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Volume 3, Number 2, Spring 2007
Melissa Jay Craig’s That’s Life, 2005
The Bonefolder: an e-journal for the bookbinder and book artist
Table of Contents
Disciplining a Craft by Clifton Meador 3
Teaching Book Culture by N. Bradley Christie 11
The Book Art of Melissa Jay Craig by Jen Thomas 18
Solving the Production Puzzle: Jigs and Other Tips for Hand Binding Books in Multiples 23
by Priscilla Spitler, Hands On Bookbinding
2
Beautiful Books Digitally by Jamie Runnells 33
One Book, Many Interpretations: The Making of the Exhibition by Lesa Dowd 37
A Review of the Guild of Book Workers 100th Anniversary Exhibition and Exhibition 41
Catalog by Craig Jensen
No Longer Innocent: Book Art In America, 1960-1980, a review by Melissa Jay Craig 45
Advertise in the Bonefolder 46
Submission Guidelines 50
Editorial Board:
Publisher & Editor/Reviewer:
Full information on the Bonefolder, subscribing,
contributing articles, and advertising, can be found at:
Peter D. Verheyen: Bookbinder & Conservator / Special
Collections Preservation & Digital Access Librarian, Syracuse
University Library, Syracuse, NY.
<
To contact the editors, write to:
Editors / Reviewers:
<
Pamela Barrios: Conservator, Brigham Young University,
Oren, UT.
The masthead design is by Don Rash
Donia Conn: Head of Conservation, Northwestern
University Library, Evanston, IL.
Karen Hanmer: Book Artist, Chicago, Il.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
The Book Arts Web / Philobiblon.com© 2004
The Bonefolder (online) ISSN 1555-6565
Chela Metzger: Instructor, Kilgarlin Center for the
Preservation of the Cultural Record, School of information,
University of Texas at Austin.
Don Rash: Fine and edition binder, Plains, PA.
Volume 3, Number 2, Spring 2007
Disciplining a Craft
First I will examine workshop instruction, and then academic
institutions.
By Clifton Meador
For this examination, I picked three places that are from
geographically different areas of the country. I will look at
their workshop offerings from fall of 2006, by title and course
description. The purpose of this examination is to understand
what most people mean when they use the term “book arts” and
to understand the scope of activity.
From a talk originally delivered at the November 2006
Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Conference
There is more interest in book arts now than ever before:
dozens of colleges and art schools offer classes in book arts,
and centers of book art have been created in nearly every large
city in America. Opportunities for education in the book arts
abound, and it seems as though something significant is changing
in the way people talk about the book arts. A discipline is
evolving, a conceptual framework for thinking about making
books is emerging.
The Center for Book Arts in New York was the first center
of its kind and it is, without a doubt, one of the field-defining
institutions. They teach hundreds of workshops a year and
offer multiple levels and sections of workshops in letterpress
printing, binding, paper decoration, printmaking, conservation,
calligraphy, and workshops that deal in artists’ book making.
For the fall 2006 workshop schedule, they listed 56 different
sections of binding classes, from bookbinding I to boxmaking
along with classes dedicated to specific structures, like long-
stitch binding classes, Coptic binding, and leather bound
books. They offered 30 sections of printing classes, 22 of which
were dedicated to letterpress and eight of which covered
printmaking topics, like Japanese wood block printing. They
taught six sections of paper decorating classes (suminagashi and
marbling), six sections of calligraphy classes (copperplate script
to handwriting for books), five sections of conservation classes
(including a master class with Gary Frost), and seven classes that
are hard to categorize, like Comic Book Weekend, Editioning
Mail Art, or Make a Limited Edition Book in a Week, which was
a printing class combined with binding.
3
How are we building a discipline in book arts?
What does it mean for book arts to be a discipline?
It is not obvious what the term “book arts” means: it seems to
describe crafts, but it is not self-evident which crafts. In order
to understand what the term means, it seems reasonable to start
by looking at where the book arts are transmitted, where people
form their ideas about what they are doing as they are learning
how to do it. There are two main arenas for the transmission of
the book arts in America: one is the informal world of workshop
instruction, usually (but not always) at nonprofit centers for
book arts, and the other is formal academic study at a college,
art school, or university. There have been book arts classes in
the university much longer than there have been workshops that
teach classes in the book arts. Porter Garnett’s Laboratory Press
at Carnegie Mellon was founded in 1923, for example. There
are many other examples; for instance, 10 of the 12 residential
colleges at Yale had letterpress shops for student use and Scripps
college press has been around since the 1940s. While there have
always been printers and handbinders teaching their crafts,
the founding of the Center for Book Arts in New York in 1974
marks the beginning of the contemporary period of workshop-
based book arts instruction.
The Minnesota Center for Book Arts is another large center
for instruction in the book arts, which also provides studio space
for artists, publishes a book every year and creates exhibition
programming. During fall 2006 they taught eleven sections
of binding classes, seven sections of letterpress classes, two
printmaking classes, three sections of paper decorating classes,
one papermaking class, a Japanese calligraphy class, and a book
art sampler (three Wednesdays: an introduction to papermaking,
printing, and binding). One of the interesting threads in the
MCBA’s fall schedule was a group of three classes dedicated to
making jewelry from left-over bookbinding scraps. MCBA also
offers classes designed particularly for teachers, usually held
in the summer, which cover binding techniques for teachers,
as well as classes on topics designed to help teachers introduce
book arts into the classroom. MCBA clearly has primary and
secondary education as part of its mission; they also regularly
offer classes for families and even preschool children in book
arts topics.
Since institutions are the places that support and create
disciplines, let’s examine the institutions that teach book arts to
better understand what people mean by the term “book arts.”
The two main arenas are quite different in their approaches
to instruction: centers of book art have an interest in bringing
in the greatest number of people to support their operations
and therefore develop courses that are clear and attractive to
a large number of people. Academic institutions do not have
the same pressure to expand and develop audience and are
subject to entirely different forces that shape programming. We
might expect academic institutions to frame book arts quite
differently.
The San Francisco Center for the Book is a decade-old vibrant
institution in the world of workshop instruction, teaching an
ambitious workshop program and creating interesting exhibition
Volume 3, Number 2, Spring 2007
The Bonefolder: an e-journal for the bookbinder and book artist
programming. During fall 2006 they offered 15 classes in
printing, all with a letterpress emphasis, 11 classes in binding
(one of which was a class in how to teach book arts to
children) and another 10 classes in a category the center calls
“related arts”: they range from a paste-paper class to a class in
writing for artists’ books. The SFCB characterizes this third
group of classes as the “creative heart of bookmaking, where
concept, materials, form and content come together.”
The academic world of book arts is larger than you might
expect. In nearly every art department there is some kind
of activity involving books, usually as part of a printmaking
program. Typically (or perhaps not untypically), artists’
books are mentioned in an upper-level printmaking studio
as a potential outcome of printmaking. There are not very
many dedicated departments of book arts, but there are a
surprising number of colleges that offer one, two or more
courses in the book arts. I collected course descriptions
from 23 colleges that teach more than one class in book
arts, and I found a very different approach to teaching book
arts from the way workshop approach the field. Instead of
classes with techniques as their subjects, making it easy to
count which crafts are taught as book arts, most classes at
schools have a conceptual framing, a title that talks about
the ideas in making books, rather than techniques in how to
make books. This is indicative of something important, but
for now let’s try to use this information to understand what
is included in the category “book arts.” It seems reasonable
to look at undergraduate introductory classes as the place in
the academy where the field of activity would be delimited.
In other words, intro classes ought to offer a definition of
the book arts as a part of the activity of teaching students to
make books. So, here are some phrases culled from course
descriptions from introductory experiences in the book arts
at nine schools, picked almost at random. Frequently, the
first class (where there is more than one class) is a class called
artists’ books.
4
There are many other centers of book art instruction all
over the country. Pyramid Atlantic is one of the few centers
that offers classes in any depth in papermaking. The Columbia
College Center for Book and Paper Arts, which is the host
institution for the graduate program where I teach, also offers
workshops in printing, binding, and papermaking. There are
so many other great places: BookWorks in beautiful Asheville
North Carolina, Garage Annex School, and Penland, are
only a few. They all offer a range of classes, generally, though
not always, with a technical orientation. All of the centers
offer some non-technique-oriented instruction. The SFCB,
for example, outlines a programmatic ambition to support
artistic activity through the “related arts” series of workshops.
But the focus in these centers, at least as defined by how much
time is spent doing what, is on teaching craft.
Based on this not-very-rigorous survey of centers of book
art instruction, I conclude that in the fall of 2006, at places
that use the words “book arts” as part of the definition of what
they do, binding is at the heart of book arts, closely followed
by letterpress printing, based on numbers of classes. There
seems to be a constellation of other crafts—paper decoration,
papermaking, calligraphy, and printmaking—that are taught
in the context of the book arts, but at a very low frequency.
It seems important to point out that while the world of
papermaking has an intimate relationship with the book arts,
papermaking is a medium on its own terms. Papermaking
supports other activities (sculpture, for example) and crosses
into many other activities, but is not offered at book art
centers with anywhere near the same frequency as binding
or letterpress classes. Of the three centers we examined
in detail, none of them offers extensive programming in
papermaking. There are places that offer many classes in
papermaking, but they tend to be specialized studios. The
classes that all of these institutions offer are a carefully
considered blend of what they can do, given the facilities they
have, and what they think their communities will choose to
support. It is important to reiterate that centers that teach
workshops must offer classes that will fill and run: it is
pointless to offer a seminar in narrative book theory if nobody
will take it. When we talk about book arts, it is important to
try to understand what those words mean to the people who
take these workshops. This is clear: to a lot of people, “book
arts” means the crafts of hand binding and letterpress printing.
From Mills College
This is one of the few schools with a stand-alone
undergraduate book arts focus. They offer a group of at least
15 classes in the book arts, a concentration in some depth:
Introduction to Book Arts
…an introduction to the techniques, structures, tools,
materials and processes used in creating artists’ books.
Students will explore a broad range of studio practice,
including letterpress printing, hand and computer typography,
simple book structures, and basic relief printmaking as they
examine the relationship of verbal, visual, and structural
content in books.
From California College of the Arts:
Bookmaking
In this class, we will concentrate on recognizing the book
within your own work and making it real in your chosen
media. Basic book structures and letterpress printing
from handset type will be introduced and more advanced
instruction will be tailored to individual needs.
Volume 3, Number 2, Spring 2007
From the School of the Art Institute of Chicago:
binding that support the theme or meaning. Conceptual
approaches, sequence, design, editioning, and experimental
books will be discussed.
Artists’ Books
In this multi-level course we investigate the use of books
in the context of studio practice. Bindings, such as pamphlet,
side stitch, accordion, and codex forms and variations are
introduced and practiced. Strategies for utilizing material and
form in relation to content, and for articulating pagination,
such as pacing, juxtaposition, and simultaneity, are addressed
in individual projects.
From the School of the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston:
Artist’s Books: An Introduction
An in-depth introduction to one-of-a-kind artists’ books.
This course is for artists of any discipline who want to work
in the book format. Students learn many book structures,
including portfolios pamphlets, multi-signature, concertinas,
Coptic and clamshell boxes. We also explore a variety of
image and text-making techniques. During open studio time
students develop ideas and complete ‘a book a week,’ which
may include edible books, altered books, books made of
natural materials, visual books or books that tell stories.
5
From Wells College
Wells College, another of the few schools with a dedicated
undergraduate book arts department, offers two introductory
experiences:
Hand Bookbinding I
This course introduces students to traditional bookbinding
techniques by familiarizing them with the tools, materials
and techniques of the craft. Students are expected to produce
a set of book models that are clean, structurally sound, and
consistent with the class demonstration.
From Middle Tennessee State University:
Book Arts
The Book Arts Program offers two classes in book arts
(ART 3550 & ART 4110) and two classes in letterpress
printing (ART 3770 & ART 4770).In Book Arts I and II
students learn various book binding and book designing
techniques and skills. The concept of the artist’s book is
explored and students are encouraged to work with both
traditional and non-traditional book forms and materials. In
Letterpress I students learn the basics of letterpress printing
using raised metal type to form text and relief printing
processes to create images
Letterpress: Introduction to Typography
Demonstrations, readings, and assignments on the
mechanics of handsetting and printing from metal type.
Traditional and artistically innovative approaches to using this
medium will be covered. Each student will create her or his
own individual projects: postcards, broadsides, book, etc.
From Wellesley College:
From Smith College:
Book Arts Studio
The Book: Theory and Practice I
In an interactive setting, students will gain hands-on
experience in bookmaking, with an emphasis on the creative
possibilities of ancient craft and contemporary art. In the
Library’s Book Arts Lab, students will learn to set type by
hand and print on hand presses. Students will create limited
edition broadsides and artists’ books.
Investigates (1) the structure and history of the Latin
alphabet, augmenting those studies with an emphasis on the
practice of calligraphy, (2) a study of typography that includes
the setting of type by hand and learning the rudiments of
printing type, and (3) the study of digital typography.
From the San Francisco Art Institute:
Of these nine schools offering introductory experiences in
book arts, eight schools promote the technique of binding as
central to the practice, six of the nine schools use letterpress
as the method of choice for creating text, six of the nine list
artists’ books either as the title of the class or as a potential
outcome for the class. It is really fascinating to note that seven
of the nine approaches frame book making as an expressive
or artistic form and talk about conceptual issues in making
books. The relationship of form to content seems to be at
the heart of much of this activity; at these schools, the focus
is on the book as a place to make art. Wells College uses
Artists’ Books—Structures & Ideas
This class uses the form of the book as a source of
inspiration and as a medium for expression, building upon
many traditional bindings and newly created structures.
Students will acquire technical skills and explore different
media as they create a series of contemporary artists’ books.
For each book, emphasis will be placed on the interactions
between words and images and on using materials and a
Volume 3, Number 2, Spring 2007
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