Book for Exhibit

Just under the wire, I finished my book for an exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Library. There is a show there of a very prominent Book Artist, Keith Smith. I have several of his books and use them often for instruction and inspiration. The Delaware Valley Chapter of the Guild of Bookworkers members made works based on Smith's non-adhesive bindings and they will be shown in conjunction with the exhibition. Cool! 

I've been doing a lot of research on bees in eager anticipation of mine (which I still don't have and am not sure I will get this weekend after all) and I stumbled across this book on google books: Langstroth's Hive and the Honey-Bee  Google books is a great resource to find rare and out of print books. If they are in the public domain they are often digitized in their entirety. You can download a pdf. From there it's not difficult to turn the pdf into jpegs and set everything imposition in InDesign. Print it out and Voilá! Book on Demand. I didn't use the entire text because it's nearly 600 pages, so I just chose about 60 of the pages I was interested in, the hive design, flowers the bees were interested in, and recipes. 

In his book 1, 2, & 3 Section bindings, Smith has instructions for a hexagon sewing. I took that and modified it to turn it into honey comb. 

Designing the pattern was a major challenge. I have several sewing cards where I tried doing all kinds of crazy things. I finally got what I thought would work and so I decided to make a little mock up. 

That's a lot of holes. 

Sorry for the blurry - but you get the idea. Things went fairly well until I got to the other side. The paper was just too perforated and I started tearing holes through them. 

I figured I had the hang of the binding anyway and could start working on the materials for the real book. 

The orange is a nice departure from all of my blue books. I picked up two pieces of Cave Paper at the College Book Arts conference and that came in handy. That's the inner cover. 

I couldn't find the right paper for the outside. I would have loved to use a sheet of the Walnut Cave Paper, but I don't have any of that. Luckily I remembered all of the gorgeous paper I bought in Korea! The beautiful Hanji papers were exactly what I wanted. 

I had forgotten how beautiful they all are. I'm glad I've saved them and not squandered them of silly projects. This is the one they were meant for. 

I chose the brown papers, and dipped two different shades in melted bees wax. The pages become slightly translucent so that orange Cave Paper shows through nicely.

It took over 9 hours to sew the seven signatures. 

Final touch,

a little gold bee for the front cover. 

I am really satisfied with this binding. So much so, I'm looking at the other two sheets of wax-dipped paper and thinking - I could make two more. Why not? 

I'm extra proud of myself because my mock crab-apple bloomed on Saturday. Boy howdy are my allergies kicking up. 

The tree is incredible this year. I've seen so many people stop and take pictures of it, reach up to touch the petals, and even a few people picking some branches. I don't mind. I always want to do that when I pass the cherry trees that are so spectacular. And if I could, I'd have a big vase of the blooms on my kitchen table.