As far as books go, me and Vicky Martin are something of a duo. When ever there's an event on at St. Brides we plan to go. As of yet, we haven't. In London, the plan was to go to the Bookbinding shop. I threw a wobbly and missed out. Yet now, we have done something good and proper.
Vicky contacted Maureen through her mysterious and knowledgeable ways and asked me if I fancied tagging along to "A day of bookbinding out in the countryside somewhere, at an old ladies house". I obviously said yes. Bookbinding; good. Countryside; better. Old ladies; great. There's probably nothing better than learning something from someone you imagine could be your gran. Grandma's have special powers but without rambling too much about all of that, I was in and it was booked.
We pulled up to a little yellow country house and it had been snowing.
"Come on! Come in ye blighters!" yelled Maureen's husband after we'd been sitting in the car for a few minutes because of arriving early.
"Suppose you've brought this bloody weather with you aye?"
And hence began one of the best days I've had in ages.
The house was literally strewn with books in every possible place. It smelled like antique shops and had the bric-a-brac organisation of a car boot. There was a live fire place churning away and what seemed like a door in every room to the outside. I was in love with the place. Maureen spoke with great articulation and phrases that probably only a handful of people understand without reference. She sat us down and went through what we wanted to do or achieve from the day and silently shuffled through the biblio-encyclopedia that was her head before delivering the days intinerary.
We went through to the studio and there was everything. Obviously more books than there was oxygen, but there was multiple workbenches, trays and trays of metal type, reems of fabric, tools in a whole manner of shapes and sizes and litte pieces of paper with scribbles everywhere like a note-storm had swept through the place.
I was going to learn a very awkward kind of multi-binding in that I'd essentially be having two books bound together to form one. Maureen rightly stated that there would be no point dragging time down in making my planned triple-book binding as the principles would be the same as a double-binding just extended one further.
Without going too much into the details of what I made (as I'm making a separate write-up on the detailed process to be included in my FMP notes) the breadth and detail of what I learnt in one day was incredible. Maureen was amazing for thinking of what'd be best for us in making alterations to methodologies so that we could use equipment that we'd have. For example, she taught me how to curve a spine to overlap the cover with a bone folder although it wouldn't normally have been done this way. Another genius trick was to use a hacksaw to make the holes for the stitching.
We had home-made soup, bread and banter for lunch and got straight back to an afternoon of putting the covers on our 'textbook'. Although I felt quite nervous towards the last hour or so for trying to digest techniques and ensure thorough understanding, then using it accurately was a gapless process. Learn then repeat. Of course Maureen showed or re-explained if I or Vicky were a little too unsure to take the dive but for the most part I had to hold my head back from thinking about it just go with what she said and afterwards it all clicked into a brilliant planned set of techniques.
I have made a set here on Flickr with a few pictures of the end product from the day and a few shots elsewise.
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