Tag: exhibition

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Treasure Island | A Fine Binding

June 2016 will see the return of the Worthing Artists Open Houses to our seaside town. As a craftsperson, I have previously enjoyed the increased members of the public coming to say hello at The Book Hut, but never directly taken part. This year, however,  I will be much more involved, with two projects on display and a workshop at the Worthing Library, it’s all go at this end. The first, and key project, is that which is introduced here – Treasure Island – a fine binding of my own creating, that will be on display at StudioFreer in June. It is the first fine binding I have made for approximately four years, and the very first which will be available to buy.

  • Treasure Island cleaning the spine
    Cleaning up the spine
  • Treasure Island sections in press
    Flattening the sections
  • Treasure Island flattened sections
    Cleaned sections
  • Treasure Island guarded sections
    Ready for sewing
  • Sewing onto linen threads
  • Sewn up.
  • Gold and red endbands
  • Tooling the cover

TREATMENT

  • Initially the cover was removed from the binding and kept for future use in the design process.
  • The textblock was then placed in the press and the spine lining and adhesive (animal glue) was removed manually with a spatular, having been previously softened with a wheat starch paste poultice.
  • The sections were then cleaned individually and put in the press for flattening.
  • The outer folio of each section was then guarded at the spine with a 12gsm tengujo tissue to reinforce them, and placed back in the press.
  • Made endpapers were created using gold leaf and paint and sewn along with the textblock.
  • Following pressing, it was sewn onto three tapes.
  • All three edges were paired and gilded in gold leaf.
  • Endbands were sewn in gold and black silk.
  • The spine was lined with fray not and manilla.
  • The boards were laced in and covered in a smooth cartridge paper and sanded.
  • The binding was then covered in a light green goatskin.
  • The cover decoration consisted of the first chapter of the book blind tooled onto the cover, and the title brought out in gold leaf.
  • Treasure Island Original
    BEFORE
  • AFTER
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aMAZEme at the Southbank Centre

This week The Man and I had one of our “Luke & Maudie’s Fun Day Out”. I love these days, they are filled with enjoyable meandering, varied and regular pub visits (preferably trying out new ones) and generally having an enjoyable fun day.

The Saturday just gone was one of these days, this time along the Southbank – one of my favourite parts of London, and if you have not been recently, or are due to visit London soon, I cannot suggest it strongly enough to visit. It’s fabulous all year round, come Christmas there will be hundreds of little markets and lights on all the trees. But this time of the year is a time for drinking outside and picking up the sunshine amongst the London cloud – its wonderful!

The Propstore was the first stop – a bar just outside the National Theatre, which is one of these pop-up bars that will be there until the end of September. It’s made from old bits of scenery from the theatre and supplies micro-brewery beers including a very nice pale ale!

We also popped into the The Royal Festival Hall (another favourite), and managed to see a fantastic exhibition called aMAZEme. It’s been created by Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo and is based on the concepts of Art & Literature, Entertainment and Generosity. It is a collection of books built up into a maze in the shape of a fingerprint and really is great. It is one of these rare exhibitions where you can get involved, the phrase is “feel free to pick up the books and have a read, but please replace them for others to enjoy” – how great is that?!

I thoroughly enjoyed it, there isn’t much like being surrounded by walls of books, so I strongly suggest anyone in and around London goes and has a look, and possibly a pint on the river – can’t get much better than that!

Some books were in need of conservation!

I remember this book from when I was a kid!

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On Eagle’s Wings

Today I was back at the V&A for the first time in the New Year – it’s always nice to return after a break and find familiar faces, so it was a happy return!

The day was also boosted by seeing On Eagle’s Wings exhibition at the museum. This is an exhibition on comic books that myself and a collegue have been working on for the last month or so, each of us doing paper repairs on the covers and display spreads of the comics. Having been involved since the start of the conservation work, it was really nice to see the exhibition come to fruition.

Due to copyright issues, I was not able to get any close-ups of the comics themselves, but in the images below you can see the general layout. It is located outside the Twentieth Century gallery and takes up four of the cabinets there. One of the cabinets is specifically dedicated to the girls comics, which I worked a lot on. Girl is the counterpart to Eagle, which is the key comic book for the exhibitions. The latter was an extremely popular boys comic whereas Girl was one of the leading girl’s comic books, including such items as Wendy & Jinx (a detective duo) and how to do flower arrangements.

I was pleased to see that of those comics that I had worked on, I was not able to see the paper repairs, which is a good sign!

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COMIC BOOK CONSERVATION

Mondays at the V&A have been quite varied recently, which has been a pleasant change. Although I am very keen to help with the Daily Mail project, it is always good to alternate! This week and a little bit of last week, Sal and I were working on conserving comic books for a forthcoming exhibition which will be taking place next year.

The comics have been amazing, very early renditions of some classics, including a first edition of Superman (I haven’t managed to get my hands on this one yet!) and also some Daring Dan (not sure if that is correct). As yet i have not come across any Marvel comics, which are generally a favourite, especially X-Men, but I’m not actually sure they are old enough for this exhibition – its going to be a good one!

TREATMENT

The conservation is very minimal, as their are so many comics, we can’t spend long on each of them, so they are having their covers repaired of any tears, and also any spreads that are displayed – if any. So very minimal.

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Two Bookbinders @ Work

This weekend I spent an enjoyable morning at the exhibition of two bookbinders in The Midhurst Gallery, where I met both Maureen Duke and Gaynor Williams, who were exhibiting some of their work, and were a delight to meet.

Both Maureen and Gaynor are Book Conservators as well as binders and teach at the nearby West Dean College. The exhibition itself was a feast for any keen binder, with a great display of various bindings, including miniature books, designer bindings and works of conservation. There was also a lovely display of some of Gaynor’s new bindings including some address books and photo albums, making use of some fantastic papers from both abroad and the V&A museum!

Outside the gallery was a fantastic selection of hand-marbled papers by Louise Brockman, which seemed to use traditional patterns with bright colours, making them look very modern and tempting! If you are keen to take a peek, the exhibition will remain in place until Saturday 24th July, and I believe they will be holding daily demonstrations throughout this time.