making hand-made books

[jnantz]

not sure if this is the right place to ask this or not, if it is wrong, i hope the mods can put it where it belongs ...

blurb and other sites make it easy to make books in mass quantities
to sell, does anyone else make them by hand still ?

does anyone else here make hand stitched books
or handmade folios to present things ?

i have been making them on and off for a while ..
what kind of things are you making ?

i've done closed spine (signature) books, japanese bound ( stab ) books
as well as things that allow images to be loose ...

[Vaughn]

I have not yet, but making small books (of platinum prints from 2 1/4 negs) has been on my mind for a long while.

Not a problem with you (as your images usually come with words), but a gallery owner who specializes in hand-made books told us that collectors, etc, do not consider a hand-made book a "book" unless it contains some written material (does not have to be much.) Otherwise, I guess, it is a photo album.

Vaughn

[QT Luong]

Interesting custom portfolios here: http://www.mullenbergdesigns.com/

[paulr]

Sure people do. I've been working on--and putting off--such a project for a long time. incredible amount of work. There are many resources on how to learn bookbinding, but beware that it's a craft unto itself. There are people practicing bookbinding with the seriousness that you apply to photography. After looking at Keith A. Smith's books on the subject, I ditched the idea and decided to hire someone. The price per book was in the neighborhood of $200 several years ago. Other people quoted me more.

[r.e.]

does anyone else make them by hand still?

The art is alive and well. The people who do it even have conventions. Here in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, there's a woman, originally from the US, who is quite active: http://www.tarabryan.com/books.html You may find some of the references on that page of her web site useful for follow-up.

It isn't just binding. There are still people, as you will see from the above link, who are doing hand set type. I have a friend, in his early 20s, who is adept at it and took a summer course not so long ago at one of the universities in Texas on the latest thing - making a mould of hand set type that can be stored and used in the future. I'll avoid the debate on whether this is cheating :)

One can't get too far into this without running into the whole question of book design and typography. In case you aren't familiar with him, there's a poet named Robert Bringhurst whose book, The Elements of Typographic Style, is widely considered the classic, must-have book in the field. It's been translated into ten languages. He recently published a new book on design, and of course there are his books of poetry. He is a perceptive and elegant writer.

[Drew Wiley]

Check with Ctein. He's been making extremely limited edition books for some time,
mostly inkjet prints with accompanying text. The binding itself is done by a high-quality
outfit in SF. Think he still sells them from his website. Somteimes he tips in a single
small dye transfer print with the collection.

[PViapiano]

I've made some closed spine signature books, and this past week was designing a hand-made photo book of inkjet-printed portraits from my daughter's first six years. I love bookbinding but it does take a lot of time and planning (I'm an amateur...)

Have you ever seen a 21st Editions book? I'm wondering how they bind pt/pd prints into a book?

[jnantz]

paul,

could they be drymounted on the page ?

when i tip images into a book it is always
with a bead of wheat / rice paste.

i have never incorporated many words into the books i've made
it always seemed a difficult task to find a way to get the worded-page
onto the book page, but the more i think about it, maybe i can affix the words
the same way as the images...

[Vaughn]

Words: that was my thought, too -- to actually print the words in platinum just like the images themselves. I lean towards printing both the words and images onto paper, then binding the paper to make the book -- rather than tipping in the prints.

But this is all talk -- I am afraid it is one of those "One of these days I'll..." things.

[PViapiano]

J...

I don't think they are drymounted at all, nor tipped in.

Tipping in can be a nice way to do it, however if the image support is thick, it can wreak havoc with the binding. Just try tipping in a bunch of photos in a Moleskin notebook and you'll quickly see that the binding will stretch and eventually weaken and break.

You can print signatures in platinum but not double-sided, but if you designed the book properly you could work out printing inkjet text on pages that don't have images.

Or, actually, maybe you could print one side of sigs in pt, let it dry and do the other side. Hmmm...would the developed and dried side get ruined if it's subjected to another round of dev and clearing...interesting question.

I know that pt prints can be gummed over, so they would survive a round in that particular process. Hmmm...y'all got me thinking now...

[Vaughn]

Some of the papers I have used for platinum have very different sides -- so choice of papers would be important if trying to print both sides. I have plenty of reject prints to try double sided printing with! I was thinking of printing on over-size paper then trimming to center the image...I'd have to rethink that if trying to get an image on both sides.

[jnantz]

vaughn --- i had at one point thought about printing text onto mylar and contact printing
that sheet onto photo paper, but i soon realized it would be white text on a black page
so i would have to make a second contact ... it seemed like a lot of work! so
i stuck to just images ...
i have used photo paper as signatures / book pages, but it always made me worry that
the emulsion and pages would tear from being bent / turned / creased often ..
not to mention single weight paper worked great for pages, and now
there isn't much, if any, single weight paper being made anymore ...

paul --- i know what you mean about a "fanned" pages.
i have found that if the bound-edge of the page is folded
so each sewn pages is double-thick there is less of a problem with fanning ...

[Vaughn]

That is why such processes as platinum are nice -- one prints on a good quality watercolor paper, with no emulsion issues. There use to be some very paper-like photopapers (RCArt by Luminos, for example) that are no more.

For words, one could print inkjet onto transparent media, reversing the tonality (black page, white letters) -- but one might have to stock up on black ink! And I think copy shops might be able to take a regular paper copy, and copy it reversed onto a transparent medium.

[jnantz]

paper ( or velum/ acetate ) negatives from the copyshop ...
just enough imperfection to make things interesting!

i wonder if you could print on both sides of a salt print, or a cyanotype ?

thanks vaughn :)

- john