Thursday, May 6, 2010

project #8: japanese-bound jester booklet

This little book is just a rebound version of one I did in my class with Esther at Cooper Union last month. I had tried a new way to do this binding and the version I completed in class struggled. As I was (sort of) cleaning up my desk (putting things in folders and the folders in the folder holder) I ran across this little guy just begging to be fixed. I clipped the pages together with a binder clip, trimmed them all to be the same size, poked some better holes along the spine and vóila! A new and better book was born.

One of the things I'd done with the pages originally that I'd really liked was that I'd cut out a couple of jesters and glued them to the corners of two of the pages in the book. Even with the trimming they made the cut (pun intended). Here's one. Isn't he saucy?

Here's a close up on the binding. You can see that this isn't the traditional Japanese stab-binding stitch, but instead a little improvisational one of my own. I liked how the cross-overs mirror the tools crossed in front of each jester.

Here's another picture of the spine so you can see the cross-action better. I was actually really pleased with how it all turned out. I'm not really sure what one would do with a book so small and with so few pages, but the paper sure makes it feel good just holding it in your hand. The size is nice and unobtrusive as well. Sort of like you're holding a lovely little secret.

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