#Elizabeth Soutar Bookbinding Competition

[ashmouthbooks]

EARTH IS MISSING! / EVERYONE'S WORLD IS ENDING ALL THE TIME

this spring I entered the Elizabeth Soutar Bookbinding Competition held by the National Library of Scotland. The theme this year was climate change. I didn't win any of the categories (I certainly didn't think I'd win any of the Craft categories, but I thought I had a decent shot at the Creative categories) but I am very happy with how my binding came out anyway!

under the cut is the details of the binding and the process that went into it, plus a full list of the texts included.

this is a modified 3 piece bradel binding - a 3 piece bradel is usually made with leather spine with the spine attached to the textblock and the front and back covers added on after. there's another variety of a 3 piece bradel case where the spine and boards are assembled with a thin piece of paper to later be covered with a bookcloth. I wanted to use some leftover misprint cardstock I had (the same stuff I'd previously used to make paperbacks) and I wanted to print the titles directly onto the covers and spine (specifically I wanted to overprint the titles to imitate the existing misprint), and in order to fit it through my printer I had to have it in three pieces. so I assembled a bradel case as if it were to be covered with a cloth, only the cardstock I was using to assemble the case would also be the cover material.

everything I used to make this book was recycled or reused, with the exception of the greybeards which were new (I didn't have any rescued book boards from secondhand books at the time). the text paper is recycled eco-craft paper, the endbands are re-used macramé cords wrapped in green wrapping paper that came from a gift bag, and as mentioned, the cover material comes from a misprinted running sheet.

a few process photos of getting the case together:

in terms of content, I took care that not only should the binding fit the theme of climate change - by using recycled and reused materials - but the text inside should also fit the theme. there were a lot of considerations there because I could easily have just bought a copy of something like Greta Thunberg's speeches and rebound them, but I wanted the texts to be something that made sense to me. so I went and looked at the SFF magazines I read for climate fiction and essays, I looked for academic papers, and I looked on Gutenberg for older pulp fiction relating to climate change. once I had a selection of texts I pared them down to two categories, fiction and non-fiction, and decided the most fun way to bind them would be as a tête-bêche with fiction on one side and non-fiction on the other, and this then informed how the binding would physically turn out - the modified 3 piece bradel.

here is the full table of contents for each side of the book:

EVERYONE'S WORLD IS ENDING ALL THE TIME and other writings

A Climate of Competition: Climate Change as Political Economy in Speculative Fiction, 1889–1915 by Steve Asselin Published in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 45, No. 3, SF and the Climate Crisis (November 2018), pp. 440-453

A Century of Science Fiction That Changed How We Think About the Environment by Sherryl Vint Published in the MIT Press Reader, 20th July 2021

The climate is changing. Science fiction is too. by Eliza Levinson Published in The Story, 30th June 2022

’Not to escape the world but to join it’: responding to climate change with imagination not fantasy by Andrew Davison Published in Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 375, No. 2095, Theme issue: Material demand reduction (13 June 2017), pp. 1-13

Science in Fiction: A Brief Look at Communicating Climate Change through the Novel by Eline D. Tabak Published in RCC Perspectives, No. 4, COMMUNICATING THE CLIMATE: From Knowing Change to Changing Knowledge (2019), pp. 97-104

Everyone’s World Is Ending All the Time: notes on becoming a climate resilience planner at the edge of the anthropocene by Arkady Martine Published in Uncanny Magazine issue 28, May 7, 2019

EARTH IS MISSING! and other stories

Earth Is Missing! by Carl Selwyn in Planet Stories (1947)

Climate—Disordered by Carter Sprague in Startling Stories (1948)

Climate—Incorporated by Wesley Long in Thrilling Wonder Stories (1948)

A Being Together Amongst Strangers by Arkady Martine in Uncanny Magazine (2020)

You’re Not The Only One by Octavia Cade in Clarkesworld Magazine (2022)

Why We Bury Our Dead At Sea by Tehnuka in Reckoning Magazine (2023)

[iashe-uk]

Section: "Did you know that..."

 BOOKBINDING  SKILLS CELEBRATED AT NATIONAL LIBRARY

The  centuries-old craft of bookbinding has been celebrated at the National  Library of Scotland in a competition that has attracted entries from across  Europe.

The Elizabeth Soutar bookbinding competition — now  in its 24th year — demonstrates that a wealth of talent continues to exist in  the skilled art of hand binding and book design.

 See more at: http://www.nls.uk/news/press/2017/02/bookbinding-award-winners