My most recent binding is a little miniature book, filled with beautifully colourful illustrations and annotations of the Italian city, Venice. The book is by the British artist Barbara Dorf (1933 – 2016). She was born into a North London Jewish middle class family in November 1933, her father was a Polish furrier whose business was bombed during the war. She studied at the Central School of Art and Crafts in London and then she won a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art, studying there until 1962. Ever with few funds she sat as a nude model, taught at the Ruskin School of Drawing and at Oxford Brookes University and in several girls’ boarding schools.
It is hard to find much information on her and her work but I do know that she painted architectural subjects in oil and watercolour and in charcoal drawings, and was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy in London and with the New English Art Club. Works by Barbara Dorf are in the British Museum collection and also held by both Lady Margaret Hall and St Edmund Hall in Oxford. Kingston University holds an archive of Dorf’s long-term correspondence with her friend, the author Iris Murdoch.
The original binding was covered in calf on the spine, with the title ‘Venice’ tooled in gold onto the leather. The boards were covered in marbled paper. I first removed the text block from the case and then removed the linings from the spine in order to get the pages free. Each section was made up of just one folded folio, many of which were illustrated with watercolour pictures of Venice scenes.
The first thing to consider was how I was going to rebind it. I found some paper of the same weight and folded up the same number of sections as that of the real book in order to create a mock-up of the binding. Given the scale of the book I decided to use a concertina stub binding method, and worked first on a complete sample book (see below right image).
The colour theme within the text block was mixed with rich purples, blues, greens, oranges and gold. I chose to create an overall design using a green and orange colour palette. I had a lovely pale green paper that I chose to use for the concertina stubs. It was the same thickness as the paper of the sections, meaning each section was allocated a v-fold in the concertina to be sewn to.
I cut a long strip of paper to the same width as the height of the sections. I then used a square profile piece of metal bar as a folding gauge, making sure as I worked my way along the strip of paper that each fold was parallel to the next. I used the original sewing stations in the twelve sections to create a pricking template, which was then used to transfer corresponding sewing holes into the concertina.
Each section was then sewn to the concertina using thin linen thread, using a pamphlet stitch with the knot tied within the concertina fold. The end of the concertinaed paper was left long in order to fold and create an endpaper at either end of the text block.
Once all of the sections were attached to the concertina, I glued together the concertina folds to encapsulate the threads holding the sections in place. Below you can see how I used the extra length of the green paper to create some double-thickness endpapers at either side of the text block. I also then sewed on some extra leather-jointed endpapers to either side of the text block.
I was then ready to sew the other ends of the folded concertina paper together to stabilise the spine. I created a second pricking template, and used this to make holes in which to sew the spine ends of the concertina to three thin tapes. I used the same thin gauge linen thread to do this.
I was left with a nice stable text block, in which the pages opened freely. I added a double tier leather-covered endband to the top and tail of the spine, with a little strip of thread detail on each tier. The plan was to case the text block into a cover made off the book which I was then able to work on next.
I was lucky enough to visit Venice a few years ago, and along with the Cicchetti (The Venetian answer to Spanish tapas), Bellinis, the bridges, and of course the canals, one of the main things that stuck in my mind was the colourful poles you see everywhere.
The poles that line the canals of Venice are called “Pali di casada”, which is translated as, “poles of the family”. These colourful poles are painted in family colours and were originally placed in front of palaces to help visitors recognise them at night. Traditionally on top of each pole, an oil lamp shed light in the dark. Nowadays, these oil lamps are replaced by modern caps or “cappellozzi”; which they symbolise. The designs are all different in size, design and colour; depending on their location.
I decided to base the cover design on these poles, which also feature in Barbara Dorf’s little paintings within the book. The colour theme within the text block is mixed with rich purples, blues, greens, oranges and gold. I chose to create a design using a green and orange colour palette.
I chose to use a dark green goatskin for the spine of the book, and some pale green “pistachio” coloured buffalo skin for the covers – both of which were split to 0.8mm in thickness. Using the dark green goatskin, I paired this together with cream goatskin to create stripy onlays, cut to different widths to vary the size of the pali di casada on the covers. Once struck down, and their caps were added, it was time to start the embroidery phase.
I hand-embroidered details along the length of each pole using both coloured and metallic threads. I also added little seed stitches around the poles on the bottom half of the covers, to give the appearance of the shimmering water of the canals.
I wanted to title the spine, and found what I believed to be an appropriate font – which I pricked through a template and then sewed to an orange goatskin leather label which I would affix to the green goatskin spine.
I also made up the case for the binding at this stage too. I laminated together some small boards, and cut a piece of wooden dowel to length for the spine. The wooden dowel was half-round in profile and I covered it with layers of watercolour paper to bring it up to the necessary width to accommodate the text block and the boards.
The boards and the spine piece were joined together with a piece of linen, making sure that I left some space for the covering materials at the joint area. The boards were then bevelled with a French paring knife before being sanded.
I had decided from the beginning that I wanted to play around with a catch for this binding. I thought it would be fun to try and create a little miniature wooden pole to match the profile of those on the cover design, which would be able to slide in and out of some brass armatures, fixed to the boards of the book.
I am fortunate to have a master woodworker, Stephen Stokes, living very close to me in the village of Bodden Cross. He runs Bodden Cross Studio, where he teaches wood turning and letter carving, as well as taking on commissions. This was probably the smallest in scale commission he has done to date, I had a selection made for me to choose between and I was very pleased with the results from my odd request!
The one I chose to use I added an orange bead to the top of it by drilling a small hole through it and passing a brass finding through the bead and gluing it into the end of the wood.
For the brass armatures that would act as the clasp for the book, I sourced some brass rod to the correct inner dimension as the turned wooden rod. I soldered this onto some flat brass rod, which I would later be able to bend into the correct shape so that when the boards of the book were closed the holes would line up and the wooden rod could be slid through them.
I cut a channel into the inside face of both boards, to the depth of the brass strip. I cut it overlong and played around with where I needed to attach the brass so that the two pieces would be aligned as the construction of the book progressed. Once I was happy with the placement, I used epoxy glue to fix the brass pieces in position.
I never like to solely trust glue over time incase it fails in due course. So I additionally drilled a series of small holes through the brass and boards and also mechanically fixed them in place by twisting thin brass wire to secure them.
A final layer of Watercolour paper was added to the outside of the boards, and sanded once dry to conceal both the linen underneath and also the brass wires. I also filled in the inside of the boards and added an extra layer of Zerkall that was sanded flush.
The final step was to cover the brass pieces in leather. I used Lascaux glue to fix affix a thin layer of lens tissue around the surface of the brass. Lascaux glue allows porous materials to be stuck to non-porous materials. I was then able to glue a thinly-pared piece of the dark green goatskin onto the outer surface of the brass (see below image on the right).
The case of the book was then ready to have the leather spine applied to it. I marked the positioning onto the back of the spine leather and applied glue to the case. The head and tail of the false round wooden dowel were then covered by cutting the leather into points and gluing them down to the ends (see the below right photo).
I stuck a piece of Zerkall down to top of the leather I had turned in at the dowel ends and sanded it flat. I then pared two pieces of very thin leather to match, cut them into the profile of the rounded spine, edge pared them to nothing and glued them down to conceal the sanded Zerkall on the ends.
The bull skin was then glued to the front and back boards using a mix of PVA glue and paste. I was then ready to case in the text block.
Once the text block was stuck in at the spine area, I put the leather joints down. They were mitred in with the turn-ins, giving an area central on the boards to be infilled to bring it up level across the whole face.
For the doublures, I decorated them to appear like “Terrazzo”. The origins of Terrazzo can trace their roots across the globe and as far back as ancient Egypt, but modern-day Terrazzo that we use today began its story around 500 years ago in Venice, Italy. Venetian artisans of the time began to take the discarded chips from marble slabs and imbed them into concrete mixtures creating an attractive tile with coloured flecks.
I pared off thin pieces of leather in greens, oranges, cream and gold and stuck them randomly onto some pale green bull skin to create the effect, I was really pleased with how it looked. The back edges of the doublures were pared and then stuck down to the insides of the boards, which had been lined and sanded flush. I also used the small leather pieces to adorn the spine area.
The binding was then complete! So time to think about the container that it would be housed in…
I can’t recall exactly how the idea struck in my head, but I had quite a strong vision of what I wanted to do for the container for this book. Fortunately the woodworker who makes my boxes for me was willing to give this more elaborate one a go for me!
I designed the box to give the appearance of a Venetian window from both the outside and the inside of the lid. The book would be seen through the ‘window’ in the closed lid of the box, as if looking out onto the canal from inside a Venetian building with the blind half closed. When the lid is opened, the outside of the window, with shutters, is visible.
For the outer lid of the box, I took inspiration for the pattern from some wall painting I saw in a church in the Italian city of Pisa during the summer holidays. This was made up of a circular design in colours very similar to that of the miniature book.
I drew the concentric circle design onto a piece of cream paper, and then out it down onto a light box so I could see the pattern through the paper. I cut out pieces of orange paper for the diamond shapes of the pattern and glued them down, using the lines I could see as reference.
I then cut an approximation of the window shape out of the paper, as this area didn’t need the patterning on it. I used the same green paper as I had used for the stubs in the binding to fill in the gaps of the wallpaper pattern with lozenge-shaped pieces. The final stage was I added small Moon gold dots where each of the lozenge points met.
The box was made bigger than the book to allow for the format of a long thin window to adorn the lid of it. My box maker created a well within the base of the box for the book to sit. This needed to be padded out and lined and I needed to devise a way for the book to be lifted out of the box.
I hinged two pieces of Gemini board together with a piece of linen and then covered the two sides with paper and leather to match the binding. I added a leather tab, which is what would be used to lift the hinged board to allow the book to be taken out. This was then glued into the well of the box.
I then lined the rest of the box base with the dark green goatskin and added more leather terrazzo pieces to pattern it. The “outer wall” of the building (so the inside of the box lid) was lined with paper, and the “inner wall” (the outer lid of the box) was then lined with the wallpaper I had made.
The shutters for the box were painted dark green to match the colour of the goatskin, along with the windowsill. These were then stuck in position using PVA glue and I created a Roman-style blind for the window.
Here are some images of the completed book, more can be seen on my website here.
