Illuminated Manuscripts: Hands on project 1

I decided to extend myself; why not as we are stuck at home, and I have some spare moments. (This is where one laughs out loud at the ridiculousness of that statement)

Nonetheless I am undertaking the Coursera unit entitled

Deciphering Secrets: The Illuminated Manuscripts of Medieval Europe.

This is not my area of expertise or research, but the Medieval Ages have always fascinated me. The great thing about this course, free if you wish, is that I am learning such a lot about our very early history. Anyway, I will use this blog space over the coming weeks to document our hands on project, which is to recreate a medieval manuscript with materials available to us as regular people, not bookbinders.

For my fellow students I offer some translations:

En español   en français

Esta no es mi área de especialización o investigación, pero la Edad Media siempre me ha fascinado. Lo mejor de este curso, gratuito si lo desea, es que estoy aprendiendo mucho sobre nuestra historia temprana. De todos modos, utilizaré este espacio de blog en las próximas semanas para documentar nuestro proyecto práctico, que es recrear un manuscrito medieval con materiales disponibles para nosotros como personas normales, no como encuadernadores.

Ce n’est pas mon domaine d’expertise ou de recherche, mais les âges médiévaux m’ont toujours fasciné. En suivant ce cours, gratuit si vous le souhaitez,  j’apprends beaucoup de choses sur notre histoire ancienne. Quoi qu’il en soit, j’utiliserai cet espace de blog au cours des prochaines semaines pour documenter notre projet concret, qui est de recréer un manuscrit médiéval avec des materiaux à notre disposition en tant que gens ordinaires, et non en tant que relieurs.

Recycled parchment used as pastedown – Pergamino reciclado usado como laminado- Parchemin recyclé utilisé comme contre-collé

This week’s project consists in making imitation parchment. I will be using a strange sort of grease proof paper usually used in printing. It has the consistency of parchment, being smoother on one side than the other, flexible and has that polished finish on it. According to our instructions I will dye one side darker than the other in order to create a “flesh”side, distinct from the inner side (usually paler)

I will attempt to recreate certain aspects of parchment: veins, holes, wonky edges, sewn repairs

El proyecto de esta semana consiste en hacer pergamino de imitación. Usaré un tipo extraño de papel a prueba de grasa que generalmente se usa en la impresión. Tiene la consistencia del pergamino, es más suave en un lado que en el otro, flexible y tiene ese acabado pulido. De acuerdo con nuestras instrucciones, teñiré un lado más oscuro que el otro para crear un lado de “carne”, distinto del lado interno (generalmente más pálido) Intentaré recrear ciertos aspectos del pergamino: vetas, agujeros, bordes torcidos, reparaciones cosidas.

Le projet de cette semaine consiste à réaliser des parchemins d’imitation. J’utiliserai un papier etrange résistant à la graisse habituellement utilisé dans l’imprimerie. Il a la consistance du parchemin, est plus lisse d’un côté que de l’autre, flexible et a une finition polie. Selon nos instructions, je vais teindre un côté plus foncé que l’autre afin de créer un côté “chair”, distinct du côté intérieur (généralement plus pâle) J’essaierai de recréer certains aspects du parchemin: veines, trous, chants biseautés, réparations cousues.

Step 1: Get it all ready

1. Get paper ready. I cut paper to size. I like small books, so I will have 8 sheets that when folded will be a book that can be handled quite easily, and placed in a bag. Because it has a coating, I sanded one side so that the dye will take
2. Get the dye ready: I made strong tea and let it sit for a few hours. Get paint brush.
3. Make a play area: I have a marble stone surface, a plastic mat and a plastic container lid. I tend to be messy
4. Get the pressing boards and absorbant material ready. I don’t want to crinkle the paper. Palimpsests would have been dipped in a wet element (milk) and worked. But they would be required to be flattened. otherwise they would be unusable.

Paso 1: prepárarlo todo

1.  Prepara el papel. Corté papel a medida. Me gustan los libros pequeños, por lo que tendré 8 hojas que, cuando estén dobladas, serán un libro que se puede manejar con bastante facilidad y colocar en una bolsa. Debido a que tiene un recubrimiento, lijé un lado para que el tinte tome 
2. Prepara el tinte: preparé un té fuerte y lo dejé reposar durante unas horas. Consigue pincel. 
3. Haga un área de juego: tengo una superficie de piedra de mármol, una estera de plástico y una tapa de recipiente de plástico. Tiendo a ser desordenado 
4. Prepara las tablas de prensar y el material absorbente. No quiero arrugar el papel. Palimpsests se habrían sumergido en un elemento húmedo (leche) y trabajado. Pero se requeriría que fueran aplanados. de lo contrario serían inutilizables.

Étape 1: Tout Préparer

1. Préparez le papier. J’ai coupé du papier à la taille voulue. J’aime les petits livres, donc j’aurai 8 feuilles qui, une fois pliées, seront un livre qui peut être manipulé assez facilement et placé dans un sac. Parce qu’il a un revêtement, j’ai poncé un côté pour que le colorant prenne
2. Préparez le colorant: j’ai fait du thé fort et je l’ai laissé reposer pendant quelques heures. Obtenez un pinceau.
3. Faire une aire pour jouer: j’ai une surface en pierre de marbre, une surface plastique et un couvercle de récipient en plastique. J’ai tendance à être désordonnee
4. Préparez les planches de pressage et le matériau absorbant. Je ne veux pas froisser le papier. Les palimpsests auraient été trempés dans un élément humide (lait) et travaillés. Mais ils devraient être aplatis. sinon, ils seraient inutilisables.

Step 2: Take a deep breath and proceed

Paso 2: respira hondo y procede
Étape 2: Respirez profondément et continuez

Step 3: Do it
Paso 3: hazlo
Etape 3: au travail

Results – Resultats:

Step 4: Make it look genuine
Paso 4: haz que parezca genuino
Étape 4: donnez un aspect authentique

1.  Make incision and sew it – Faites une incision et une reparation cousue

2. Make hole and sew it decoratively – Hacer un agujero y coserlo decorativamente – Faites un trou et cousez-le de façon décorative

3. Shape edges of paper – Formar bordes de papel – Formez les bords du papier – 

 

4. Make hole and fill it – Hacer un agujero y llenarlo – Faites un trou et le remplir

5. Make hole and leave – Hacer un agujero – Faites un trou et le laisser

I made a short movie, which took longer to put together than the actual hands on, if you are interested in seeing abit of the process.

I hope it fulfills all the criteria and that you enjoyed watching the movie

Rubric for the “hands-on” project

	1 point	2 points	3 points	4 points	5 points
Source	No actual manuscripts have been used as example for inspiration	1 mss has been used as source and roughly replicated	2 mss…	3 mss…	At least 4 different manuscripts have been used as source for inspiration
Transformation of the school cardboards into “parchment”	Nothing has been done to “convert” the cardboards into “parchment”	Some actions have been taken that at least allow to differentiate between the flesh side and the hair side of the parchment	Some effort has been made to improve the resemblance, but very little (1).	The materials used have been worked out to resemble the original ones, but there is some room for improvement (1).	The materials are the original ones, or a true effort has been made to adequate other materials to resemble the originals (º).
Graphic documentation	No image has been submitted	There is only one image, and it is not of the final product.	Only the image of the final product has been included.	Some images have been included or short videos, but they do not allow to follow in detail the whole process.	There is a complete video or a thorough collection of images, that allow to follow the process in detail.
Written documentation	No written explanation has been submitted	A written description has been included, too poor to give an idea of how the project has been really undertaken.	A written description has been included, but it only allows to follow the general process, while the details are not specified. The technical vocabulary learned in the lectures has not been applied.	A detailed explanation of the project has been included, in which every step has been described, but with no express reference to the lectures. The technical vocabulary learned in the lectures has been applied.	A very detailed explanation of the project has been included, in which every step has been described. If shortcuts have been taken, it has been however specified how the procedures were supposed to be if these had not been necessary.

The Common place book

I had an enquiry the other day about someone’s commonplace book. What was that? According to Wikipedia:

a commonplace book is ” Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. …. Such books are essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces are used by readers, writers, students, and scholars as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts. Each one is unique to its creator’s particular interests but they almost always include passages found in other texts, sometimes accompanied by the compiler’s responses.  ”

When I read this I remembered that I grew up doing this in primary school. I wonder where they are now?

They are neither diary nor journal. The two examples in this blog will have some of the author’s own musings and writings in them.

Thomas Clifford’s commonplace book (NLA MS1097 – item 42) houses all manner of information:

 

Cambridge panel with full gilt spine panels

endbands

laced in

It is actually a great way to remember things. Indeed, as a bookbinding teacher I now deliberately leave information out of any notes I give; I recommend to my students that they add in information as a way of retaining it.

Here are some of the things Clifford wrote in the book:

Ambition like a torrent xxxx looks back…..

suspicio – jealousy

An index

On the endpapers I found this pot watermark

pillars or bollards

This is Nettie Palmer’s commonplace book of a much later period 1907-1936 (NLA MS 6531)

According to the catalogue, this is a notebook in which

“she transcribed favourite pieces of poetry, extracts of prose writing, brief diary entries and personal reminisciences for the period 1907-1910, 1913-1914, 1918-1921 and 1936. Loose clippings, a drawing and manuscript notes inserted.”

I remember writing all sorts of notes. Maybe you could try as well.

cheers

 

Booksleuthing: A visit to an australian colonial library

Braidwood, middle of nowhere? Somewhere between London Sydney and NewYork. Ok, 3 hours south of Sydney.

My friend Sonia’s family home of Bedervale is a mansion in the early australian colonial style. There have been parties around the folly, mystery murders in the cellar and of course, girly nights in the new part of the house.

I first visited Bedervale in the late 1980s when I joined the Spinners and Weavers. I had longed to use our spinning wheel and now here were women to teach me how. We would meet in the old kitchen and chat while we carded wool, spun or wove.

Sonia and Margaret, daughter and mother both gogeters in their own right, with the Lesleys, in the old kitchen

It is a house full of relics;  it contains furniture and bric a brac of various importance relevant  to three families, the Coghills, the Maddrells and the Royds. My parents being antique dealers I really didn’t pay much attention to any of it; it was just more furniture and stuff. However now that I am a book sleuth, it occurred to me on Friday night while we were sipping champagne, that perhaps there was a library here.

Interesting side of the library

As a National Trust home, this library has been catalogued. The books were brought over by the first owners of the house the Coghills. Many of the books carried bookplates from Brompton Library. We looked at a few books and many dated to 1830s or more, right when machine made paper was taking over the printing and bookbinding world.

I was anxious to see if I could find watermarks. Randomly Lesley and I pick out

Lesley is now fascinated about watermarks. Not only does she want to read this travel guide to Syria and Egypt, dated 1788, but she wants to find watermarks as well

Unlike many of the other small books in the library it is bound in-grain, however due to its size very few marks are visible, a few circles at  the head, a cut off  fleur de lis? Unfortunately no photos because my phone ran out of juice. But as I proceeded to peer into random books, I would show Lesley the difference between chainlines and laid lines and machine made paper. She started to get excited, and now understood my fascination with watermarks.

the effect of cheap sheep leather…

We were here for dinner, so we decided to go back to the old kitchen in order to quiz Margaret. The books, it seems, were probably first bought as a job lot – after all, members of the squattocracy had to seem reasonably well read. And then as various members developed interests, the library became populated with books that followed a purpose such as Maddrell’s medical training in Germany: so lots of medical books and german literature.

What a good excuse for returning more often to Braidwood. If you are in this part of the world Bedervale runs a bed and breakfast and week end tours of the homestead, so you could take a peek at it yourself.

Watch this space for more on the library…..

 

 

 

Finding the Virgin Mary

Last day of the week; last book on the pile. And there she was, staring at me, the baby Jesus in her arms.

Virgin Mary holding Jesus, standing in a boat

Found in

RB MISC 3181

Ignatii Coutino … : mariale, sive conciones super evangelia festivitatum sacratissimae Virginis Mariae:

The google translation is : Ignatius Coutino: marian, sermons on the Gospels or the most sacred festivals of the Virgin Mary.

I’m not sure whether she is standing in a boat; what else could it be. The image is fine and is located on the fly leaves.

Isn’t it just amazing? There were no watermarks that I could discern in the book.  The book itself is squarish; blind tooled leather over paste boards; 3 double cords, laced in.The text was printed in Cologne in 1661.

I just thought you might be interested…..

What’s wrong with this book, part secundus.

Two versions

“It’s alright like that; it’ll look handmade.”

How many times have I heard these words uttered by students, and even occasionally by myself?

The point that many people don’t make is that to make it handmade means that one wants to make it better than a machine.

I used to spin wool. I left irregular lumps in it because I couldn’t control the tension. My excuse was same as above: it would look earthy, handmade, natural. As I watched the old women around me spin fine wool, and as my control became better I realised where the challenge lay.

From a distance those two books in the picture above don’t look too bad. However  they are disappointing. I’m onto a third version now. All three are hand painted. I recently sent the last version to a competition so I can’t show it to you. It wasn’t too bad; still looked handpainted. I’ll post photos when it comes back.

I suppose it’s all about the expectations in my own head; my skills are a lot better in my own mind than in reality. I’m always flicking through fine bookbinding books; I want to do something like that one day, sooner rather than later. I am still in the practising phase, even though I learned bookbinding many years ago. However I probably haven’t even reached a thousand hours of (design) binding; I muck about in the evenings and on week ends.

I recently covered a paperback in leather. Why would I bother you may well ask; because I wanted the practise. Until recently I only used cloth and paper. So in order to practise I bought some cheap leather. I figured I would hone my skills on cheaper material before using the good stuff.

Wrong! It is not enjoyable to try to pare crap leather. I have persevered; I am putting a split board onto the paperback, but it is still not sufficiently pared at the turn ins, and looks ugly. And yet still I will continue to the completion for two reasons: firstly for the exercise. I’ll try leather mosaic. Secondly because I want to finish it. The effort I am now putting into making templates and planning the design will hopefully translate itself into better skills for the next book.

It is one of my favourite children’s books, and I’ll give it away to the Little Free Library once it is built. It isn’t as ugly as all that hopefully no other binder will see it. It’ll look handmade. Haha.

In search of the elusive: watermarks

No doubt about it; working in a library gives me access to a great selection of books. Being a bookbinder gives me some handling privileges.

I had in my hand tonight Thomas Moore’s Utopia, 264 page mini version, 5cm by 10 cm, dated 1663. Full leather sewn on three leather tongs. It  feels much-handled, the leather smooth and shiny.

Thomas Moore’s mini Utopia

Recycled guards. mind the fingers!

I’ve been chasing watermarks for the last two weeks. The Library houses over 6.5 million books. Of those it may have over 70 thousand books in the rare stack.  I now know that in the catalogue there are 34 entries marked as having watermarked pages.  Surely there must be more. Who has the time to find out?

3 sewing supports

I’m working on a watermark slideshow for the reading room and I’ve been calling up random books from the rare book stack and checking them out under the light sheet.

It would of course be easier to just spend time in the stack but that is not quite yet possible.

Back to the watermarks. Let me show you those in the mini Utopia:

Arg. You can’t see it well

I have a light sheet but the room I am in is quite bright. The books I pick are all within a certain  date range, 1600s to 1800s. I am betting that the papers will have watermarks. I have discovered that not all  books are equal. Sometimes the plain endpapers are sewn on cross grain; sometimes they are totally different to the textblock papers. I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise; as a binder I wouldn’t use the same papers as endpapers.

In this tiny book, the printing makes the watermark hard to identify.

Yes there is one on there

The National Archives of Australia have created a database of all the watermarks they have amongst the papers in their collection. They have put out a call to other cultural institutions to add to this database. This would prove to be a very useful tool. I’m currently using three books of watermarks to identify those I have found. Often I get close, but not quite right.

I tried using Google Image but it is not as easy to use as it may first appear. Many of my photos have undetermined splotches that I see perfectly well as watermarks, but not so the computer.

I’ll show you some more watermarks next time.

Thanks for reading.

ps sorry about the changing font.

Watching bookbinding on You Tube

I’ve been having a hard time lately because every time I open my mouth to say something obvious, I’ve been told I’m too harsh.
I am now going to say another obvious thing: some stuff on YouTube can be terrible!
I have learned a few things on YouTube; after all I don’t actually have a regular teacher and I get my information where ever I can.

Some channels are great: Sea Lemon and Bookbinder Chronicles for example. They teach useful techniques and in the case of Bookbinder Chronicles, really good methods.

On the other hand, You Tube is filled with beginners sharing their tips about how to make a book without understanding, and sometimes without seeming to care, about the whys and hows of book making.
I want to be encouraging; really I do. Information should be readily available and free. But please, let’s make it good information. I guess you can’t trust every thing you find on the Internet.

On Sunday I watched 7 episodes of how to do a leather binding and was cringing at each episode, hiding my face in embarrassement as the well meaning young man blathered on about how badly he was binding. And was more embarrassed by the complimentary comments from the punters.

I am not being elitist, I am no master. I hear you need 10 000hrs before you can qualify for that title.

However I do think that you need more than five minutes (or having read 5 books) worth of training to teach anything! I really think that if one assumes one can teach bookbinding, one needs a mountain of experience and skill. If the people who are looking for information have no idea what they are looking for, we should provide them with  the correct information.

Enough said, I’m going back to trawling You Tube!

LOL

Learning about medieval pigments

It’s been a while and much has happened since I last wrote. Frankly I have been less than enthusiastic about my every day life. However little binding experimentations at home have been keeping me sane.

In May I had occasion to “go back to school” as it were. Cheryl Porter, director of the Montefiascone Summer School was invited to Canberra by the Tait Bindery to give a week long workshop on the history and making of medieval pigments, entitled “Recreating the medieval palette”.

Day 1 of pigment workshop; inorganic pigments

 

The 5 day week was broken up into morning lectures and afternoon practical sessions. Unfortunately I couldn’t stay for the afternoon sessions, but simply being there, taking notes and asking questions without having to hand in an assignment was heaven for me.

Cheryl knows this stuff inside and out. She has been working in Egypt of late, but has studied the history and manufacture of medieval manuscript pigments for decades. In her spare time she goes insect hunting or nut collecting in far off places, and experiments with pigment making.She knows people and places I could only dream of, and she knows her stuff inside out and back to front. For example, she knows that flesh tones were usually painted in earth colours because Adam came from the Earth, and green was also used quite a lot for this purpose.

We learned about organic and inorganic pigments, pigments from insects and finally discussed conservation issues.

                                                         Manuscript detail

 

We took in a lot of slides; slides that showed how skilled the monks were at their craft, and how laborious it must have been to get even one manuscript finished.

This slide shows some fibres of Brazilwood not fully filtered out and still present in the ink.

To get to the nitty gritty, as it were, let’s start with inorganic pigments. These are made from rocks and minerals, and were on the whole, cheap and easy to manufacturer for the medieval colourist. These occur more often in panel paintings; examples of these would be the ochres(red and yellow), with various percentages of iron, magnesium, aluminium and silica which create different hues.

Here is a good word for all you scrabblers out there: levigation. This is the process by which powedered rock is put in water, shaken, and then filtered, ready for use.The finer the grind, the better the colour. We discussed the shapes of the molecules, their lightfastness and where were the best places to mine the various minerals.

The words ultramarine, lapis lazuli, green earth, azurite, malachite and orpiment flew out of Cheryl’s mouth and into our brains. At the end of the all morning sessions I would nod and smile, having understood every bit of the lectures, been fascinated by the innumerable slides and examples Cheryl pulled out of her hat.

Day 1: 9 pages of notes.

Day 2

Organic pigments, on the other hand, come from plants and animals. These are more often used in manuscripts. Their problem is that they tend to turn away from their brightness to a gaudy brown.

Another Scrabble word: clothlet. This was a handy way of travelling with your pigments. Cook your colour in water. Take a plain unmordanted cloth, dip it in and then dry it, repeating as many times as the fabric can take the colour. Once dry you can roll it, fold it, do anything. If you need colour, cut a small piece off and add water; hey presto! colour.

A lake colour: this is a soluble organic pigment that has been turned into an insoluble inorganic pigment by precipitating it onto a colourless mineral base. Pigments have been used since at least the Roman period in Europe, and cochineal (from the Americas) was first used in about 1580

Who thinks these things up? Human beings have been clever for centuries!

Cheryl talked about collecting plants and insects; about how laborious each process was. Of all the medieval dyes, the insect dyes were the most expensive, probably because they came from far away places like the Middle East and the Americas. These were used for dyeing textiles for royalty. There are four main insects from which pigments are derived. Mostly this involves harvesting the old pregnancy cocoons in which the females have died.

On and on the information flowed; about inks, about the differences between ink and pigment (is there any?) Did you know that sepia comes from the ink sacs of cuttlefish and squid?

We got to touch samples of material, such as kermes cocoons, madder roots. We talked about blacks: carbon black, lamp black, ivory black, charcoal black. We talked iron gall ink, very popular for legal documents from about the 12th century as it didn’t smudge (not so good for today as old letters can attest). Iron Gall ink being a mixture of a vegetable extract, a metal sulphate (usually iron) and tannin (usually from gall or tea leaves). Yes gall is a thing: it is the egg of the gall wasp.  The laid eggs were harvested from small oak trees, soaked in water and steeped to get the tannin.

Day 2: 7 pages of notes

Amongst the slides that Cheryl showed were various details of patterns and variety of pigments and colours.

islamic panel

one organic red one inorganic red

The above information is a very condensed version of 4 mornings of lectures. This is just a brief overview of a most fascinating subject. I would love to visit Montefiascone in August and re take Cheryl’s course, as well as participate in the other 3 workshops on offer during the month of August. I would encourage you to get to Italy over the summer.

We were very fortunate that she visited Canberra. Cheryl is an amazing lecturer. She was really engaging as an academic and as a person.

At the end of a very satisfying week

A year of teaching

The end of the school year is looming; this week is my last class at CIT (Canberra Institute of Technology). I inherited a class of my very own at the beginning of the year. How lucky am I?

Neale had actually thrown me in the deep end last year when he suggested to the vocational course co-ordinator from tech that I could so some casual replacements. Neale, colleague and mentor, was my first teacher in 2006. I’m still a newbie myself and so it was with some trepidation that I did a few replacements for Sally, and when she decided to hang up her bonefolder, the college offered me the job.

My inheritance included messy cupboards full of half finished work from bygone students, some sad looking brushes and glue pots and a jumble of papers and book cloth. This space is shared with the screen printers, and more often than not there is ink left on the tables.

Cleaned out cupboards

Every Thursday Bookcraft services experienced binders who come in to do their own projects and beginners who come bright eyed to discover how a book is made. It’s been going for years, and has more or less remained in the same format. Unfortunately we are now in separate rooms and the newcomers don’t get the benefit of watching the more experienced binders at work.

I’m new, keen and have a plan. Actually, it’s Neale’s plan; I basically devised an eight week course that mirrored what he taught me. I had found his teaching schedule useful and great because it took me slowly from the basics, like finding the grain of cloth and paper to making a book of my very own, like a bought one.

In my first class I inherited 2 new students. I simply continued from where they had started; the next term I had a full class of 7 plus more return students. My class plans aimed to get the students to go home with a finished product at the end of every week. The tasks get progressively harder, building on skills learned the previous week.

I love teaching beginners; I love showing them basics ways of making a book, of sewing a few folios together and getting something worthwhile.

Throughout the year I get a different bunch of students; I teach them a bunch of stuff from my plan; I hone down the teaching palaber until I find the correct words, the words that they will understand, that will make them do the task more easily. Teaching makes me better understand what I am doing.

Mostly I enjoy meeting new and different personalities. I try to remember their names; I think the more new people you meet, the easier it becomes. Bookbinding attracts a certain type of person: not so much fussy as patient and who pays attention to detail. Some people have more hand dexterity than others; some are more artistically inclined.

I’ve learned that I can’t push the students too fast; they will work at their own pace and the class plan seems to grow organically.

Alf waiting for his book

Historically bookbinding was a man’s trade. Now it seems this art is, in this country at least and in my classes, dominated by women. We’d like to have more men, I think it changes the dynamic. Ultimately though, the tasks at hand make us silent. There’ll be a brief flurry of conversation, and before concentration takes over once more. Cheese is de rigueur at teatime. Here we gather with the more experienced clan: Peter and Helen reminisce over the good old days with Neale, and I talk about the future. Over cheese and a cup of tea we find out how each of us came to binding, what makes us tick.

I have further plans for this course. I’d like to start a continuing class on another day, where I would have the occasional guest teacher showing them something wonderful. I would like to make an excursion to the Canberra Bookbinders Guild (who meet on Thursdays!). I don’t want to keep just teaching beginners because I know I will reach a saturation point; if I see that they are heading in a direction, that there is a better goal for them to achieve, then we will have more and better skilled bookbinders and the art won’t die. The powers that be just need to give me a classroom.

And finally but not least….my wanderings through bookstores

Wandering slowly through bookstores used to be one of my favourite pastimes. I would buy books just to own them; cooking,  crafting, secondhand books, new ones.  I couldn’t bear going to a library; how could you obscure a cover with a label, or worse, stamp an ugly stamp on a page?

As I grew wiser, I started collecting books. At first woodworking, specifically on boxmaking, then papercrafts and calligraphy. When I became a mother, I turned to children’s literature. My son has a fine collection of interesting books, and I do believe that reading him unusual picture books made him into the boy he is today. I would buy one book in several different editions simply for their bindings. I started buying hardcover books

But now I am thriftier; I use the library, and simply stroll in bookstores to see if I can find that special, out of print book, or perhaps some special manual. Besides, it is only when one moves house that one realises that books weigh a tonne.

But here I was in England, land of the book, of the secondhand book. What was I going to find?

Tell you the truth, not that many bookstores at all. I took some pictures of some of the more interesting stores. I suppose nearly everyone is reading ebooks on some sort of device. Not me. I still love the feel and smell of books.

On my reconnaissance day I found Treadwell’s store near Senate house. When I mentioned this to Anthony fellow student and nail biter, he laughed derisively and said : “the witches’ bookstore?”

Treadwell’s store, closed on Sundays, open for browsing

I hadn’t realised it was an esoteric bookstore behind its grills. What attracted me was the small sign in the window that said something along the lines of “ Browsing is a lost art. Please feel free to come in and browse”. Its cosy  interior was also a nook for fortune telling.

Again in my wandering I came upon “The School of Life”. Not exactly a bookstore; a self help organisation which sold books by Alain de Botton. I wished the shop had been opened because it looked like an interesting place to be.

When I asked about, the locals suggested two places: Foyles or Skoob Books. Foyles was disappointing, hence no photos, but Skoobs was the quintessential second hand bookstore, and cute to boot. It reminded me of a similar underground bookstore we have in Canberra “Q Books”.

Skoob

The entrance alone deserved a whole page to itself. It promised to be a fount, a treasure trove, and had I larger bags, I would have bought more books.

This is the type of store I can see myself owning. Tumbles of books everywhere about anything and everything. I had been expecting second hand books stores to be like pubs; one around every corner. So  it was disappointing , and a sign of the times. I still believe that people read, however access to the internet makes reading and publishing any piece of writing so much easier than having to go through a body of peers or a bunch of editors and publishing houses.

At the Last Bookshop in Oxford you can buy any book for two pounds.

How could I be in Oxford and not visit the Oxford University Press? It wasn’t a very inviting store I must say. I don’t know what I images I had in my head.

Oxford University Press; where so many books, text books, non-fiction, have been published. It is so famous. It was silly to have expected something grandiose; grandiose isn’t even the word. Possibly,  interesting. But it really was a mildly boring shop, and could have been anywhere amongst other thousands of boring shops with books whose covers left nothing to the imagination and purveyed no sense of wonder.

Maggs Brothers in London held a reception for all the students from the Rare Books Summer School. The diminutive entrance belies what is hidden behind the facade.

Mr Maggs, Ed, was a very solicitous host. It was an opportunity to talk to our class mates socially. But with every event where people are thrown together, the evening flet a little forced. Not many of the students turned up; but of those who did we had an enjoyable and relaxing evening.

We were left to wander through the one room store, perusing books from the shelf. I found out a little later that the real Maggs store was the basement warehouse underneath the large patio area where we were picking on pork pie and samosa and chatting. We were not invited down there.

Perhaps it was because Iw as travelling that I resisted the urge to buy. However I can now see that I could get a lot more out of a second hand bookstore than simply another book to read: it could be another book to rebind!