Rebecca Edition Run Part Four: Leatherwork, Embroidery and Book Covering

One of the crucial things to get right when working on an edition run is ordering the correct amount of materials for all the books. Once I had made the prototype book and box I had a good idea of the quantity of leather, boards, bookcloth etc, for the job. I was most anxious about ordering the correct amount of leather, as that was the most costly of the materials. I had to order just enough to cover the run, without ordering too much that I would forever more be making dark green custom coloured bindings!

I sent the sample of green leather I had used for the sample board (see blog post one for information on the sample board) to J. Hewit and Sons Ltd. They are a well-established company with a 200 year history of manufacturing the finest quality leathers for bookbinding and leather goods production. I was informed that the sample I sent them was lighter than their standard ‘Colour 7’ Chieftain Goat, but that they should be able to match it. I was only going to need 13 skins for the edition run, but they were not able to dye less than 24 Chieftain Goatskins at any one time. Luckily for me, at the time I contacted them they were due to dye a pack of goatskins to their ‘Colour 7’, so my skins were added to that order.

As I had completed the forwarding of the books, I was able to create an accurate paper template which was sized to fit exactly around the text blocks with a 20mm margin all around for the turn-ins. I placed this template on the reverse of the green leather and drew the outline onto the back of the skins, including the position of the board joints, and cut the pieces I needed (see above image).

As the leather had been split to 0.8mm, no further edge paring of the turn-ins or thinning of the leather at the board joints was necessary. I was therefore able to progress with cutting out the printed onlays. Lisa Takahashi had printed the rhododendron flowers onto squares of thinned bullskin that was backed onto Japanese tissue. The tissue on the back on the onlay made it nice and stable and helped retain the shape of the onlay once it was cut out.

I used a scalpel with a 10A blade in it to cut out the onlays one-by-one. 10A blades are great general purpose shape that I use a lot of the time, they have a straight-edge with a strong tip and fit into a size 3 handle. I worked from the front of the onlay so I could see the outline of the printed flower, and I cut carefully around this outline with the blade held at an angle of around 45 degrees. In the below right image you can see how the cut is angled, so that the upper edge of the onlay is slightly larger in size with the cut angled away from this edge.

Once I had the size of the covering leather and the size and shape of the onlays, I was able to create a tracing paper template to use when positioning the onlay onto the green goatskin.

In turn I laid each green leather cover in position under the tracing paper template. I used PVA glue, applied, with a foam roller, onto the reverse of the rhododendron onlays and stuck them down in position. they were then rubbed down with a Teflon folder and left to dry.

I could then start the task of paring the leather. I wanted to pare the leather in three places on the back of the skin: the corners where the leather would be turned in around the boards; the head and tail of the spine where the leather would be turned down into the hollow; and the reverse of where the onlays had been glued down.

Leather paring is the process of thinning leather by cutting away strips. At all four corners of the skin I cut a mitred angle off at about 3mm from where the board corner was marked. Using my French paring knife I then pared an angled cut out to this line (see below left image).

At the head and tail of the spine, I took a ‘scooped’ cut from each end of the skin using my French paring knife (below left image). This was then feathered out from further back into the skin to create a long bevelled cut (below right image). It is important to take away enough leather here, so that no ridge of step is visible on the spine of the book once it is covered in leather. I flipped the leather over and folded the turn-in back on itself, and tested it by rubbing my finger across this area to check that it felt smooth.

“Back paring leather” refers to the process of thinning down the flesh side (the back) of a leather piece with a paring knife. This involves carefully shaving off excess leather from the underside of the skin to achieve a desired thickness and is typically done in bookbinding to level out the cover of the book. The leather is held against a smooth surface like a lithographic stone while the knife is carefully moved across the back, gradually shaving away material. 

I always favour a French paring knife when I do my back-paring, however different binders use different tools to achieve the same end result (for example a spokeshave or a razor blade plane). I strop the blade of the knife regularly to make sure it remains as sharp as possible. “Stropping” is the final step in sharpening a knife, which involves polishing the edge to remove imperfections.

The very final stage that the leather went through before I moved onto the embroidery was to add some small extra onlays onto the centre of the rhododendron flowers for the stamen ends. I cut multiple small oval onlays by hand from thinly pared maroon goatskin (below left image). Six of each were then stuck to the centres of the onlay flowers and left to dry (below right image).

I was then able to start embroidering, the bit I love the most! I completed one cover entirely from beginning to end and worked out a step-by-step plan for the embroidery based on this. I then applied the embroidery threads one colour at a time to all the other covers in turn, which I felt was a more efficient way of doing this stage of the project. I pre-pricked the holes for the stitches using a needle pricker, which I then used as a guide and it also meant the needle was easier to pull through an already made hole.

The majority of the embroidery was done using 6-strand embroidery floss which is a thread made of six strands of cotton that are loosely twisted together. As I was stitching onto dark green leather I cut the lengths of thread I was using quite short, as they tend to pick up the colour from the leather and can start to appear dirty as the stitching progresses if the lengths are too long. Once a piece was cut and separated, I pulled the thread through a block of beeswax to coat it which helps the fibres of the thread stick together and prevents fraying.

I kept accurate notes about the order of the embroidery that is not necessary to go into detail with in this blog post, but to summarise:

• Using 2 strands of pale green thread I “tacked” the maroon onlays on the stamens (above right image)
• I tied 11 pale green and 9 orange French knots in the flower centres (below left image)

• Using one strand of maroon thread in whipped running stitch, I sewed the stamens (above right image)
• I used 2 strands of thread in a whipped running stitch to apply all the lines of definition in a variety of pink, purple and white thread on the petals (below left image)
• I used 2 strands of thread in a whipped running stitch to apply all the lines of definition in a variety of green and maroon thread on the leaves (below right image, visible on the reverse of the leather)

The final stage was to add some finer polyester threads that were couched into position. Couching is a hand embroidery technique where a thread is laid on the surface of a fabric and then secured in place with small, regular stitches made with another thread along its length. The two threads can be of contrasting colour and thickness, but for these flowers the same colour thread was used for both steps.

The whole time I was embroidering the stack of covers, I kept referring to the first one I had done to check that the stitches I continued to do were correct.

I intentionally used quite heavy weight embroidery threads so that they would give an extra dimension to the cover design, which is especially apparent when viewed under raking light – like in the below left image.

I find the back of the embroidery to be as interesting (if not more so) than the front. I always try to capture the backside of an embroidered piece where the thread pattern is visible, showcasing my process through a somewhat messy or intricate arrangement of stitches. It reveals the unique details of how the design was created, rather than just the neat version on the front (below right image).

I carried the stacks of leather covers around my house and studio to do bits whenever I could steal a spare moment. What felt like months later resulted in lot of covers ready to stick onto the bindings and I just had to capture all the finished covers together for a few photographs…

I love this working shot of my studio with all the bench space taken up by piles of Rebecca-related things. I haven’t yet written about how I made the clamshell boxes for this edition run (it’s coming up in post six of this series) although in fact I had already started to make the base trays – as you can see in the rear of the picture below.

Before I put glue to leather there were some final crucial steps to ensure I was ready to combine the text blocks and the covering material. I made sure each of the books had the front and back boards marked as it would have been awful to stick one on upside down (below left image).

I also back-cornered the boards which refers to the technique of carefully cutting away a small triangular piece from the head and tail edges of the boards at the joints, allowing the cover material to fold neatly around the spine without causing the boards to bulge at the corners (upper right image).

Once the text blocks and the covers were completely ready, it was time to make some paste. I combine strong white bread flour and water in a bain-marie which is heated and stirred with a whisk until smooth. I let the paste cool before using it and any remaining paste can stored in the fridge and lasts about 5 days (although I was using so much of it to cover all these books I didn’t really need to store any on this occasion).

The front of the leather was dampened using water strayed by an atomiser. I then turned the leather over and applied three layers of paste to the flesh side of the leather, giving it time in between applications to penetrate it. I also applied some PVA glue to the joints area of the text block, plus some in the label recess. I did this as I wanted to give extra adhesive strength to these areas when the book was covered in leather.

Using the outline of the spine and the boards I had drawn on the reverse of the leather as a guide, I positioned the text block spine onto the leather and drew up the sides. Using the palm of my hand, I pushed the covering leather into position onto the boards.

I then lay the book with the end of the spine overhanging the bench. I opened the boards and eased open the hollow on the book spine. Using a thin spatula, I pushed the turn-in leather down into the hollow (bottom left image). The same was repeated at the other end of the spine and the leather was turned in around all the board edges.

Using the same thin spatula, some of the leather was eased back up from inside the hollow (below upper right image). This gave enough leather to then form into the endcap. A piece of linen thread was tied around the spine of the book (below bottom right image) which allowed the endcaps to be further shaped into the desired form. As this element of the binding process has to be done quite quickly and takes two hands, I only have selective images of these steps – perhaps one day I’ll try and film the steps instead!

The leather was also moulded into the recess on the spine whilst damp using a Teflon folder.

This was a daunting part of the process and I was really happy once all the books had their covers on! Part five in this series of blog posts will cover: gluing down the leather joints; infilling the inner boards and sticking down the edge-to-edge paper doublures.