#hand binding books

[starchaserdreams]

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

MY FRIEND HAND BOUND TEMPTATION EYES AND GAVE IT TO ME AS A GIFT. IT'S GORGEOUS. LOOK AT THIS. I'M IN LOVE. IT'S PERFECT. BOOK BINDERS ARE MAGIC. I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS REAL, I HAVE A COPY OF IT!!!!!

THANK YOU @selin1005 YOU TALENTED GENIUS!!!!!

Temptation Eyes

[tk-duveraun]

This is probably retreading crow Yuan ground, but crow spirit Shen Yuan to transmigrated into a crow!! When SJ didn't die as expected. The system gives him a little boost to get started on cultivation as well as "mini games" that increase his cultivation and but the time LBH comes out of the abyss, SY has a golden core and can communicate with lbh though he's a long way from a human transformation.

But this point in his life, LBH knows to be wary of everything, but also that crows are intelligent and loyal so he gives SY a chance and once he discovers they can communicate easily, allows the bird to hang around.

It's good to have a spy - and not even a demonic one or one first loyal to MBJ (looking at you, shishu). Crow Yuan is very supportive of LBH's schemes and plans, but extremely critical of LBH's women. It should take more than a "you deserve better than her" and a few squawks to dissuade LBH from his conquests, but something is sharp and bright and he DOES deserve better

When LBH has a breakdown over QWY forcing herself on him by coercion, SY goes into overdrive. He'd thought that scene was sus but now he's on the war path.

He goes and retrieves a ton of magical items and precious manuscripts to help LBH handle xinmo so he's never forced again. SY keeps waiting to feel bad as some woman dies bc LBH refuses to save her with his dick, but that feeling never comes. He feels a little upset, but mostly at airplane for designing the world that way

LBH still knows sy is upset and eventually research reveals there was a non heavenly pillar cure AND the woman's village should have known it. He goes back and strongarms them into doing regular sex pollen education.

Then it happens again

And again.

SY is starting to get confused about LBH's conquest against wife plots. Shouldn't he be, you know, conquering the land?? Not that SY is complaining. LBH never seemed to enjoy his power, he just never wanted to be trampled on again. It was like that study about how money does buy happiness, but only to a certain point. Maybe power was the same?

After sy learns SQH is airplane, he whole -heartedly encourages LBH to force more and more demonic sovereignty on the North just to give airplane more work. Especially since SY, with his front row seat on LBH's shoulder, has seen tons of demonic courting live and knows MBJ wants a piece of that.

Meanwhile, SY's cultivation improves by leaps and bounds with the help of LBH's blood and various gifts from the protagonist.

SY really wants to hate all of the silver bangles and other decorations he's gifted, but his brain is still a crow's brain at the end of the day so he suffers it with dignity.

At one point he realizes maybe he should stop cultivating. After all, if he's a human, the dynamic will change. LBH might see him rejecting marriage offers as a threat rather than good advice. LBH might think sy wants more power and riches for himself rather than for LBH

[sosnastudios]

I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State is an anthology of poems collected by Rena Priest inspired by the cycles, spirit, and wisdom of salmon. The book is bound bradel-style in salmon parchment drummed over mirrored boards, depicting salmon as they transform on their journey from saltwater sea to freshwater waterfall. The edges are graphite, with the top edge gauffered in the style of salmon scales.

Salmon parchment made and naturally dyed by the binder. Board. Original text block. Hook Pottery endsheets. Reflective mylar film. Graphite edges. Embroidery thread.

Part of the Guild of Bookworkers Traveling Exhibition: Night Circus, opening in Boston, MA in October, 2024.

[towns-end-bindery]

Hozier Lyric Book

Worked on this all day on Friday (12/27/24). Trimmed the edges, sacrificed some blood to the bookbinding gods, sewed endbands, and printed the end papers and cover.

So far it’s my most successful book trimmed using only a chisel. It’s also my second time ever sewing headbands, so they’re still pretty messy I think. The typeset is the most complex I’ve ever created. Going through it, I feel I could have made some better choices. But all in all, it still might be the best book I’ve made so far.

Original typeset by me. Includes his newest song Hymn to Virgil.

[egasbabindery]

My first tête-bêche binding, my first octavo, and my first time working with leather. This is a combination of two Star Wars fics I've adored for years, and which I nearly always read as a pair, so this combo seemed really natural. The stories are 'Wonderterror' by Peradi and 'Luke Skywalker. 19. Full Human.' by Samvelg. They both explore the premise of the Skywalkers as Eldritch creatures as a result of Anakin's (lack of) parentage, and they are amazing. I made an effort to reach out to both these authors for permission but received no response; if either of them request that this post be taken down, I will of course do so. But as this is a personal book for my own collection that will not be sold or distributed, I felt that showing it off was fair.

Printed on legal paper, font is Uni Neue(body text), Gearus (titles, headers, cover text), and Typographer Caps (drop caps). Images are composited from standard star wars and kraken/cthulhu conography, which is duplicated on the covers (with nearly invisible black squiddies underlying the flashy star wars logos, love how subtle they came out). Typeset in Affinity. Covers in black fairly low grade cow leather with HTV, endpapers printed from an image found in rawpixel's public domain archive, and headbands sewn on. Specifically made the bookmark ribbon long enough to run through the book twice, to potentially mark places in both fics at once.

[zerosconsort]

Visual representation of what 7 months of continuous bookbinding looks like.

This is the same exact book. I updated the margin and text size to match what I do now, and trimmed some of the hanging " that I missed the first time, but the page count is about the same.

The comparison side shots alone for this bind is crazy. The paper is one thing - but the new tools and the headbands, the way the book lays, how the corners are cut and the vinyl application? GRL

Keep working.

[etherati]

My first REALLY tiny book, a bind of Four of Swords. A sextodecimo! This lil guy is about 3" x 2 1/4" and is bound with actual cards from the miniature edition RWS deck. Because of the fun tarot imagery I'd been wanting to bind this one, but it's so short, just about 5000 words, so it had to go really little :3

Printed on pop-tone white from French, spine and sword detail done with HTV. I printed the main narrative in black and the flashbacks in blue, for visual separation, and the endpapers are of artwork done for this fic by the incredible @sandwichartistdatzu !!

[goatsandgangsters]

Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, from A Power Unbound by Freya Marske @fahye

Alan looked at his hand engulfed in Jack’s. He said, coming to the realisation along the way, like a sentence that only revealed itself word by word as he wrote it down: “You’re still the kind of arse who’ll pick two fights before breakfast, but you’ve been desperate for someone else to look after, haven’t you?”

[heartnosekid]

🧡 for my best friend, @daytimewhisper. 💚

💛-🧡-💚 | 💛-🧡-💚 | 💛-🧡-💚 | 💛-🧡-💚 | 💛-🧡-💚

[magnoliazul]

After a few requests, I've created my very own planner!

I could not believe when a few people asked me to design and bind my very own planner, but I'm so so glad I decided to do it. It was a very long process, at times even painful, but here they are - colourful planners for colourful souls!

Regarding the design process, I decided to include a yearly overview, a monthly calendar, as well as weekly spreads and pages for extra notes (similarly to my very first commission that you can check here). These are all the things I personally need in a planner, so I thought I'd start there. But what about you? What do you need in a planner?

I'll be participating in a crafts market pretty soon! Hopefully people will be excited about these! 📖

Please consider giving me a follow for support! 🙆🏻‍♀️ - insta: magnoliazul.folio

[karis-the-fangirl]

Another Christmas gift book! This one was a watercolor sketchbook for my sister—I’d already decided on the Coptic binding and made the covers when I decided it needed a ribbon, and rather than glue it on somewhere I added a little French link stitching. I’ve very pleased with the look of it!

I stitched it together Christmas Eve, which is why these are hasty Christmas Day pictures 😅

[pink-apocalypse]

Made a scrapbook from scratch last month?? And then I made some Halloween pages :3

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Friday! 

Today we’re taking a deep dive into Songs for Gaia, a slim edition of poetry by Gary Snyder (b. 1930). This understated, beautifully-crafted letterpress volume was printed in 1979 for Kah Tai Alliance at Copper Canyon in Port Townsend, WA, a fine press dedicated solely to poetry since its founding in 1972, and was handbound by poet and bookbinder Samuel Green. It features woodblock illustrations by poet and printmaker Michael Corr (b. 1940), who learned his craft while living in Kyoto from block printer and illustrator Takeji Asano (1900-1999). Asano was a notable figure in Japan’s Sōsaku-hanga woodblock printing movement. The book is quarter bound in cloth with a cover marbled in a finely executed combed feather pattern, a touch that lends a hint of psychedelia to its otherwise traditional aesthetics. It was released in a limited edition of 300 copies.   

Snyder, who is popularly known for his time amongst and spiritualist influence on the Beat poets and the counterculture of their generation (along with Kerouac’s portrayal of him as Japhy Ryder in the 1958 novel The Dharma Bums) spent 13 years in Japan (1956-1968) studying Zen Buddhism, forestry, and ecology. A scholar of Asian languages versed in cultural anthropology, he also studied calligraphy with accomplished calligrapher and seal carver Charles Leong during his time at Reed College. Snyder’s calligraphic signature graces the half-title page of this edition.  

This modest yet potent edition of Songs for Gaia is a fitting form for the work of a poet whom writer Bob Steuding once characterized as cultivating an “accessible” style and “a new kind of poetry that is direct, concrete, non-Romantic and ecological.” As Snyder wrote of his own work in A Controversy of Poets, “I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.”  

View more Fine Press Friday posts

View more woodblock illustration posts

View more marbling posts (shout out to Alice, our resident marbling expert!)

-Ana, Special Collections Graduate Fieldworker

[sosnastudios]

Atlantic Salmon Population Data in New England Rivers

The book is a salmon parchment-bound collection of data tables regarding salmon populations and management in New England rivers. Sewn onto the cover with fishing line are pieces of salmon parchment dyed in onion skins and stamped with the names of the data tables used. The edges are decorated in graphite, which adds to the shiny fishiness of the design. The endsheets are handmade paper with bits of plant material, which I thought evoked the feeling of standing in a river.

All of the salmon parchment used was made by me, the binder, out of skins procured from a local sushi shop.

[towns-end-bindery]

Hozier Discography Typeset Samples

This is one of the most elaborate typesets I've ever made. I'm so excited to put it together. It's gonna be a letter quarto sized book. It's going to be a gift for my husband (hopefully ready by Christmas).

If anyone has any questions about the choices I made for this typeset, feel free to ask!

The title page art was illustrated by Chu Thang (Instagram: @chu.tienthang).

UPDATE: it’s been made into a book!

[vellichorbindery]

Coquette, pink version of HP for a Christmas gift commission 🎀

These took 12 years off my life and I procrastinated on them like crazy, but I’m very proud of the final result.

A labor of love and sleepless nights and so much weeding my hand cramped.