Handmade Books

Last Saturday we went on a brilliant course run by a local bookbinder, Judith Ellis. We learnt a technique called 'longstitch' binding, which doesn't require any glue.

In the morning we used pink and green PVC covers to get the hang of things -

But in the afternoon we were let loose on a selection of lovely leather covers, and marbled papers....
Jon used dark brown leather with a light blue marbled paper inside, and I used red leather with a matching red marbled paper.

We're really excited about experimenting with this technique - somehow printmaking, letterpress and bookbinding seem to be happy bedfellows. Hopefully we can remember enough from the course to make another one each this coming weekend...

There are lots more examples of this type of binding on Flickr.