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  1. International Edible Book Day!

    April 1, 2020 by Erin Fletcher

    International Edible Book Day is celebrated on April 1st. April Fools may seem like the perfect day to create literary inspired desserts and dishes, but in fact Edible Book Day celebrates the birthday of French gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755 – 1826). Famous for his book Physiologie du goût, Brillat-Savarin and his colleague Grimod de La Reynière are known as the creators of the gastronomic essay genre.

    This unusual holiday was the brainchild of book artists Judith A. Hoffberg and Béatrice Coron, who cooked up this idea in 1999 during Thanksgiving. Edible Book day was first celebrated in 2000. This yearly event takes place around the world and invites bibliophiles, book artists, binders and food lovers to combine literature with food in creative and humorous ways.

    In this video for North Bennet Street School, Colin Urbina and I offer two options for creating an edible book inspired by bookbinding techniques. Using tortillas for pages and jelly and peanut butter for glue, Colin recreates an edible version of a Drum-leaf binding.

    I was greatly inspired by Tiffany Eng’s post on the West Dean Arts & Conservation blog. I’ve been wanting to make her version of a Japanese Stab binding for a long time. Unfortunately, my twizzler thread was not long enough to create the proper sewing. My edible book has leaves of lettuce, ham and salami with swiss cheese endpapers and mayonnaise doublures. The Cambridge panel tooling was done with yellow mustard. Our books were bound, documented and then consumed.

    Even though this video is geared towards kids, this technique is great for any age group. You can find more online content created for NBSS here. If you are looking for even more instructional content, I have a growing list of tutorials and I also teach live workshops in-person and online. Check out my list of Upcoming Workshops.

    Happy International Edible Book Day!

  2. Teaching at Paper & Book Intensive 2018

    August 28, 2018 by Erin Fletcher

    In May of this year, I had the honor of teaching at the Paper & Book Intensive which was held at Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuk, Michigan. If you aren’t familiar with PBI, it’s a two-week intensive camp where participants take three workshops on topics related to bookbinding, printmaking, paper-making, conservation and book arts. Everyone stayed in lodging on the grounds at Ox-Bow and ate together during mealtimes. During off-hours, people spent their time creating, mingling, making toast from the 24-hour toasting station or roasting marshmallows at the fire pit near the lagoon.

    I had been invited to teach my 2-day Introduction to Embroidery on Leather workshop during the first session. In the first session, participants take two different workshops, one in the morning and the second in the afternoon. This meant, as an instructor, I had two different groups to teach over the span of four days. I had 13 students in the morning and 12 students in the afternoon.

    My workshop took place on the second floor of the print building. The space was wonderful. It is a newly constructed building with high ceilings and tall windows on all four sides that looked out into the woods. After getting settled and going through materials, we embarked on our first task of poking lots of holes into leather through a paper template. The room was so quite and still, that a unique soundtrack began to play out. The ping from the pin vise and crunch of the paper template mixed with birdsongs and swaying trees.

    The participants were working with buffalo skin for the samplers. It’s a leather that I love to work with and is very forgiving with embroidery work. Although certain challenges presented themselves with the darker skins. After we finished punching, we went through each stitch one by one. Students were invited to bring their own threads to play around with, so there was a nice mix of materials being used on the samplers. Some worked and some didn’t.

    At the end of the first session, everyone convened into the painting studio for a show and tell. I had been so distracted teaching by my workshop, that I didn’t get a chance to visit the other studios. So it was really great to finally see what everyone else had been working on.

    Above are samples from Letterlocking with Jana Dambrogio (left) and Vasaré Rastonis’ Conservation Binding Model for a 13th Century European Manuscript workshop (right).

    Above are some pieces from Velma Bolyard’s Paper Threads: North Country Shift (left) and Rebecca Chamlee’s The Printmaker as Naturalist (right) workshops .

    Many of my students had little to no experience with embroidery work, but everyone was determined to master each stitch. Threads were sewn and then torn out to make second and third attempts. I was really impressed with everyone’s ability to navigate through diagrams and hard-to-see demonstrations. In the center of their samplers, I asked each participant to design a letter in whatever stitch or stitches they preferred. Some students also began embroidering into bookcloth and paper. The participants in my workshop definitely felt the intensiveness of PBI!

    After session one was complete, everyone had a day off to recoup and relax. I went into town with some PBI pals to shop the local antique mall and each some local grub. Afterward, we walked to Oval Beach at Lake Michigan. It was a beautiful beach and view of the lake. We even made a couple of duck friends along the way.

    As an instructor, I was able to take a workshop during the second session and I chose John DeMerritt’s The Prototype: An Exploration of Edition Binding. I had met John a few years back during my second year at North Bennet Street School and have admired his work and ingenuity, so I was really excited to pick is brain.

    The structure of John’s class was informal, which freed everyone up to work on their own projects. We had materials to play with in order to develop prototypes. As someone who rarely gets a chance to spend time on personal work, it was very welcoming to have these 4 days to work out the details of an artist book that has been lingering in the back of my brain.

    On our final day of John’s class, we were commissioned by Mary Hark (papermaking instructor) to build a box for a paper quilt.

    We devised a design for the box and chose materials as a team. Mary let us choose from a selection of her papers for the box and we choose a beautiful crinkled indigo paper for the tray that proved to be rather difficult and pulled many of us together to trouble shoot. And without proper weights, we had to use body weight after attaching the tray to the base.

    photo credit (right): Cristiana Salomao

    photo credit (right): John DeMerritt

    I was tasked with creating an embroidered paper label for the box. We chose to use the coordinates of Ox-Bow and the dates of the second session as the title, as it represents the time and place of both creations. In the end, the box and quilt were put into the auction and was finally sold to the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.

    At the end of session two, we assembled once again in the paint studio for another show and tell.

    Above are examples from Béatrice Coron’s workshop From Book Shelves to Cat Walk: Wearable Papercuts and Artist Books (left) plus Chela Metzger’s workshop Early Modern Record-Keeping Book Structures: Model Making and Investigation (right).

    Just a few pieces from Bridget Elmer’s workshop The Typographic Print (left) and Mary Hark’s workshop Papermaking Informed by a Sensibility for Textiles (right).

    Post show and tell, people began to wind down and get ready for the festivities ahead. That evening included a silent auction followed by a studio tour to see the various work created by the artists in residency. Along the tour, I savored some local Ox-Bow brews and chatted with a very talented artist about her brightly colored macramé sculptures. Check out the work of Noël Morical.

    On the following day, everyone gathered at the meadow under the theme of Renaissance in Space. We ate hors d’oeuvres and cheered on the jousters. Afterward we filed into the painting studio for one final dinner, which included lofting balloons from table to table until they popped. A mighty group effort.

    The evening quickly turned into night and people began to say their farewells. PBI was a truly incredible experience and one that I will never forget. Despite the pressures of teaching, my time at Ox-Bow was relaxing and inspiring. Being surrounded by creative and talented people who are both encouraging and supportive for two weeks can be life changing. It’s an experience that I would recommend for anyone that is apart of or wants to be involved in this community.

  3. Swell Things No. 48 // Maine, Michigan and Texas

    June 30, 2018 by Erin Fletcher

    For the past three months, I’ve been traveling to teach and have visited some incredible spaces and met really talented people. So in this Swell Things post, I’ll introduce you to a few.

    1. In May, I taught at the Paper and Book Intensive which was hosted by the Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuk, Michigan. This is a really unique space built near a lagoon that flows into Lake Michigan. The camp ground is filled with a variety of buildings set up for paper making, printmaking, painting, ceramics and glassblowing. All of the participants are housed on the grounds and we meet at the Ox Bow Inn for meals and social events. I highly recommend making the trip to Saugatuk for either PBI or to attend a workshop at Ox-Bow. It’s a fantastic way to unplug, relax and be creative.
    2. In April, I taught a workshop at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. And although my schedule hindered me from visiting PrintCraft, I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to tell you about it. PrintCraft is the combined studios of W.I.P. Editions and Strong Arm Bindery in Portland’s West End. Sharing equipment, experience and expertise in the fields of printmaking, bookbinding and letterpress printing, co-owners Lisa Pixley and Martha Kearsley produce an array of prints, printed matter and ever-evolving experiments in stationery. PrintCraft studio storefront is open Tuesday – Sunday from 12:00-6:00pm.
    3. At PBI, I met a delightful and talented ceramicist by the name of Gabrielle Soltis. She set up shop one evening and I walked away with this gorgeous speckled paste bowl and a handmade mug for my morning coffee.
    4. Before teaching in College Station, Texas, I made a stop in Austin to visit family. But I also made a visit to Flatbed Press and Gallery, which was founded in 1989 by Katherine Brimberry and Mark L. Smith. The space functions as a publishing workshop open for artists to produce large-scale limited editions prints. They are set up to create etchings, lithographs, woodcuts and monoprints. While walking through the studio, two large woodcuts had just been inked up and were ready to print. The inking took a little over an hour!
    5. During my time at PBI, I got to meet the extraordinarily smart, talented and hilarious Béatrice Coron. She works primarily in Tyvek creating “cut stories” by slicing away the material to reveal intricate scenes. Her work exists as flat pieces of art and wearable garments. In fact she wore a beautiful silver and black Tyvek jacket during her evening presentation. She has also designed fencing, sculptures and art for public spaces.

    6. I met Carey Watters at PBI and we spent an evening chatting about our art, our family and our love of travel. Her paper reliquaries are quite magnificent and her approach to paper cut sculptures is fresh and exciting.
    7. Vintage Marüshka fabric prints from the 1970s and 80s were scattered throughout the Ox-Bow Inn. The one pictured above was my favorite and is located in the bathroom inside the dining hall. I was able to find an authentic Marüshka cat print from 1983 that is hanging above my bookcase.
    8. I am a ceramic fanatic and when Jon Hook came out to PBI to sell some of his pieces, I jumped at the opportunity. I was in awe of so many of his vessels and mugs, but I ended up walking away with this tiny ceramic pig.
    9. Before visiting Flatbed, I made a stop at the Austin Book Arts Center (which happens to be in the same building). Mary Baughman gave me a tour of the bindery and their newly added print shop. The space is cozy and well loved. Every inch of their space is well designed to really maximize the potential of the room. They will be celebrating their third birthday in September, if you’re in the area, stop by for their auction!
    10. During one of the last few days at PBI, the resident artists opened their studios for touring. This is when I got to meet fellow School of the Art Institute alum, Noël Morical. Using macrame, Noël creates these massive hanging sculptures with bright parachute cord. She also had on display some smaller wall hangings, that to me, resembled alien-like sea creatures. I hope to own a piece one day!

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  • My name is Erin Fletcher, owner and bookbinder of Herringbone Bindery in Boston. Flash of the Hand is a space where I share my process and inspirations.
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