A Yen For Paper

CELTIC INSPIRATION

As you can see from the journal bookshelf, a new little "limp binding" with a leather cover has made its appearance. I was browsing on the web the other day and fortuitously came across information about this book of bindings originating from Tallinn, written by Monica Langwe - and needless to say I felt compelled to order a copy.

 

Whilst waiting for its arrival, I have been doing quite a lot of reading recently, and in particular, have been reading John O'Donoghue's truly inspirational book of Celtic wisdom, entitled "Anam Cara", which translates as Soul Friend. I was particularly struck by the quotation (page 106/107 in my copy) from Meister Eckhart: "Thoughts are our inner senses", as I hadn't really considered thinking in this way before.

Being Scottish, is the reason, I suppose, that I have always been interested in things Celtic, whether it is wisdom, all those wonderful eternal spiralling designs, or script.  In particular the Ogham script has fascinated me, partly because of its utter simplicity - an alphabet of just 20 straight line letters/symbols. It has mainly been found in Ireland and Scotland, carved into Standing Stones - messages and names from the ancient times...

Inspired by these various strands of thought, I decided, in my enthusiasm, to make a leather covered journal with a limp binding - somehow incorporating the Ogham script. The images above are the result of this fun experiment and, of course, the lettering spells out the Meister Eckhart quotation, reading from bottom left, line by line, up to top right (but not in gaelic as Ogham would originally have been written). Isn't it just great when you are able to weave together several threads of your interest and imagine a new pattern in the fabric of life?

LONG STITCH/LINK STITCH BINDING

Above is a leather journal I bound today in this old German style, following instructions from the Keith A. Smith "Non-Adhesive Binding, Books Without Paste or Glue, Volume 1". You can see this book and all of the other ones on the Keith Smith site.

As you can see it has exposed long vertical stitches on the spine, (and here I have employed one of the variations by altering the length of the stitches) and chain stitches along the head and tail.  The leather that I have used in this instance is Reindeer leather from Shepherds - their online shop is useful for ordering all sorts of bookbinding goodies.

I did cheat a little because I wanted to add some really nice endpapers.  This beautiful french paper was marbled by Sylvie Hournon - isn't it just gorgeous? It has a lovely feel to it and a wonderful density of shading.  I just love it. Anyway, I had to glue that in place.

Finally I added the black leather cord and the shiny red glass bead - perhaps I was influenced by Rudolf there :-)

MONTHLY NOTEBOOKS 2009

I was really  inspired by Patrick Ng's post entitled "Elements of My Perfect Little Notebook"  on his blog Scription and decided to incorporate just a few of the elements into these notebooks, which I made as a gift for my husband.

These little books are bound with a simple pamplet stitch in red thread, have textured grey card covers and are sized according to the golden ratio - see my previous post on Divinely Proportioned Notebooks. They are fairly slim volumes and so far I have made one for each of the first six months of the year.

The cover photos are ones which were taken on a trip to Japan and I chose a black and white effect in order to give more uniformity to the set. As you can see they are date stamped and the relevant month is picked out in red and further emphasized by a little tag made of hemp.

Finally, I attached a small calendar of the relevant month to the inside cover, just for reference. The pages are mostly plain, apart from 4 - one for each week, which are lined and have a title box, as shown below.

I am really pleased with the way these turned out.  Think I will make a similar set for myself now and maybe I will even get round to making some kind of a wrapper to keep them all safe.