#French bookbindings

[diana-andraste]

Cover designs for Hans Holbein the Younger's Alphabet of Death, bound in a most unusual manner in 1895 by Paul-Romain Raparlier (not for the squeamish).

[zhalfirin]

A princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs

Full cloth binding, backed with french groove and paper onlays, coloured edge and french double core endands.

The typeset was part of Renegade's Tiny Books Bang event last year, but it took me forever to get enough distance to come up with my own cover instead of copying the wonderful bind that was exchanged in the event.

This wonderful typeset was provided by @tinwhiskerpress

Materials used:

case covers - grey board 2,4 spine stiffener - cardboard covering materials - commercial bookcloth (Duo brick, brown) paper onlays: bugra bütten (yellow, green), marbled paper (by Renato Crepaldi)

inner book bookblock paper - Schleipen fly 05 (115gsm) endpapers - marbled paper by @renato-crepaldi endbands - buttonhole silk (Gütermann), leather core (1 and 2mm) edge colouring - oak gall ink and interference chameleon acrylic ink (Nebula copper)

Size: ~A6

See WIP pictures here and some detail pictures here

[talulamerriwether]

some of the other books I've bound so far

[zhalfirin-binds]

French double core endband as described in Greenfield and Hille's 'Headbands: How to work them'

I'm not entirely sure I did them right. The endband I was introduced to as French double core a few years back had 2 cores, but somehow I ended up with 3. Despite leaving some room for improvement, I kind of like how it came out though and for the first (the other one is still waiting to be done) I'm happy. It worked way better than anticipated.

The start was a bit fiddly, but after a few tie downs it got better.

I used a 2 mm and a 1 mm leather string for cores and a 'working thread' (which is not what the thread being wrapped around the cores is called in the book, but a secret different thread that becomes the bead). Next time I go for a smoother thread though. The 2mm is a bit coarse and the silk catches on it. I guess that's why they usually use bâtonnets made from paper. They just don't have any rough parts for the thread to catch on.

Only the backside looks a bit like a mess, but then, no one is going to see that when I'm done.

[getfuckedblr]

she’s here! one of the absolute best severitus fics - namesake necklace by @wiceba !!! i’ve printed this out like three different times and ended up either messing up the end papers, or the cover design (cheap htv is generally awesome until it melts bc it’s cheap and my iron is too hot). but yeah i’m calling this done!

none of my binds are perfect bc i can’t seem to cut in a straight line (?) which is actually like a lot harder than it should be??? but again this is for me to have my favorite fics on my bookshelf, not to sell so i’m satisfied!

[namorssideburns]

My latest bookbinding project has been this french-link stitch journal, the first I've done. The cover is a very nice pattern of paper I picked up at my local art supply shop. It's a bit wonky but I think it turned out pretty good!

[sits-bound]

First time using a French link stitch to sew the signatures together. I really like how secure it makes it all feel, especially since I didn't use tapes.

I used Sealemon's tutorial:

I didn't think to do this until after I'd punched the holes, otherwise I would have spaced them out more.

Hopefully I can get this glued together tonight, but as you can sort of see on my table, I'm working on a (garment) sewing project right now that's pretty thorny, so I may not get to it. It's okay. I'm happy as long as I'm making something.

[rossignoldelaboue]

Reliure

Du fil et une aiguille

Pour tisser une histoire

Qui doucement s’habille

D’une note d’espoir.

Il traverse les pages

Les lie habilement

Par un geste sans âge

Et voilà un roman !

[elijah-loyal]

my dudes, i am so happy rn i just started working on repairs for my 1880's "Flora Orientalis" (language mixed in French, German, and Latin) and ohmygod it's beautiful

Like, I get to help fix this!! I get to help this book!!

Currently, it's in 4 pieces:

solid textblock (all one piece thank GOD)

back cover, severed

front cover, severed

half of the spine (the previous owner decided to put PACKING TAPE over the ENTIRE spine to hold it together. Needless to say, that did Not work)

My friend let me take some nice leather that I'll see if I can work with, since it's very thick and so unfortunately strong that neither of my boxcutters or my X-Acto blade can bevel the edges.

[magnoliazul]

This was my first experience with sewn board binding.

It's been my favourite ever since i first learned about it, but it took me a while to figure it out - and i'm so glad i did! i absolutely love how it opens flat without loosing its shape, and how you can mix and match covers and spines.

This has been on my shelf for over a month now because I've been too scared of using it but the time has finally come!

[swampfoxe]

Working on a Dostoevsky fanfic compilation for a friend. Maybe I should've used tapes because it got a bit beastly, but I forgot. And this is the neatest, most uniform stitching I've ever done so I'm not gonna undo it. I don't even wanna start gluing things. I just wanna look at it. PLUS it's all one piece of thread that I measured perfectly. This may never happen again.

[killcow]

[talulamerriwether]

three hand bound sketchbooks, with pockets at the front and back. each has a different weight of paper, so in order for the spines to match, each has signatures with a different number of pages

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP Der Traum aller Träume; Utopien von Platon bis Morris (The dream of all dreams; Utopian dreams from Plato to Morris

Part I survey or ‘all things wrong (and the few things right) with this book’

Now this one I started over two years ago and didn’t finish because of time and, to be honest, because the quality of the leather and overall sorry execution of the french binding had made me too sad to keep looking at it. It started out nice. The colour is wonderful, sadly the leather is a coated split leather (which was not clear from the description, I didn’t ask either and thus made a hasty decision because it was cheap). To work with it it was soaked with paste glue which caused the coating to detach and rub off in different areas. Most of the very prominent on the cover. I’m still thinking about how I could cover those up and at the moment I’m considering to hot stamp them. I considered dying the area, but I’m not sure I’ll like the look any better than what I have at the moment. The book as some other issues. For example was my hinge gap too small and now the cover doesn’t open to a 180° angle to the inner book but stands up. Also, when you look at it from the outside the covers are clearly not level with the spine. The pinched and tense look of the spine area in the inner book is quite normal for a French binding (it’s also the reason why it is not my favourite binding style), what is not normal, is how the signatures look kind of crumpled though. I was not careful enough when wacking it with a hammer for backing so this is what I got in return.

However the corners turned out fine, I guess mostly because I used way less paste glue there. Since the start of this bind was years ago I naturally forgot most of what I had planned. Apparently I was going for hidden/ covered leather corners. The telltale detail for those is how the edges of the leather come together on the outside of the case. A paper or other material will cover it up so only the very tip is peeking out. A larger part than usual will be visible on the inside so it makes sense to put the ‘nice’ side of the leather there. Another small detail, is the cardboard covering the standing edges of the case, which tells me I had prepared for gilding them too. What turned out really nice too is levelling the covers. Where the leather is applied there is a small step that can be made leve with the cover by adding another piece of card board the thickness of the leather. In this binding I managed to get that completly even, no ridge to find.

So this is where I am now with this book. I had some cover decoration for gold tooling prepared, but it includes tools I don’t have access to anymore. So I’ll see if I can adapt with or come up with something else.

[alightinthelantern]

I think if I ever become a published poet I'll hire a skilled bookbinder to make exquisitely beautiful hardcover bindings of my books in limited runs and pay for the work out of my own pocket, then sell the books for a premium to hopefully recoup my losses. I think making the books myself is beyond me, or at least making them to meet my high aesthetic standards...

[namorssideburns]

Wip