This fabulous array – if I may be so immodest – is the product of a couple of courses that I have been on recently at Hot Bed Press and The Portico Library.  The three thinner ones, bottom right, are all pretty simple combinations of paper and thin card cover which are stitched together in the middle.  The long thin one (bottom middle) is known as Japanese stab stitch and is the same simple construction but you can see how the stitching holds it together.  The bigger grey one and the smaller, thicker one at top left are both open spined so that you can see the decorative stitching which is holding them together.  Top right is a standard hard back with blocks of paper aligned inside (known as ‘signatures’)  The smallest one at top middle is a concertina book with lettering – which I will come back too.

This kind of bookmaking is not expensive and not too difficult if you are reasonably dexterous.  It is also very contemplative. The handling of simple objects such as paper and card, needle and thread, the coordination of hand and eye, and a steady pace all combine to lower the blood pressure significantly.

My personal interest, as regular readers will know, is in the use of this kind of book for the interaction of text and photograph.  In particular the larger open-spined book and the Japanese stab stitch make layout very simple because they have no signatures: they consist simply of page upon page all sewn together.  This means that layout is a cinch.  With the others layout is more complicated because sections are folded into sections so you have to work out the whole scheme before you start printing.

The other subject that I picked up some good tips on was paper weight.  Paper weight is expressed in ‘grams per square metre’ (gsm) and goes of course from the flimsiest paper to the thickest card.  Obviously there is an optimum range for a book which will combine the practicalities of folding with a reasonably long life.  There are also questions of shade, texture and grain.  Fortunately, at Hot Bed Press, I stumbled on the enormous G F Smith catalogue (also available online) with its seemingly infinite ranges of paper.  Each paper is annotated with shades, weights and so on but best of all, printer compatibility.  Two papers recommended for laserjet printing by our tutor from this range were Munken and Syklus.  (Impressed with that detail?  Just thought I’d let you know.)

So bit by bit I am edging crab-like towards the goal of producing a hand-made photobook combining text and image.  I just have to work out what to put in it now.

Just one last thing.  The rather eyecatching cover of the concertina book is in fact a woodblock letter print that I also made at Hot Bed Press.  We were supposed to be printing words but when I saw the letter outlines in such a large size I decided to ditch meaning and just go for shape.  This was the result.

 I was pleased.  I thought it had a touch of the Soviet Constructivist about it.  I’ll probably frame it.