Book Studio

For your one-stop shop of traditional bookbinding and book repair instructions, go to the Indiana University Libraries website, Repair and Enclosure Treatments Manual. It has a wide variety of techniques, clearly illustrated and explained.

For an overview of some pretty amazing bookbinding work, check out this post at Bibliodyssey.

Bookbinding Exhibition Australia (BEA) is planning its next exhibition, Under the Cover, to be held at the Stanton Library in North Sydney from November 2006 to the end of January 2007.

They invite bookbinders and others who make books to take a broad view of the title and create a binding that represents what they see under the cover — be it under the quilt cover, the book cover, or even the cover of darkness. Inspiration might be found in quilting material and methods, or this aspect can be disregarded all together. However participants choose to interpret Under the Cover, BEA anticipate this will be an exciting exhibition of diverse bookbinding methods and styles. They hope to attract a broad group of participants for this exhibition.

The Stanton Library is organising an exhibition of heritage Australian quilts, from Annette Gero’s collection, to be held at the same time as Under the Cover. Even though the exhibitions will be in separate spaces, there are similarities and differences between the two and they have chosen the exhibition title with that in mind.

More information is available on the BEA website http://bookbindingexhibitions.com.au

For anyone interested in artist’s books, whether making them or administering them, I highly recommend The Bonefolder, an e-journal for the bookbinder and publisher, published by Peter Verheyen and a wonderful team of editors and reviewers. There’s always a great mix of practical instructions, reviews and debate about how books should be classified and viewed. To this date there are four issues; vol 1.2 has a practical overview of the tunnel-book structure and vol 2.1 does the same with flag books, both of which are interesting ways to play with single-page prints in a book form.
Note to ANU School of Art Students: the journal is readily accessible online, but if you want copies of any of the articles, the Book Studio keeps a hard copy printout of the journal in the BS office.