Category: JOURNAL

A technical journal of my college activities during my MA year at Camberwell College of Art, whilst studying Book Conservation.

Posted on

Bologna Children’s Book Fair

Well, it’s a little late, I know, but I wanted to do a small post on the Bolognia Children’s Book Fair, as it only comes round once a year, and it’s not the norm for me!

The fair, perhaps obviously, is a children’s book fair, and as far as I am aware, the only book fair specific for children in the world. It is a delight to go to, possibly more so than the London and Frankfurt book fairs, as given the target audience, the books are filled with colour and illustrations as far as the eye can see. I was attending the fair with my aunt’s publishing house, Picthall & Gunzi, and am not ashamed to be biased in claiming that their books were by far the nicest there!!

Of course the location is also a bonus point for the fair – we enjoyed several delicious meals in local area, and a fantastic drink in the square. The square itself is surrounded on all four sides by some fantastic architecture, which i have included some pictures of here. Quite a beautiful place to visit if you have the chance.

A great trip, and one I thoroughly enjoyed! Especially the three churches which were about 2 minutes away from one another and quite staggering! (see below…)

  • The Team!
  • Down one of the walkways - looking similar to London Book Fair!
  • The stand – nice and busy!
  • Outside the fair, in the gorgeous sun
  • Beautiful narrow streets
  • The national art gallery, which was on one side of the square, I think it used to be a university many years back!
  • Another side of the square
  • A student protest! – the same the world over!
  • These steps are in the art gallery, and were initially made like this so horses could go up them!
  • Church no1 – huge.
  • Church no2 – even bigger!
  • Church no3 – IMMENSE!!!
Posted on

Tools of a bookbinder (a student at least!)

Well it seems that this year is already one for finishing off projects that have been sitting around for several years, the first being the finishing of my quilt squares, which I am very relieved about! And now I have managed to finished my tool kit, which has been sitting around unfinished for two years. I made it too long initially and have been meaning to reduce it in size for a long time. So here it is finished – finally!

As you can see the top folds over and it rolls into a portable tool kit, which has been very useful. My tool kit contains a few scalpels, a cobblers knife, two bonefolders, dentist tools, a japanese brush, a japanese awl, a water pen, nail clippers, scissors, tweezers, a ruler, an eraser and a couple of very nice wooden muji pencils.

This is my Singer sewing machine, which along with my tool kit is a favourite possession of mine. My father bought it for me from a charity shop, and amazingly it had all the original instructions, extra feet, extension plate and all sorts still with it. With some good instructions from my father and his help in installing my new motor for it, I have been making good use of it recently.

Posted on

Mondays at MoDA

Over the past four weeks, and for the next two, four of us gals from Camberwell have been spending the day at the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (MoDA), where we’ve been making archival boxes for their library. The reason for this being that MoDA, and the part of Middlesex University to which it is connected, is moving (quite frankly this seems like an excellent idea to me, as its current location in Cockfosters, seems like the other side of the world after two hours on the tube!!).

Anyway, as any good trainee book conservator will know, books must be protected in a move, especially those which may be fragile in any way – this could be the cover, spine, boards, text block – anything really. So we’ve been making phase boxes for the badly damaged books and melinex wrappers for reasonable conditioned books with their dust jackets in tact. I’m still not that keen on these glued phase boxes, there seems too much margin for error, but I’m getting better at them.

The museum has a large collection of books on domesticity including cookery books, interior design, house keeping etc, many of which date back to the early 20th century, and some possibly earlier still. An excellent collection and great museum, well worth a visit if you’re in the area.

Here are a couple of pictures of the studio – I’m always a fan of seeing studio pictures.

Posted on

Dickin’ around at the V&A

Well last Friday our class spent a really interesting afternoon at the V&A seeing the conservation being done on the Dickens manuscripts for David Copperfield – these were the actual pages that Dickens wrote – amazing!

Here you can seen some of the pages as I imagine they would have looked like on Dickens’ desk – all piled up and scribbled on! It’s unlikely these will be seen again in these piles as they are being re-bound in manuscript volumes for safe keeping at the National Art Library at the V&A.

The V&A are working through all the Dickens manuscripts they own and rebinding them, as the way they were previously bound (tipped on at three edges) was starting to pull at the pages. In their new housing the pages will be tipped on one edge and held down on the opposite side with a paper tag similar to what you would find in a photo album (as in the image above). This means the pages will be able to move around if they need to.

The covers of the manuscripts are in a replica marble paper that matches the original paper that covered the first bindings of these manuscripts that happened around Dickens’ time. These original bindings were taken apart in the 60’s by the V&A and rebound – this is what is now being updated.

Posted on

The UCL Special Collection

Over the last couple of weeks we have spent a couple of afternoon’s with the exceedingly nice and knowledgeable Mr. Fred Bearman, who is the Preservation Librarian at the UCL Special Collection, and a Bookbinding Historian.

UCL LIBRARY

They have been wonderful afternoons, looking at some very early bindings dating back to the 15th century when printed books first came into existence, known as Incunabula, meaning ‘cradle’ or ‘swaddling’ in latin. Prior to this books were all manuscript and hand written, often by monks and clerical men.

There were also some other interesting ones, including a chemise binding – books with an extra cover on them which would wrap all around the book like a cloth, these popular prior to the development of  Protestantism and after the latter these books were often cut down as they represented extreme Catholicism in some areas and were frowned upon.

Two very interesting afternoons – and very educational!! My brain is struggling to keep all the information locked in!!

Posted on

My first week of college

Sorry I have not been around recently, Kelly from May Day Studio, kindly nudged me for an update on starting at college, and as I have now completed my first week, it seemed like a good moment to let you know what has been happening!

This is my college, Camberwell College of Arts, where I am studying Book Conservation. The building itself used to be a boy’s grammar school, but it’s now all part of the London Arts College.

The first week included a lot of introductions to what lies ahead. We also launched straight into the basics of the chemistry we will need, including the structure of an atom! A little daunting to begin with, but also exciting. Thursday included a trip to the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, for an introduction to their ‘Handling Collection’, which was very interesting. The museum itself is beautiful and on fantastic grounds – apparently they have some great Christmas events, including carols by candlelight, which has always been a favorite of mine!

We spent all of Friday in the studio, which you can see above, its a fantastic space, and kitted out especially for the book conservators. We all have our own desk space and have been over the do’s and don’ts of the studio – such as no pens, nail varnish or perfume! The former may damage the book you’re working on, and the latter will prevent you from smelling any rotting pages!!

We then got straight down to making some small pamphlet bindings, which you can see below. The greener one is made with two sections, using a very nifty technique of folding the cover in the middle to allow you to sew the two sections to the cover without any glue!

Anyway – tomorrow sees the beginning of a series of lectures on European Hand Made Papers, which should be really interesting, so I will report back on them next week!