upon seeing my graily replica diary, my friend exclaimed that she needed a Bond book. something not necessarily NERdy, per se, and obviously not a replica, since young mr bond is not known for his fondness for ancient tomes, but rather, something that would fit right in with that ethos, something, perhaps, that they might sell as Bond Swag. thus was i tasked with the creation of just such an item, and thus did i begin the search for inspiration. my first stop? eBay, of course, were one may find swag both real and imagined. one of the first to catch my eye was a CD emblazoned with the MI6 logo, a rampant lion and rampant horse in a circle. i also saw some movie scripts with “autographs” of the cast members, but the client liked the idea of a Bond dossier, as, frankly, did i.
for those of you already bored with this post, you may find the rest of this post a tad bland. for those of you interested in the creation process, however, please continue on.
this was my first time w/ a new binding style, one i don’t even know the name of. i saw a picture of it in a book conservation manual and performed what i call the zen of carolyn: i took one look at the picture and instantly understood how to do it. yays! (^_^) alas, it turned out to take sooo much longer that i thought. of course, the book is huge, so that was a factor, too, but then i had to go and decide that stations every half inch was the way to go. silly me. the book’s 11.25 by 8.5 inches (a british small demy quarto, for those of you interested), so that’s like 20 stations. 22. something like that, anyway. not like i stopped to count. i started yesterday, and the girl’s birthday was/is today, so i was on, shall we say, a slight deadline.
after a couple moments of poking nasty holes in my table (giving my table a lived-in texture that will be popular one day, damn it, if i have to start that revolution myself!) i got to move on to the sewing part. the first signature was as easy as most, except that you leave a little loop out of the stations, so i had to find a way to keep those things from stripping out and joining their brethren on the inside of the book instead of the outside, where they were suppose to be. so i sliced off a length of hemp cord and wrapped my binding thread around that.
joining that second signature is where we got to the real fun, though. you go up to that first station like normal, but then when you come out of the second station, you thread your needle through that loop you left hanging out of the first signature. this is the part where i thank god for the internets and pictures, because otherwise i’d have no idea how to explain this to you. anyhow, you then enter that second signature via that second station (yup, the one you just came out of, go back in there) and continue down to the next station. it’s actually fairly simple, and it’s really easy, it just seems to take longer than the other case binding stitch i use. plus, i hardly ever make books this large.
when i was finally done with the binding, it was time to tackle the cover. originally, i planned on doing some half-leather style (with the seperate spine and corner triangles, for those of you uninitiated to the horrors of bookbinding terms) but i didn’t have enough of the book cloth i wanted to use, so while i was casting about for alternatives, i rediscovered this creepy alligator skin or whatever textured paper and decided to go for that. then i turned back to my original MI6 logo idea and had a ball with it. the original pictures i had found on ebay didn’t print up too well, so i went back to the internets and it delivered once more. i found one w/ the animals and the text, but w/ a coat of arms, too. so i printed that one out and embossed the hell out of it (note to the unwary: photo paper does not hold up well under heat) and then glued it on. it looked a tad out of place, so i busted out another round of embossing and it finally looked good. it would be better if i could do it in metal and emboss that, or maybe some etching or something, but my skill level isn’t quite that high yet. not that i don’t have instructions on copper electroplating…
anyhow! thoughts of accidentally electrocuting myself in pursuit of The Craft aside, i then busted out my fancy new 007 stamp and some metallic inks and added a little touch to the bottom corner of each page. the first zero turned out a little weird, but the other number and that gun symbol turned out pretty good, huh?
further reading: for those of you interested in learning more about the bookbinding technique used in today’s post, i recommend a book entitle Conservation Book Repair by one Artemis BonaDea. not only is this technique right from that book, there’s tons of other awesome book-conserving info in there. i actually read it for that, since i was repairing a lady’s prayer book from church, and i just discovered it had this technique by happy accident.
