Last month, I finished printing my latest book project on Rives BFK paper on my Vandercook Universal III in the studio. There will be 25 copies of this limited edition. Below are pictures of the process of printing and folding the signatures.
These are photos of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, printed at Pennyroyal Press in 1982 with wood engravings by Barry Moser. Bookbinder Philip Smith completed the forwarding of these two fine press books over in the U.K., but the binding was not completed before his death. He made a notation on the colophon at the back of both regarding when he had started the forwarding of the books.
These are photo details from sewing and forwarding the book. There is a significant difference between making one or two design bindings and creating the same binding multiple times for a limited edition binding.
The Springback Binding is from the 19th Century, used for guest books or accounting books.
My current book project is a short story I wrote in 14 vignettes. I'm printing this project on the Vandercook Universal III.
I printed my first small book project on the Chandler and Price. This project was my first attempt at producing an editioned book.
One of the many online bookbinding and printing courses I took during the pandemic included a month-long course taught by the amazingly talented bookbinder Samuel Feinstein. He offered a workshop entitled Intro to Blind and Gold Tooling that was hosted by the SF Center for the Book.
I added a photopolymer platemaker for letterpress printing to the studio.
The pandemic has come with some unusual changes in routine that have had many benefits in terms of making progress on my first book project.
Learning more about mechanics has been one of the surprising and wonderful aspects of working to get my printing press operation up and running. If I'm not actually able to practice printing, I'm at least learning how to repair and maintain the presses.
Of Paper and Ink 