I’d just finished a whole body of work centred upon a poem by Rosemary Dobson that I’d accidentally overprinted during the production of her collection, Poems to Hold or Let Go. I worked with the pages in various ways: overprinting them, using origami on them to form sculptural elements, and I thought that this would be a chance to finish the process, to draw a veil across this particular train of thought. I see this as a broadside rather than anything book-related.

I’ve had an old linen hankie in my ‘collection’ box (or one of them, specifically the textiles one) for years — and isn’t it great when things finally find a purpose? I can’t remember if this one has special family significance or if it was given to me by someone… I wouldn’t have bought it. It’s gorgeous, with real handmade lace around the edges.

The text of the poem was transferred from the original letterpress print to the hankie by eucalyptus transfer (which leaves a wonderful lingering scent of eucalyptus, very Australian) and then I used some antique thread to hand-stitch a weeping thread veil over the text. It really is antique — it comes straight off a Victorian-era factory bobbin and has marvellous slubs and stains through it.

The Hankie Project link above gives a post to each entry in the exhibition, which looked wonderful. I’m sure there are plans to travel the works, so it might turn up somewhere near you. If you’re ever in Alstonville, on the far north coast of NSW (an easy daytrip from Brisbane), visit Julie’s gallery, which specialises in artists’ books and print works.

Feel the Fell was made for my solo show, Pressings, at Megalo in 2009. I often run pieces of paper through my press rollers at the end of the day to remove the excess ink before cleaning, and I keep every piece of paper, because I love the random and beautiful results. They speak to me of the process of printing (especially when I have used packing sheets, and there is overprinted embossed text that is picked up by the ink) and the process is a primary part of the experience of using letterpress, because the final printed product is often so similar to something that can be produced more easily by other printing methods.

Anyway, this piece came together when I was browsing through my high school copy of Norton’s Anthology and my eyes were caught by some lines I’d read years ago and had underlined, and then forgotten:

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

And the first lines seemed all I needed to unlock an emotional darkness that the ink seemed perfectly eloquent enough to convey. It’s a very specific poem, but the despair is universal, and so I let the marks do their work.

It’s a lovely piece to look through, and until Artspace Mackay bought it, I encouraged people to use their hands without white gloves to flick through it (and now it is doomed to white-glove-dom forever!). You can see white gloves peeping through some of the images here… After a day or two of having them there, I decided they weren’t necessary, because most of the beauty is in the way the soft paper feels in your hands.

I made a box for it to live in, in which it rolls up like a scroll. The box is covered with a black slubbed bookcloth called Cannapetta, and has hand-stitched detail and ties in black waxed linen thread.

It was also exhibited at the 2010 Libris Awards in Mackay.

I also made a smaller version of this book for a friend who loved it but couldn’t buy the original. That one is also unique, and lives in Melbourne, hopefully being loved and handled. It’s box is recycled from an old bible.

Artist’s book. Unique letterpress concertina-bound book with removable hard cover and slipcase. c.100 x 100 x 50mm. Canberra: Ampersand Duck, 2005. Private Collection.

Viewed from the side in one of the many possible configurations

I often make small books from the remnants of larger projects, and this is the first of them. Playing with Anna’s Ghosts is a playful book with a concertina binding, removable hard covers and a half-slip wrapper. The title is a pun on the use of typesetting proofs and the contents of the text, which are poetry scraps from the printing of Shared Rooms. The book can be configured in as many ways as the scraps of text can be read.

view from above when arranged in a circle

This is part 4 of 4 posts. For details about the physical aspect of this book and the original premise, go to the first post, here. 2nd post. 3rd post.

Essentially, this is an on-line recreation of a book consisting of three sets of postcards revolving around a set of short writings by Henri Michaux.

The first set has on one side (the ‘text’ side of a traditional postcard) the official, published translated text. On the other side of each is a collage image inspired by the text.

The second set has on one side the original French; I don’t speak or read French, so I’ve picked out the words that make visual sense as an English speaker and highlighted them. The other side has an English translation of the French, generated by Babelfish, an internet translation program. It’s a weird machine translation, very literal and sometimes completely missing the point.

The third set is highly personal. The images are drawn using ink, gouache and gold paint and then partially erased. The text is hand-written, using my own experiences, and echoing Michaux’s text without imitating it. These were written in 2000, four years before I thought about blogging — but you can see why I took to blogging so happily.

There are 12 pieces of writing in ‘I am writing to you from a far-off country’. I have arranged all the postcards into twelve sections, so that you can see the sets in the way they were meant to be viewed. The second batch, postcards II-IV are below, showing fronts and backs. If you like them and wish to read them all, they are divided over four  blog posts: I, II-IV, V-VIII, IX-XII.

IX

X

XI

XII

This is part 3 of 4 posts. For details about the physical aspect of this book and the original premise, go to the first post, here. 2nd post. 4th post.Essentially, this is an on-line recreation of a book consisting of three sets of postcards revolving around a set of short writings by Henri Michaux.

The first set has on one side (the ‘text’ side of a traditional postcard) the official, published translated text. On the other side of each is a collage image inspired by the text.

The second set has on one side the original French; I don’t speak or read French, so I’ve picked out the words that make visual sense as an English speaker and highlighted them. The other side has an English translation of the French, generated by Babelfish, an internet translation program. It’s a weird machine translation, very literal and sometimes completely missing the point.

The third set is highly personal. The images are drawn using ink, gouache and gold paint and then partially erased. The text is hand-written, using my own experiences, and echoing Michaux’s text without imitating it. These were written in 2000, four years before I thought about blogging — but you can see why I took to blogging so happily.

There are 12 pieces of writing in ‘I am writing to you from a far-off country’. I have arranged all the postcards into twelve sections, so that you can see the sets in the way they were meant to be viewed. The second batch, postcards II-IV are below, showing fronts and backs. If you like them and wish to read them all, they are divided over four  blog posts: I, II-IV, V-VIII, IX-XII.

V

VI

VII

VIII

The first set has on one side (the ‘text’ side of a traditional postcard) the official, published translated text. On the other side of each is a collage image inspired by the text.

The second set has on one side the original French; I don’t speak or read French, so I’ve picked out the words that make visual sense as an English speaker and highlighted them. The other side has an English translation of the French, generated by Babelfish, an internet translation program. It’s a weird machine translation, very literal and sometimes completely missing the point.

The third set is highly personal. The images are drawn using ink, gouache and gold paint and then partially erased. The text is hand-written, using my own experiences, and echoing Michaux’s text without imitating it. These were written in 2000, four years before I thought about blogging — but you can see why I took to blogging so happily.

There are 12 pieces of writing in ‘I am writing to you from a far-off country’. I have arranged all the postcards into twelve sections, so that you can see the sets in the way they were meant to be viewed. The second batch, postcards II-IV are below, showing fronts and backs. If you like them and wish to read them all, they are divided over four  blog posts: I, II-IV, V-VIII, IX-XII.

II

III

IV

Digital images, laserprinted text, pen, ink and gold paint on paper, custom perspex cover. Unique, Canberra: Editioning & Artists Book Studio, NITA, 2000. Currently with Arki von Optropp, Artist’s Book Dealer, Sydney.

This is the first of four posts on this book. 2nd post. 3rd post. 4th post.

Made during my visual art degree, when I was having a major crush on the writings of Henri Michaux. This is a work about translation. Henri Michaux was French, but there are debates on how French his French was, as he played merry hell with the rules. This set of writings is arranged as one side of a correspondence, and I extended this to include my own explorations into the text.

I made three sets of postcards, and they are all included below, since my unique copy seems to have disappeared with a dealer I haven’t heard from for years, and I spent a lot of time thinking about this project and would like to look at it more often myself.

The first set has on one side (the ‘text’ side of a traditional postcard) the official, published translated text. On the other side of each is a collage image inspired by the text.

The second set has on one side the original French; I don’t speak or read French, so I’ve picked out the words that make visual sense as an English speaker and highlighted them. The other side has an English translation of the French, generated by Babelfish, an internet translation program. It’s a weird machine translation, very literal and sometimes completely missing the point.

The third set is highly personal. The images are drawn using ink, gouache and gold paint and then partially erased. The text is hand-written, using my own experiences, and echoing Michaux’s text without imitating it. These were written in 2000, four years before I thought about blogging — but you can see why I took to blogging so happily.

There are 12 pieces of writing in ‘I am writing to you from a far-off country’. I have arranged all the postcards into twelve sections, so that you can see the sets in the way they were meant to be viewed. The first set is below. If you like them and wish to read them all, they are divided over three more blog posts: II-IV, V-VIII, IX-XII.

I

I gave an account of the exhibition opening at my personal blog.

Exhibition statement:

I have a burning desire not to waste materials, and my personal artist’s books are made from paper or other materials left over from more formal projects. Many of my unique books are made from the print proofs, ghosts or off-cuts of commissioned letterpress work. I make them as a souvenir of a collaboration, or as an extension of themes that run through the text I’ve been working upon.

I am an avid reader and chronic daydreamer; I often spend so much time with the words and images of a single book project that it is refreshing to rework them in a different, more playful context, which allows me to extend my appreciation of the original text beyond the realms of the traditional page layout.

I also like to trawl second-hand book sales and rescue under-appreciated books to rework them into something people might value again. I might use the title and/or cover of vintage novels to begin new stories that the viewer can continue in their own imagination. In any case, my working methods seem perfectly in tune with a world that is once again recognising the need to re-use and recycle as a cultural process.

Selected works from the show:

Grieving: Let Go, 2009. installation of folded original letterpress pages
(from Poems to Hold or Let Go) and a vintage book spine.

Nightladders: After, 2009. Vintage book cover,
concertina papercut from offset-ink press proof pages.

Nightladders: Escape (detail), 2009. Vintage book cover,
papercut from offset-ink press proof pages.

Nightladders: Escape (detail), 2009. Vintage book cover,
papercut from offset-ink press proof pages.

Me, Like a River, 2009. Concertina flag book of
letterpress offcuts from the book Shared Rooms.

Never Kill a Dolphin, 2009, from the series ‘Jetsom’. Clamshell box from vintage book cover, lined with the book’s illustrations. [sold: private collection]

]]> http://ampersandduck.com/art/2010/03/13/pressings-recycled-bookwork/feed/ 0 http://ampersandduck.com/art/2010/03/13/books-to-hold-or-let-go-works-in-progress/ http://ampersandduck.com/art/2010/03/13/books-to-hold-or-let-go-works-in-progress/#comments Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:14:35 +0000 duckie http://ampersandduck.com/art/?p=54 Continue reading →]]> Books to Hold or Let Go is an upcoming exhibition at Canberra’s Craft ACT gallery.

Opening on 14 May at 6pm, Books to Hold or Let Go showcases Australian and international binders working with the text of Ampersand Duck’s fine press publication Poems to Hold or Let Go by Rosemary Dobson and Rosalind Atkins. The exhibition will run until 20 June, and associated events (floor talks or readings) are being negotiated.Poems to Hold or Let Go is a 56pp volume printed using photopolymer plate and boxwood wood engravings on 125gsm rag mould-made Magnani Vergata laid paper. The binders have received the book in sheet form (folded but unsewn), and it is totally up to them what they will make of the cover. To see the original volume, go here. I am really looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!

I have asked participating artists to send me images of their work in progress, so watch this post as I add to it over the next couple of months.

First up is Sydney bookbinder Barbara Schmelzer, who has decided to do a German vellum binding and is sharing images of her preparations to  airbrush the vellum:

Next is Mia Leijonstedt, who is one of our international binders: She is Finnish, but working from the United Arab Emirates. Mia’s contribution to the exhibition will be a soft cover binding with “long-stitch” structure. According to her:

Most often long-stitch bindings leave the sewing showing on the spine but this will be covered. The base cover is maroon goat skin laminated with silky fabric and the onlays will be dyed parchment.

Showing the general colour scheme of the binding and the preparations for sewing –
soft leather cover laminated and folded, endpapers dyed and trimmed.

A close up of book just before sewing.

Book sewn with white thread in long-stitch style. Thread dyed black on the spine side.

Front cover of the binding open, showing the doublure laminate and endpaper.

Preparing to cover the sewing with dyed strips of parchment
that will also form the basis of the binding’s final design.

Next we look at a few images showing some of South Australian binder Mark Gilbert’s planning processes:

Mark’s been drawing up his ideas…

Making maquettes and practising his blocking…

… And is now fully into production.

Lorraine Brown,  formerly of Sydney but now working from Queensland, is still working on her cover design, but so far the book is sewn on 5 cords (each cord being 3 ply unbleached linen yarn, wound 3 times to create a 9 ply cord) using waxed linen thread, and the endpapers are Canson Ingres Vidalon cream 100 gsm plus a decorative paper. Here’s a shot of the sewing:

Lorraine is sewing onto cords using a sewing frame.

There are a number of ‘alternate’ bindings emerging as well. Printmaker Lee Bratt, of Canberra, has constructed a concertina format for her book sheets:

A view from above. The poem pages are removable.

A detail of the front panel, featuring one of Lee’s prints.

Genevieve Swifte, also from Canberra, is working on a very conceptual version of the book. Here is her initial ‘promotional’ image:

whets the appetite, somewhat, doesn’t it?

It’s very exciting, seeing all these ‘tasters’. Here’s more:

“The wooden boards having been cut to size. Next step is cord attachment and sewing…”

Victorian bookbinder Elke Ahokas’s book is bound in a Carolingian style. The covers are of Victorian Coobah (Acacia salicina) which will be oiled. The text block is sewn onto hemp cords using waxed linen thread.

“The front cover, un-oiled as yet….”

Dario Castello is the president of the ACT Bookbinders’ Guild. Here’s a peek at his work:

a detail of the front cover

Joy Tonkin, of Book Arts Canberra is preparing an exposed sewing technique in the style of Jean de Gonet’s binding.

The book is sewn onto snake skin tapes.  The hollow-back spine is covered in oasis leather.  The boards are a wood veneer with polycarbonate and leather onlay decorations.  The endpapers are hand-made papers from Nepal.   The book is housed in a box made from hand-made papers, lined in suede, and titled in kangaroo leather on the spine.

Linda Newbown is also from Canberra:

an open-book view of Linda’s binding.

Linda says:

Laced-in binding. Vellum spine, paper boards, kid leather (from found glove). Bound 2009.
Binders hold the printed pages momentarily. We bind the pages so that you may more easily hold them. The bindings will show signs and marks from the binders’ hand. We have held these pages and now let them go.

Less than six weeks until the opening! Watch this space!

The exhibition opened on May 14, 2009 at Canberra’s Craft ACT gallery and continued through to June 20, 2009.There were 24 bindings by 23 people, including the original edition binding of the book. I set aside 30 copies* of the freshly-printed pages — called sheets — as a deluxe binding edition (numbered I-XXX), and they were offered for sale to binders with the added incentive of an exhibition of what they did with the pages. This show is the result.

All works are unique (apart from the edition binding, of which there are 200), and most are for sale. For information about prices, you must contact the binders personally: drop me a line and I will forward you their details. Many of the binders belong to the Canberra Craft Bookbinders’ Guild, and some belong to the NSW Guild of Craft Bookbinders.

There is an online room brochure for the show, available from the Craft ACT website, and basic details of the bindings. I am using this post to feature the binders and their work in more detail, and also in their own words if they provided an artist’s statement. There is also a post about some of the bindings in progress.

Participants

I will list the binders in alphabetical order, and then include their details. You can click on each name to jump to their information. All images are © Ampersand Duck and the artists. Please do not reproduce anything without acknowledgement.

Elke Ahokas (Vic)
Sue Anderson (NSW)
Lee Bratt (ACT)
Suzy Braun (NSW)
Lorraine Brown (Qld)
Sarah Bunn (NSW)
Dario Castello (ACT)
Molly Coy (WA)
Teresa Duhigg (ACT)
Caren Florance (ACT)
Mark Gilbert (SA)
David Hodges (ACT)
Rosemarie Jeffers-Palmer (NSW)
Mia Leijonstedt (United Arab Emirates)
Linda Newbown (ACT)
Barbara Schmelzer (NSW)
Wayne Stock (NSW)
Genevieve Swifte (ACT)
Robin Tait (NSW)
Wendy Taylor (ACT)
Joy Tonkin (ACT)
Vicki Woolley (ACT)
Anthony Zammit (SA)

PARTICIPANTS IN DETAIL

Elke Ahokas (VIC)

Personal: Elke Ahokas is a professional bookbinder from Victoria. You can see more of her work at her website.

Work: Carolingian binding: oiled Victorian Coobah (Acacia salicina) slabs. Text sewn onto hemp cords using waxed linen thread. Translucent paper endpapers.
[back to index of participants]

Sue Anderson (NSW)

Personal: Sue Anderson is an amateur binder from NSW. She has exhibited widely in both bookbinding and artists’ book exhibitions and prefers to collaborate with writers and printmakers.

Work: Simplified binding of embossed black leather boards, design in acrylic by binder. Black goatskin and white sheepskin spine. Grey goatskin details. Japanese Kozo endpapers.

Statement: Rosemary Dobson’s recurring images of dark and light, and references to the moon and moonlight, together with the wood engravings affected my choice of binding materials and design.
[back to index of participants]

Lee Bratt (ACT)

Personal: Lee Bratt is currently studying at the Printmedia & Drawing Workshop of the ANU School of Art and has a strong interest in artist’s books.

Work: Artist’s book binding: concertina files, Stonehenge paper, Gampi tissue, leather, Polaroid transfer print, gold and silver leaf.

Statement: my choice of book design was influenced by information taken from the project, the poet, the artist and my thoughts on the title.

The title, “Hold or Let Go” conjured up thoughts of a child’s’ squeeze box, a music instrument that requires the player to hold and/or let go to make the music. The pages of the book are filed in the concertina sections, a small bow extends out of the file inviting you to hold or let go of the pages. The back cover has part of the keyboard from a squeezebox and the handles have been attached in opposite directions, so you may hold the book but let go of the pages.

The poets’ age influenced the choice of materials: Stonehenge paper for its strength and colour, tissue paper for its fragility and leather for its permanency.

The wood engravings inspired my Polaroid transfer mounted on the front cover, which is an image of a tree taken through the words from a poem. The tree stretches out as if letting go or taking hold of the words.
[back to index of participants]

Suzy Braun (NSW)

Personal: Suzy Braun was a refugee from the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. Her bookbinding is informed by her professional life in fashion and textiles.

Work: Gold-blocked leather cased-in binding with marbled endpapers.

Statement: I was born in Budapest, hungary. My Central European background in the Second World War interrupted my formal schooling, and I have come quite late in life to bookbinding. Initially I was trained as a seamstress, and later as a patternmaker/designer. At the time of the Hungarian Uprising in 1956, I managed to escape the country through a dangerous, swampy border into Austria with countless others of my compatriots. After lengthy official processes, I was accepted to migrate to Australia and have been resident in Sydney since 1957 and continued my profession as a designer of ladies fashion. I have always been a keen reader and I have an interest in art, classical music and all kinds of handcraft.
[back to index of participants]

Lorraine Brown (Qld)

Personal: Lorraine Brown has been binding books for 9 years under the name Bound by Brown. Prior to this, her working life was in the IT industry in varying capacities – mainly programmer and project manager. She lives at Mt Tamborine in Queensland.

Work: Text block: Sawn in block sewn on 5 cords – each cord being 3 ply unbleached linen yarn, wound 3 times to create a 9 ply cord. Sewn using beeswaxed linen thread 16/3. The endbands are green goatskin suede with a linen thread core. The endpapers are made using Canson Ingres Vidalon 100 gsm – cream – and a decorative paper showing antique manuscript design for pastedowns.
Spine: Green oasis goatskin, acrylic paint washed pigskin with clear top coat for random spine wraps.
Cover: Inner cover: 1200um greyboard lined with 70 gsm brown display paper. Greyboard edges coloured using Burnt Umber acrylic paint. Outer Cover: Queensland Walnut Veneer with clear shellac finish.
Title: Green oasis goatskin, 18pt Times New Roman typeface, red gloss pigment foil, and
‘find the title’ in the jumbled letters.
[back to index of participants]

Sarah Bunn (NSW)

Personal: Sarah Bunn is Paper Conservator for the Art Gallery of NSW and Library and Archive Conservator for the Australian Museum.

Work: Limp binding: chain stitch with recycled Japanese silk kimono chemise.

Statement: Working as a conservator of rare books in libraries in the UK, Italy and Sydney, my perception of books and bindings has been shaped by my exposure to the beauty and ‘honest’ representation of materials as expressed in early printed book structures and by the inherent flaws and degradation of their later 19th Century counterparts. I choose to create simple, tactile structures — books I would want to open, and read, in privacy.
[back to index of participants]

Dario Castello (ACT)

Personal: Dario Castello is a Canberra bookbinder and President of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild.

Work: Simplified binding in leather and canvas. Hand marbled paper by Joan Ajala. Matching slipcase.
[back to index of participants]

Molly Coy (WA)

Personal: Molly Coy is a fine binder/restorer, book artist & tutor working in Western Australia.

Work: Book block additions: Embossed pages 150gsm Parilux Matt Cream with gold blocking foil and hand-coloured images. Additional blank pages in the back of book for owners poems / thoughts. Hand-made rice paper inserts. Handsewn, round-backed block with embossed, coloured/gilt edges
Binding: Case in printed, hand coloured hide, with onlay and hanging title.
Doublure in rust suede with inlay and gold foil and blind embossing.
[back to index of participants]

Teresa Duhigg (ACT)

Personal: Theresa Duhigg is a Canberra bookbinder and a member of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild.

Work: Cased-in leather binding with colour applique.
[back to index of participants]

Caren Florance (ACT)

Personal: This is my website. For more information on me, see here.

Work: Exhibition binding: Long-stitched limp binding or rag momigami paper (made by the artist) and vintage Victorian cotton thread. Title embossed using lead type.

Statement: I am slowly binding the edition binding of 200 copies (in batches to avoid falling over with boredom), so it was wonderful to have a play with this binding. Recently I stumbled upon a cache of gorgeous rag momigami paper I’d made when a student, and thought this was an opportunity too good to miss. I bought the thread (on it’s original Victorian-era factory spool) from one of my favorite kooky shops: Peppergreens, in Berrima, NSW. One of the features of momigami paper is that it grows softer the more it is handled, yet remaining strong. The spine of this binding is much softer than the sides, with the hope that the cover sides will become more pliant with frequent reading of Dobson’s excellent poetry.
[back to index of participants]

Mark Gilbert (SA)

Personal: Mark Gilbert is a South Australian bookbinder.

Work: Full Morocco leather binding, blind-stamped, with red cloth doublures.

Statement: I wanted the book to have a simple, almost plain look and feel — and where possible — to evoke the  rural Australia of my childhood. A lot of the poems seemed to have that  flavour; my favorite was ‘Breakaway’, and this influenced my selection of the materials.

I sewed the sections with the closest thing to raw string that I could find. This had problems as it kept fraying and broke a few times as I tensioned it. Similarly, the coloured end papers appealed to me as they had a sort of natural unfinished look .

I was lucky enough to have a piece of golden morocco goatskin just big enough lying around and I felt that was in keeping although it might give the book a more refined finish. The colour was so beautiful  that I decided to risk it. To counter this I determined that the decoration should be as simple as I could make it. I therefore reduced the title to its essence Poems but introduced the bar motif to stimulate thoughts of captivity and/or being “set free”.

The red cloth doublures were selected because the colour combination was so exciting — and the repeated red glimpses were introduced for a bit of interest and to continue the bars into the book . The decision to bond the coloured endpaper to the plain one was an afterthought and had to be done “in situ”. This was the most nerve-wracking moment.

I am an amateur bookbinder and, although this  is my own work, I could not have achieved this standard without the assistance and advice at every step from my teacher Anthony Zammitt.
[back to index of participants]

David Hodges (ACT)

Personal: David Hodges is a Canberra artist and bookbinder. He prints and binds unique editions, conducts workshops and undertakes bookbinding commissions and book repair. David has a workshop at the Strathnairn Arts Association.

Work: The text block is hand-stitched and case-bound using a variation on a dos-a-dos binding. The case is a full binding covered in a cotton and blind embossed.
The endpapers are a Eucalyptus and watercolour transfer on hot-pressed 160gsm Canson.
[back to index of participants]

Rosemarie Jeffers-Palmer (NSW)

Personal: Rosemary Jeffers-Palmer is a profession binder and book arts teacher from Sydney. She also owns Artwise Amazing Paper in Enmore.

Work: Bound in local calf leather with leather onlays and silver foil tooling. Stitched onto tapes and laced into boards. Laminated endpapers, edge colouring and hand-sewn headbands.
[back to index of participants]

Mia Leijonstedt (United Arab Emirates)

Personal: Mia Leijonstedt is a professional binder from Finland who currently works from Dubai. You can see more of her work at her website.

Work: A long-stitch binding with soft goat skin cover. Decorative techniques include dyed parchment onlays and freehand blind-tooling. Binding is housed in a dyed paper wrapper. The concept of the binding is about poetry lines in visual form. On the front cover the elements are all in balanced order, holding it together, but on the back cover they are in the process of disintegrating and letting go.

Statement: Artful bindings for me are about celebrating and treasuring books and what they mean to us. I often make my bindings like they were props or characters in the story they’re housing. Each detail is important and the combination of all visual elements should invite the viewer closer, hopefully to experience a wordless moment of the rich history preserved in books throughout time.
[back to index of participants]

Linda Newbown (ACT)

Personal: Linda Newbown is a Canberra book artist and binder who works under the name Boundary Press. She is a Life Member of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild.

Work: Laced-in binding. Vellum spine, paper boards, kid leather (from found glove).

Statement: Binders hold the printed pages momentarily. We bind the pages so that you may more easily hold them. The bindings will show signs and marks from the binders’ hand. We have held these pages and now let them go.
[back to index of participants]

Barbara Schmelzer (NSW)

Personal: Barbara Schmelzer is a professional bookbinder who comes from Germany and works from Sydney. You can more of her work at her website.

Work: Airbrushed German vellum binding.
[back to index of participants]

Wayne Stock (NSW)

Personal: Wayne Stock is a professional bookbinder and a member of the NSW Bookbinding Guild.

Work: Full hand-dyed mandarin kangaroo binding with case and chemise. The image is blind-tooled and blue.
[back to index of participants]

Genevieve Swifte (ACT)

Personal: Genevieve Swifte is a professional artist who works closely with the book form within her drawing and printmaking practice. She has a studio at ANCA in Dickson.

Work: Artist’s book binding: open-sewn Magnani Vergata book block accompanied by an Asian-stab binding of hand-printed Gampi silk paper and horse hair, housed in a simple conservation folder.

Statement: In her poem ‘Over the Frontier’, Rosemary Dobson evokes for us the poem that does not exist as, Trembling, it crosses the frontier at dawn from non-being to being. In the making of this book I have attempted to create a volume of Dobson’s poetry that hovers between these two states. Difficult to read, the poems instead can be glimpsed as a whole, a shape, or as a shadow.

The presence of the hand within the structure of the book is normally hidden from us, but through the translucency of the paper I have used, these poems can be held in the palm of the hand. They become an integral part of the book itself and a metaphor for the relationship between the poet, the artist and the reader. To print this book I used gentle pressure from my fingertips, echoing the Tall, tapering fingers of ‘Spires’ and the ephemeral treatment has removed the poems from the clarity of the page, returning them to the poetic imagination, where they can be held by the inner eye.

The format of the book is at first unfamiliar yet recognisable as a copy of the original. It refers to Asian binding and structures, to scrolls and to the poetic traditions of Asia. The sensuous quality of the Japanese Gampi means that the paper behaves like sheets, like pale cloth washed in the white stone shallows. Though, in this edition, illustrations are absent, they have found their way into the book through the binding of horsehair that could have been pulled from the wire of Rosalind Atkins’ gate, resembling the web spun between hinge and latch or as a token from the hand of ‘The Bystander’.
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Robin Tait (NSW)

Personal: Robin Tait runs the Tait Bindery in Queanbeyan and is a member of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild. At present she is working from Adelaide as a paper conservator.

Work: Crossed Structure Binding Solo structure developed by Carmencho Arregui, using remnant paper stock from the Brindabella Press.

Statement: The covering paper was used for the Brindabella Press Barbara Hanrahan book Iris in Her Garden and the holes punched through are to try to echo the ‘divining colander’ mentioned in the last poem of Poems to Hold or Let Go.
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Wendy Taylor (ACT)

Personal: Wendy Taylor is a Canberra bookbinder and a member of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild.

Work: Cased-in binding. The cover material is a Canson Mi-Teintes paper, painted with acrylics and fine sanded to a silky finish to provide a tactile surface to hold.

Statement: I read Rosemary’s poems during the week of the Victorian fires.  Her poem, ‘News and Weather’, had a resonance with what was then happening in Victoria  – in particular the line, Terrible times in the world that will not be changed.  The book’s cover is a response to her poem and the fires.

My introduction to bookbinding was at high school where arts and crafts were highly valued. I have continued the craft on and off over the years. My knowledge of technique has been reinforced with courses at the Canberra Institute of Technology and additional workshops.
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Joy Tonkin (ACT)

Personal: Joy Tonkin is a professional bookbinder under the name Bookarts Canberra. She is a member of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild.

Work: An exposed sewing technique in the style of Jean de Gonet’s binding. The book is sewn onto snake skin tapes. The hollow-back spine is covered in oasis leather. The boards are a wood veneer with polycarbonate and leather onlay decorations. The endpapers are hand-made papers from Nepal. The book is housed in a box made from hand-made papers, lined in suede, and titled in kangaroo leather on the spine.
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Vicki Woolley (ACT)

Personal: Vicki Woolley is a Canberra bookbinder and a member of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild.

Work: Quarter-bound in leather with rounded spine. Front cover marbled paper by Marianne Peter, Bethune, France. Endpapers are Canson 160gsm.

Statement: I was introduced to papermaking in February 2003 which was the catalyst for learning bookbinding. I joined the Canberra Craft Bookbinders Guild in the same year. I plan to devote more time to these interests in the future.
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Anthony Zammit (SA)

Personal: Anthony Zammit is a South Australian bookbinder.

Work: Full bound in red Morocco leather with Doublure and fly leaves lined from Japanese ornamental papers. The slip case has vellum supported edges with a dark red diamond patterned Japanese ornamental paper sidings. Internal and external gold lines are hand finished.
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* yes, there are a few copies left if you are interested in using them for binding. Contact me for details.