The Book of the Erinyes

I’ve just got back from this week’s let­ter­press work­shop where I man­aged to print some proofs (photo below) of the title and half-title pages of the Book of the Erinyes.

These two pages will make up the first sig­na­ture of the book.  The sig­na­tures only con­sist of 2 sheets (8 pages in total, Crown Quarto size — 7½″ x 10″) because of the thick­ness of the 220gm cart­ridge paper I’m print­ing on.

The half-title page is set in 48pt Goudy, and the title page is in vari­ous smal­ler Goudy & Goudy Italic type with a dec­or­at­ive block.

link to high res­ol­u­tion scan of title page (JPEG ~415KB)

As the pace has star­ted to pick up on the Book of the Erinyes pro­ject I decided it was time to get some much-needed book­bind­ing practice.

I’d sewn together a col­lec­tion of blank sig­na­tures a week-or-so ago and tipped on the end­pa­pers, but I was feel­ing some­what nervous about the case binding.

Today I took the plunge and put together my first case bind­ing, and attached it to the sig­na­tures to pro­duce a fin­ished book.

I was fairly pleased with the res­ults — although the edges of the pages are very uneven from where I’d had to cut them with a knife since I don’t have a guil­lot­ine or a plough for trim­ming the pages properly.

I’ve been teach­ing myself book­bind­ing, and there have been three books which have been a great help:

• Hand Book­bind­ing — A Manual of Instruc­tion by Aldren A. Wat­son, Dover Pub­lic­a­tions Inc.
• Hand­made Book­bind­ing Tech­niques by Josep Cam­bras, A & C Black.
• The Book­bind­ing Hand­book by Sue Dog­gett, Search Press.

I’d recom­mend all of these three books to any­one think­ing of teach­ing them­selves hand bookbinding.

The Hand­made Books DVD from Shep­herds was also an invalu­able help — although the books men­tioned above are excel­lent, watch­ing the tech­niques being demon­strated lets you fully under­stand the process.

So my first book is bound and I’ve learnt a lot about all the neces­sary tech­niques that I can use on the Book of the Erinyes.  I’ve got at least a couple of months until the text and pho­to­graphs for the Book of the Erinyes will be ready, so I’m going to do a few more prac­tice pieces using blank paper over the com­ing weeks.

Last year I did an even­ing course in Let­ter­press Print­ing at the Brighton Inde­pend­ent Print­mak­ing centre. Last week Les Ellis, the course tutor, invited me back for a 4-evening follow-on course where I could work on my own pro­ject, but with Les Ellis and col­league John Packer on hand to refresh my memory and provide expert advice.

I’ve just got back from the first of these four 3-hour Let­ter­press Print­ing work­shops, and I’m happy to say that I man­aged to remem­ber most of what I was taught on last year’s course.

This even­ing I man­age to get the half-title and title pages hand-composited and locked into chases, ready for proof­ing and print­ing next week.

The half-title page is set in 48pt Goudy, while the title page is a mix­ture of 30pt Goudy (for the title), 24pt Goudy Italic (for the sub­title), and some 12pt Goudy for the small print.  It also includes a very nice dec­or­at­ive block.  I hope to be able to show you the res­ults next week.

I’m really pleased with the pro­gress today — I man­aged to get more done in one ses­sion than I’d hoped. Next week’s ses­sion can’t come soon enough.