Saturday was spent at MCBA with the other five MCBA/Jerome recipients and Jeff Rathermel, MCBA’s Executive Director. We learned about six different forms of binding and came away with an example of each that we had each made. The surprising thing to me was that it didn’t take as much time as I had thought to make any of these books, and that it doesn’t take much PVA glue to make them very strong. The glue just needs to be applied in the correct places.

The structures we worked with were an accordion book with joined sections, single sewn and double sewn pamphlets, a Meander fold book, Japanese/Stab binding and finally a drum leaf binding. I think we were all amazed at the speed we managed to complete this in!

Last night was another evening in the Letterpress I workshop. The lead type for the broadside has been set and will be proofed next week along with the lino cut, which has also been finished. For the paper I’ve chosen Zerkhall Frankfurt. We have a range of papers available to us, but of all the warmer papers this has the best balance of texture, colour and weight, although it’s perhaps a little thinner than I would like. The type I want to be a dark grey, but I’m still undecided on the colour of the image. I’ll probably wait and see what’s on the presses on the day.

We also covered setting up with furniture and quoins and the importance of getting the type firm and steady on the press bed.