who have registered. These parcels are now wending their way across the U.S., plus three to Canada, one to Austria, and one to Arctic Norway! I truly love connecting with bookbinding & boxmaking enthusiasts around the globe. Increasingly, I wish I had a world map on which I could pin tiny flags to show everywhere I’ve sent a kit. Now that I think about it, the size of flag could reflect the number of kits that have landed at a given destination.
The kit for this workshop set a new record for assembly complexity, to the point that it had to be assembled in several stages. For each kit there are a total of 22 pieces of pre-cut bookboard, in 20 different sizes. Thankfully, Zak and Tammy were on hand to assist me with trimming, organizing and stacking, which preceded recounting, reconfirming (measurements), and collating before wrapping. The Japanese Chiyogami papers with their complementary silky bookcloths looked oh-so-glorious stretched out over my center table. You can read more about the kit and the boxes we will make here. Tammy, might I add, has further endeared herself to me by dubbing me her “glu-ru”! Hah!
When I teach workshops involving glueing, I always show & tell how I use cloth-covered bricks for pressing freshly glued books and boxes. They are, in my opinion, one of the best tools for this important job. You can certainly improvise with a heavy book or books, or other weighty objects, and these typically provide satisfying results. That said, when I’m making a drop-spine box, or any box structure, my personal preference is for a cloth-covered brick or bricks. I will reveal that I have 30 of them in the studio, and for certain commissions, they are all in use simultaneously. So, in honor of this upcoming workshop, I have recorded a five-ish minute video demo-ing how to wrap a brick in bookcloth. Nota Bene: Bookcloth for this purpose is NOT included in your kit, and brick-wrapping is optional. Think of it as a “weighty topper” on the workshop cake. Students will receive the link to this brick preview video early next week.
If you’ve been waffling on the workshop fence: There’s still time for me to assemble & ship your kit. As always, I’d like to emphasize that even if you are a boxmaking novice, you will be able to work comfortably to complete your first box during the workshop. Our pace is calm, and there’s ample time to ask questions as we go. I will live record all workshop sessions, and these will be available to you later the same afternoon to watch and rewatch at your leisure!
Introduction to Drop-spine Boxmaking
Zooming Mayward, Bari