Bookbinding 1!

Oh, man, I had the best time up at the SF Center for the Book over the weekend! I took Bookbinding 1, which consisted of building two flat-back hardbound books under the guidance of Rhiannon Alpers, who has both her BA and her MA in book arts. How cool is that?

I took a bunch of photos of the process, so here they are for your viewing pleasure!

The first signature all done, waiting for the next one to be stitched on

The spine of one of the textblocks, ready to be glued

The map and materials for one of the covers

Preparing to glue the paper onto the cloth-and-paper cover

The skewers make the gutters look right.

My makeshift book press, to hold the books while they dry

I had a lot of fun, and am going to take Bookbinding 2 at the end of the month. Rawk!

It’s a lot of fun learning how to do this — not only does this enable me to build my own books, soon I’ll know enough to start repairing books as well!