Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

It’s the corruption, stupid.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!

Cole is on a roll !

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

White supremacy is terrorism.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

American History and Black History can not be separated.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Let there be snark.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

You are here: Home / Artists In Our Midst / Artists in Our Midst – Bookbinding!

Artists in Our Midst – Bookbinding!

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Our featured artist today is Don Rash, aka Subcommandante Yakbreath.  Let’s give him a warm welcome!

If you would like your talent featured in the Artists in Our Midst series or Authors in Our Midst series, send me an email message.  Don’t be shy!  Please get in touch if you would like to be featured.

Most of my daily work as a bookbinder is not particularly artistic, ranging from repairs of personal books to institutional book and paper conservation.

Once in a while, though, either because I have a text that speaks to me, or by virtue of a commission, I have the opportunity produce a design binding, a functional hybrid of craft and art inspired by some aspect of the text.

The binding in this first image is a commission from 2016 on Julian Barnes’ The Noise of Time, a novel inspired by the life of Dmitri Shostakovich. This is a full leather binding with leather onlays (small pieces of leather pared very thin and adhered to the base leather before covering), and is tooled in gold and blind (just the tool impression darkened by moisture and heat).

While leather has been the material of choice for bookbindings of quality for well over a millenium, it plays well with other materials. The next book is bound in decorated paper with leather strips at the head and tail used as an accent. This is a limited edition book documenting a group of finishing tools that one of my mentors, Fritz Eberhardt, made for his own work. It’s one of 80 copies I printed on the press shown below under the rubric of The Boss Dog Press and bound by hand.

Some people assuage their mid-life crises by buying a car; I got a twelve hundred pound Washington iron handpress. This is the heart of the Boss Dog Press, which has produced a whole seven titles since its inception twenty years ago. Surprisingly, these presses were made as late as the 1920’s.

The last book is the most recent (2021) BDP imprint, and makes me very happy. Susan Cooper, author of the fantasy sequence The Dark Is Rising, graciously gave permission to reprint an insightful lecture on fantasy that she delivered at the Toronto Public Library. This is also a decorated paper binding. The technique is known as ebru (cloud art) or Turkish marbling; it’s the process of floating water based ink on the surface of a viscous liquid, then picking it up onto a sheet of paper. The process was invented in Turkiye around 1500 and is still considered a fine art technique there. In the West it’s been used primarily to produce decorated endpapers for books. This is a fairly contemporary design that I think suits the subject matter.

I want to end by saying that, though I seldom contribute to the discussions here, I’m grateful for everybody who does. This place has been a permanent browser tab for well over a decade and, after email, is the first and last thing I read online every day. I’ve come to depend on it for the breadth and depth of insight that’s shared by the jackaltariat, so thanks to all who make this site what it is.

 

Reader Interactions

61Comments

  1. 1.

    Alison Rose

    These are gorgeous, and it’s so cool to learn a little about this! As a book nerd, this is the kind of Art™ that appeals to my heart and soul :) I’m always really happy to find hardcovers made with care and interest, and I love pulling off a dustjacket to find something neat underneath. Thank you so much for sharing this with us!

  4. 4.

    WaterGirl

    Don –  or should I call you  Subcommandante Yakbreath – please let us know when you get here.  I imagine people will have questions.

  5. 5.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    These are so beautiful. True works of art. And Susan Cooper! Cool!

    So you do book conservator work too? My book club recently read Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book. The central character is a book conservator, and there was some really interesting stuff about how she didn’t try to remove a wine stain because it was part of the history of the book. There’s a whole philosophy there that I’d never even thought about.

  6. 6.

    Zelma

    So beautiful.  My father was in printing and occasionally he would be gifted with specially printed, specially bound books.  I am glad to learn that the old art form is still being practiced.

  8. 8.

    trollhattan

    Those are lovely!

    What tiny bit about bookbinding I know stems from a tour as a grade schooler of the Seattle main library book bindery, where they re-bound worn books in house. Fascinating! but far short of what’s being shown here.

    Later learned about perfect binding, signatures, comb, spiral, etc. as part of spec’ing printed projects, but they were handled externally, other than comb binding.

    And now: PDFs!

  9. 9.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Beautiful and fascinating. I remember studying for the Bibliophile merit badge in Girl Scouts, and it was my early introduction to the topic. I will also confess to a fondness for a series of extremely lightweight mysteries by Kate Carlisle whose protagonist is a professional bookbinder; the mysteries themselves are pretty forgettable, but her research seems to be solid and I’ve learned a lot from the series about both the art and the craft of book restoration.

  10. 10.

    Scout211

    Those books are beautiful.

    After I retired, I spent about five years volunteering at our local county library. At the time they were short of funds and anytime they had a newbie volunteer, they asked the newbies to learn a variety of jobs.  One of the jobs that they asked me to learn was book repair. Sounds simple, right?  Nope.

    After studying every video online I could find and reading public library guides for book repairs, it became clear to me that books just aren’t made the way they used to be.  Books with beautiful bindings, like your photos illustrate, are not what we see these days or even what we used to check out at the library when many of us (olds) were young.  Even the gold lettering on the second book, something that we saw on most books in the past, are gone from most books today.

    Thankfully, with your post today, I can see it’s not exactly a lost art.  Maybe just a rare art today.

  11. 11.

    Subcommandante Yakbreath

    Thank you all for the gracious welcome. I answer to anything, but Don is short. With regard to Dorothy’s comment, there’s been a movement away from replacing everything except the printed pages, as was common up through the mid 20th Century. These days the appropriate practice to retain as much of the original structure and covering materials as is feasible.

  16. 16.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    Exquisite!  Thank you for sharing.  My area of expertise is as an art historian working in museums (undergraduate at the College of William and Mary) and I have found over the years that that there is nothing like taking notes and writing thoughts with a fountain pen in a properly bound commonplace book.

  17. 17.

    Alison Rose

    I’m curious how you got into this work? Was it something you pursued intentionally or did you sort of happen into it by way of something adjacent?

  18. 18.

    Subcommandante Yakbreath

    @raven:

    Somebody neglected to cut the folds off before putting the textblock into the cover. It happens on occasion. If it’s a collectible book you might want to leave it as is because an uncut copy will be rare. If you want to use it, very carefully cut the folds open with a knife (or have a bookbinder do it).

  19. 19.

    raven

    @Subcommandante Yakbreath: Thanks, the entire book is like that so that’s why I wondered. It was printed in 1956 and there are many of them for sale so I’ll just leave it alone

     

    eta

    the inside of all those double pages are blanks.

  20. 20.

    Subcommandante Yakbreath

    @Alison Rose: A little of both. I was always a bookworm. In college I did some calligraphy and got interested in the book arts but didn’t know how to proceed. A couple of years after graduating, a friend told me about a job opening at Haverford College library for a bindery assistant. I applied, but got the bookbinder’s job due to enthusiasm, and willingness to work for the (small) salary. Stumbled along for a year or so and then was lucky enough to begin studying with two major figures, Trudi and Fritz Eberhardt. I took classes with them for about six or seven years, then moved up here to Northeasern PA and have been working for myself ever since.

  24. 24.

    Steeplejack

    @Cheryl from Maryland:

    [. . .] there is nothing like taking notes and writing thoughts with a fountain pen in a properly bound commonplace book.

    I would be right there with you except that—tragedy of my life—I write left-handed. Smear city! I have tried and tried over the years, but no luck. I have a couple of fountain pens, one inherited from my father, that I occasionally stare at wistfully.

  26. 26.

    raven

    Nice synopsis of Red Grange’s career at the University of Illinois.

    This hardcover book is part of a (six volume?) series of books that were compiled written by James A. Peterson,

    a Hinckley & Schmitt lawyer and officer, for promotional purposes in the 1950s.

    Hinckley & Schmitt, the bottled water company, held luncheons for football players and its best customers and others at Chicago venues.
    This book is in very good vintage condition, clean & fully intact!

  29. 29.

    kalakal

    Those books are beautiful. And I love the Turkish marbling. Thank you so much for putting up this post, I’ve been a bookworm all my life and adore really fine editions

  30. 30.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: My Dad would have loved that.  The restaurant in Champaign called The Ribeye has all those old sports legends up on the walls, and I remember eating there with him once and he talked all about Red Grange.

  32. 32.

    Yarrow

    This is so cool. Thank you for sharing it with us. I didn’t know anything about any of this. Very interesting.

  34. 34.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Subcommandante Yakbreath:

    LOL, yes, but her parents make a lot of money through their winery, so perhaps some of it is family money. From your expert perspective, would you say the technical details as described are accurate?

  42. 42.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: I loved Vriners!  I used to go there a lot.  They are closed now, I think.  Right?

    It had a bit of the feel of my parent’s tavern.  As did Farren’s.  Damn them for moving, it’s just not the same and the food isn’t half as good.

    edited

  43. 43.

    Anoniminous

    I love the book arts and have deep respect for the handful of people keeping the skills alive.

    IIRC the Washington Press has excellent registration.  If you haven’t already reached out to the local artists as another income stream.

  44. 44.

    WaterGirl

    @Alison Rose: There are still places in Champaign where you can pick out your steak, and you can choose to cook it yourself on their huge grill, or they can cook it for you.

    There’s also a famous steakhouse and hour or two away that does the same thing.

  48. 48.

    Subcommandante Yakbreath

    One thing I want to say is that there are a lot more opportunities to learn various aspects of the book arts these days than when I got started back in the late 70s. A lot of metropolitan areas have institutions or private groups of calligraphers or book artists that offer classes. Here in the US the national organization is the Guild of Book Workers; Canada has the Canadian Book Binders and Book Artists Guild. So if this sort of thing interests you, there’s probably somewhere you can learn.

  49. 49.

    WaterGirl

    @Subcommandante Yakbreath: I imagine this thread will go on for awhile, but I want to take a minute to thank you for sharing your work with us!

    Also, I try to remember to remind the authors / artists that these thread often get late comments, in the evening and the next morning, so whenever you head out, please check back later, too.

    Thank you!

  52. 52.

    Central Planning

    @Subcommandante Yakbreath: ​  When I was a kid (I think the summer after I was 13, maybe 14), I started working in a small, family-owned publishing company. Over the next 2-3 years I learned and did everything – typesetting, plate making, printing, folding, assembling, binding, and shipping of books. Some of the machines were new, like the printing presses, cutters, and folders. Some were super old (probably from the 30s or 40s), like the gigantic machine that made book covers, to the small, human powered ones that put metal corners on books.It was an awesome job, and I loved it because I was creating physical things at the end of the day.
    Your post brings back great memories. All new employees got hazed with the “Electrostatic Black” ink we used. Because it had static in the name, we told the new folks that the ink actually jumped between the rollers on the printing press, and that it was a very strong and you could feel the pull of the ink if you put your hand over it. Once they did that someone would smack their hand down on the ink. Ahhhh, to be a kid again…​​

  53. 53.

    Tehanu

    Very nice. I truly enjoy a well-designed book — both the binding and the printing — although I have so many now that I’ve pretty much gone over to e-books; I just don’t have room on my shelves any more.

  57. 57.

    raven

    @WaterGirl:

    Family owned & operated, Beef House was established in 1964 and has continued to be operated through four generations of the Wright family.  We have named our restaurant “ BEEF HOUSE”  because we are serving high choice aged beef at moderate prices.

     

    We believe that most people dining out will enjoy our steaks cooked over hardwood briquets on our open hearth charcoal broiler, In sight before, during, and after cooking.

  59. 59.

    BretH

    A good friend a while back was a bookbinder, and some of my best times were spent in his shop, having him talk about his art or watching him at work. Thanks for sharing these things of beauty. I know the interiors, while not as decorative as the outside, are just as artistically done.

  60. 60.

    StringOnAStick

    So cool to see this and to know there are bookbinders in the world.  I’ve always felt that the printed word is sacred and contains the best and highest of humanity.  Seeing ancient text thrills me.  I feel a pain in my soul when I see crap like Regnery books, like it’s a violation of the paper and ink to be forced into that position.

  61. 61.

    Ramalama

    Your work is beautiful and I love to hold books with special binding, covers. I appreciate all of it so much that I took a bookbinding course for a weekend and was so bad at it that I became the slowest, worst student. Everyone grokked basic stitches right away. I kept thinking I’d gotten it only to see that I was and remain better suited to digging a ditch than doing any work physically on a book. BRavo to you for your work.

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