The Vespiary Book Binding & Book Conservation

Well folks, it’s all done. I know it’s been a long haul, but  I hope you can come help me celebrate the completion of the new workshop. Come enjoy the company of fellow bibliophiles on June 26th from 2pm til evening with a potluck/BBQ. We’ll have some food and drink, but bring something to share.  I’ll have some journals and repairs in progress on display, and maybe do some demos too.  RSVP in the comments section. I hope you can make it!

(Apologies to those who have already received an invite - I’m trying to cover all my bases!)

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The time has come to decide on the face of the shed. Even though this part of the process is the most cosmetic, I feel like it is the most important. I am a slave to Benjamin Moore and so I went to their shop in town to pick some color swatches. The main dilemma is, do we stick with the same sea-foam green palette as the old shed and the rest of the house, or do we go with something radical and new? The dutch-lap wood siding has gone up and we primed it over the weekend. The Benjamin-Moore website has a cool feature (the Personal Color Viewer) that allows you to upload a photo of your house, map out paintable areas, and preview the potential colors. The only downside (at least on my computer) is that I was not getting a good match between the digital swatch and the actual one in my hand. The online versions were much more pastel-like and washed out.

That said, the gif above was made from the 4 general choices I’m going with.

Red = Caliente

Yellow = Firefly

Green = Seedling

Blue-grey = Templeton Grey

And don’t forget what the shed looked like at the beginning of the project!

See, it looks the same, right?

If you read this blog, my guess is that you are either a serious craftsperson, or an enthusiastic hobbyist. You probably frequent DIY craft sites like Etsy, Craftster, or Make.  Like me, you have probably found examples of ingenious projects as well as a fair share of handmade abominations (I’m backed up by Regretsy on this). But when do amateur attempts at professional activity cross the line?

I ask, because recently a project on the Instructables website really set me off. I had to really examine it to make sure it was not a tongue-in-cheek parody, but I believe it to be a genuine attempt at repairing a book that has detached from its binding. Each step was more horrific than the next (wait til the last step - you’ll lose your mind), and resulted in an irreversible destruction of a book that could have easily been rehabilitated.

It was not a valuable book.  I am not completely opposed to modifying books (i.e. artist’s books, book sculpture, books into purses) as long as some attention is paid to the value (dollar and intrinsic) and scarcity of the item.  And I feel a little hypocritical in my horror, since I have tried to teach myself to do a number of things that stand firmly in the territory of professionals.  Perhaps it was the fact that this set of instructions was featured on the Instructables home page.  Perhaps it was something about the tone of the author, or his lack of research into the basic fundamentals of bookbinding.

The book as a piece of technology is deceptively complex. It is such a ubiquitous object in our modern lives that people take this complexity for granted. I think this has resulted in two trends - a severe decrease in the quality of mass-produced bindings, and an under-appreciation for the skill of the hand-bookbinder. So many times I have heard the words, “can’t you just fix this with a little Elmer’s down the spine?” or “I thought I could just tape it back together.” I never hear people tell their auto mechanic, “I’m sure you could fix that belt with a little duct tape,” unless it’s someone working on my ancient VW camper.

What do you think of current attitudes and trends in the DIY universe? If you’re a professional, how do you handle enthusiastic but totally wrong-headed amateurism? Are you a rabid ambassador of your craft, educating anyone who will sit still long enough to hear out your elevator pitch? Post your thoughts in the comments.

It’s been quite a while, but I’m happy to say that I’ve been thoroughly enjoying working in the new shed (flickr set). Habits die hard - I still call it the shed even though it’s more like a posh cottage. The little oil radiator heats the space well, but struggles a bit when the mercury dips below the teens (in Fahrenheit). I love not having to set up my workspace at the kitchen table anymore, and being able to organize my tools and supplies.

The upstairs is a great little reading nook, and in winter is often 10 degrees warmer than the workspace below, so it’s sometimes TOO tempting to bail on working and go up to read instead. I finished my Master’s of Library Science this past December (hence the big gap in blog posts), and have now been able to get back into free reading again. I just devoured People of the Book (yes, the heroine is a book conservator), and am now tucking into A Universal History of the Destruction of Books (I know, light reading, right?).  The author makes a compelling point in the first chapter that “the discovery of the earliest books also establishes the date of their earliest destruction.”  But that’s a theme for another post… Anyway, it’s been great to watch the snow fall in the garden through the skylight while indulging in my favorite pastime.

The outside of the shed is still just covered in building wrap as I try to search for the perfect siding. So far I’ve contemplated Hardi-board, ship-lap, dutch-lap, and a half-half wood siding + weathered corrugate metal. I think to match the old building and the flavor of the neighborhood, I’m going to try to find some dutch-lap wood siding, either locally milled or reclaimed.

Bonus! The cat has figured out how to get into that snuggly loft:

A couple of interesting videos have crossed my laptop screen over the last few days.  The first is an upcoming documentary called “Between the Folds.” Produced by Green Fuse Films, this movie features a number of artists and scientists who are exploring the bleeding edge of the origami frontier.  It will be broadcast in December on PBS’s Independent Lens program, and at a number of other screenings. As someone who trained as both a scientist and an artist, I frequently drool over elegant marriages of the two, and the recent scientific focus on the art of folding inspires me.

The second video I heard about on the Book-Arts list-serv. It was made by Abigail Uhteg who recently finished an internship at the Women’s Studio Workshop. She made a video flipbook of 3000 photos that she took over the course of two months that detail her process of constructing an edition of 35 artist’s books. I love how the books appear to sew themselves, and how you can briefly see the artist joyfully jump after couching some paper.

I’ve also been addicted to Craft in America, but that’s another story…

I know it’s been a while but I’ve been under the gun to finish a number of projects for the end of my Master’s degree.  However, the shed is nearing completion and I’m rarin’ to move in.

A pal of mine in Helena just alerted me to this fascinating book art exhibit that is touring Montana and hopefully the rest of the nation.  The exhibit is called “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate” and is a testament to how creativity can be used to combat bigotry.  Some time ago, the Montana Human Rights Network acquired a vast number of white-supremacist books. Instead of destroying them, they were donated to various artists to be part of a show with the goals of educating and stimulating dialogue about racism. The show is currently at the Jesse Wilbur Gallery in Bozeman from October 15 til December 15.  It is also scheduled to be shown at Montana State University’s Helen Copeland Gallery from November 23 to December 18. With the frightening resurgence of white supremacist groups (especially here in Montana), it is vital that we combat hate with creativity and resourcefulness.

If you can’t make it (or don’t want to wait til it starts traveling outside of Montana), you can find some of the work included in this collection online. Check out the following:

• Lisa Jarrett (click on “In Equality”)
• Marc Morris
• Robbie McClaran
• Ralph Esposito
• David Kamm

Each of these last few phases really does something radical to the appearance of the Vespiary’s future home. We recently finished wiring and insulating, as well as putting up all the drywall and paneling. We ran out of sheep’s wool and for speed’s sake, we opted for regular ol’ insulation to finish the job. Working with the wool was far and away a much more pleasant experience than fiberglass. That stuff is evil.

It’s getting close to the end and I’m starting to look at workbench and bookshelf plans.  If you have any favorites, pass them my way.  I’m hoping to use up some of the smaller (but very wabi-sabi) leftover pieces.  Here’s a link to a website that had a bunch of woodworking benches.  I think they’ll work out well slightly modified.

Oh yeah, one update I hadn’t put in - see this panel with the holes in it?

Unhappily, it caused me a fairly major injury.  We drilled comparable holes into some 2×4s as vents for the roofline.  The paddlebit on the drill I was using caught in the wood and instead of the bit spinning, the drill spun, and ripped my right arm out of socket.  I’ve got dislocation in my genes it seems, as this is not the first time, but everyone please do your rotator cuff exercises, and watch out for those paddlebit drills!

I’ve been loving the weekly feature in the New York Times, One in Eight Million, which features a short profile of a New York denizen.  Each entry is a beautiful set of black and white portraits narrated by the subject.  This week’s selection was a long time art restorer named Teresa Zakow. She talks about the comfort of continuing her craft after the loss of her husband and fellow restorer, Joel Zakow, who passed away in 2006. Being from Poland, she has an accent that closely resembles my grandmother’s, which makes this bio all the more endearing to me.

It’s really getting exciting now. June and July were all about getting some major work done on the inside of the shed.  We put in the reading/lounging loft (for me, the most anticipated part of the project), and are almost finished with the floor.  This floor just screams Montana. It’s locally harvested circle sawn fir from Superior Hardwoods right here in Missoula. On seeing photos of the floor boards, a friend pointed out that the circle saw was invented by a Shaker woman named Tabitha Babbitt.  The texture that the circle saw leaves on the boards makes me think of Old West saloons, and the stain we just put on over the weekend makes it look like it’s 100 years old again.

Below are some pics of the project, and as always, more can be found in this Flickr photo set.