Full Tilt

As you know I am passionate about books. They line my bookshelves, stand in organized stacks under the table in the living room and, as much as I attempt to be disciplined, the books continue to multiply. It isn’t just reading the books that interests me, it is the book as a beautifully designed object of art with illustrations, fine paper, design and text in elegant fonts. It made sense that at some point I would learn the fine art of bookbinding.

Susan Mills is an artist and a bookbinder. Over a decade ago I attended a bookbinding course she taught at Cooper Union. Each week, for thirteen weeks, we produced a book. In the first session, we made a small pamphlet, and learned the technique of folding paper with a bone folder. Stitching a binding is done with an awl to punch the holes and often a round needle, so in a few weeks we added more tools to our box of supplies. Working with Japanese paper requires one kind of paste and working with linen paper requires PVA. By the end of the course we had created a traditional book with a linen cover, headbands at the top and bottom of the spine and beautiful endpapers.

Over the last few years Susan has taught weekend workshops that she calls, appropriately, “Full Tilt.” In each session, we focus intensely on one project and try to finish it during the few hours allotted for the course. On Saturday, I attended a session to learn the Coptic link stitch binding which is an historical binding named for the chains of sewing stitches linking across the spine. Once you have mastered the Coptic stitch you can leave the back of the binding exposed. On Saturday, we made two books. One was bound into a case binding and the other into a binding that only required folding the cover

The Full Tilt courses are capped at ten people and we all sit quietly at our tables. There isn’t time for conversation and the silence, when we are working, has a feel of meditation. All you are thinking about, as you progress, is making certain the dimension of your fold is correct and the needle is facing in the right direction as you begin the stitching and sewing the binding together.

It is refreshing to realize that there is a return to crafts and making things. A few weeks ago, Michael Bierut, a New York designer and partner at Pentagram, a design firm that was founded in London in the 1960’s and grew out of the arts and crafts movement, reviewed a book entitled Craeft, An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alexander Langlands (W.W. Norton & Company, 2018) in the New York Times Book Review. Michael points out that the “making” industry, according to the Association for Creative Industries was worth $44 billion last year. As so much of our world is virtual, people are returning to tactile experiences.

Writes Bierut, “According to Langlands, ‘craft is nearly untranslatable, a form of knowledge, not just a knowledge of making but a knowledge of being.’ In combines in some ineffable way skill, intelligence and virtue.”

The vocabulary of craft is often lost and the tools can be found in many places. My box of bookbinding supplies includes clothespins (remember those), small devices used by dentists, bone folders made of difference materials, a hammer and several rulers. There are, of course, pencils, erasers and X-acto knives. The history of bookbinding is fascinating.

When one becomes engaged in a craft there is the question of where to stop? Now I would like to learn about letterpresses and printing making. This could be followed by papermaking and how to bind with leather. Then there is the question of time and space? Ideally the bookbinder requires a guillotine to cut paper, flat spaces to work in large format and shelves to organize and store supplies.

When I pick up the two small books I created on Saturday, I notice the mistakes I have made, and think about the papers I would like to use in the next books I create.
That’s all I’m thinking about and it fills me with pure pleasure.