RSS Feed

Posts Tagged ‘erin fletcher’

  1. New Items in the Herringbone Bindery Etsy Shop

    November 6, 2013 by Erin Fletcher

    newetsyitems

    For the past few months, I’ve had a Nag Hammadi model sitting on my bench, provoking me. I finally found the time to sit down, examine and recreate the model (which belonged to my lovely friend Anna). This particular binding is based off one of the mid-fourth century bindings, which were unearthed from an urn near the town of Nag Hammadi in 1945; the structure was quite simple to construct. 

    For my Etsy shop I’ve created a simpler version by leaving out the cartonnage and papyrus, while incorporating bright buffalo and goat skin. These blank journals are filled with kraft paper and are quite suitable for the traveler and homebody alike. The image below displays all the pieces that come together to make the binding.

    nag-etsyall

    The journals are bound in soft and supple leather. In addition to the wrap-around tie, there are ties at the head and tail to keep your pages safe and secure. Journals are available in a five different color choices, from sea foam green with red accents to…

    nag-red nag-redopen

    mauve with maroon accents. See them all at the Herringbone Bindery shop!

    nag-maroon

  2. My Hand // Field Book of Western Wild Flowers: Part Three

    October 31, 2013 by Erin Fletcher

    wildflowers12-erinfletcher

    Part One can be read here
    Part Two can be read here

    I need to backtrack a bit. Part two ends with the covering of the matching leather doublures. The remainder of the design elements that are going to be explained in this post were applied before the doublures were pasted down. Part two has been revised accordingly. 

    The final steps to completing the design included the addition of a gold border and the title. In the early stages of designing the cover, I wanted to create the gold border through surfacing gilding. Which would have been done before covering because I didn’t want to risk getting gold leaf on the embroidery stitches. However, after a few tests I decided my supply of gold leaf was too yellow against the dusty pink buffalo skin. The border was therefore painted onto the leather with a fluid acrylic pigment. This is the same technique I used on the fine binding for The Songlines. 

    The title has been tooled with handle letters in the typeface Gill Sans. Buffalo can often feel spongy under the tool and requires slightly more pressure to achieve a crisp impression. I’ve found that buffalo will not blind in the same manner as other animal skins and can be a bit more finicky to tool. So with a bit more patience, the title was gilt in gold leaf one letter at a time. 

    wildflowers13-erinfletcher

    With the completion of the binding, I was set to make a custom clamshell box. The box reflects the binding in terms of color and design. The spine of the box is covered in matching leather that has also been embroidered. The design is derived from an illustration in the book and includes similar onlays from the book’s cover. The stem was embroidered freehand and Margaret Armstrong’s name has been hand tooled with gold leaf. 

    wildflowers14-erinfletcher

    The trays are covered and lined with the same handmade paper from Katie MacGregor that are used as the endpapers in the binding. The rest of the case and joint are covered in brown Canapetta bookcloth. A layer of Volara foam was added to the outer tray as protection for the embroidered stitches. 

    wildflowers11-erinfletcher

    I am really pleased with my first attempt at an embroidered leather binding. I plan to continue experiments with this technique, as well as incorporate other sewn elements. I recently had the opportunity to showcase this binding at the Standards of Excellence Conference in Washington, DC. Through the ‘Mix & Mingle’ event, I got the chance to speak with and meet many new bookbinders while discussing my binding on top of receiving wonderful compliments and suggestions. 

    wildflowers10-erinfletcher

    Finished binding next to clamshell box.

    wildflowers9-erinfletcher

    Side profile. Detail of edge decoration and hand-sewn headband.

  3. My Hand // Field Book of Western Wild Flowers: Part Two

    October 15, 2013 by Erin Fletcher

    wildflowers4-erinfletcher

    If you missed part one, you can find it here.

    After hours of embroidery work, I was finally ready to cover the binding. The book itself had been removed from its original case binding, taken apart signature by signature and resewn. Once rounded and backed with boards attached, the edges were ploughed and sanded down in preparation for edge decoration. At this point, I had been filling in for Jeff Altepeter at North Bennet Street School and conveniently the students already had everything set up for edge decoration and gilding. I spent the day perfecting the edge, experimenting with the application of gouache through various brushes and sponges. Finishing off the edge with the sprinkling of gold leaf. 

    The hand sewn double-core French headbands came next. I love sewing my headbands in an asymmetrical pattern and by extracting colors from the binding. Sadly, I didn’t take any in-progress photos of these two steps, but you can see hints of the edge and headband in some of the images to follow. 

    Now, back to covering. 

    wildflowers5-erinfletcher

    After applying a healthy dose of wheat starch paste, the embroidered leather was wrapped around the binding, being folded and tucked and squished into place. The leather had expanded after paring more than expected, so covering became difficult to keep the shape of the design within the confines of the board. 

    wildflowers6-erinfletcher

    The covered binding was put to rest under control weight between a bed of felt and acrylic boards. The next day I eased open the boards. Once the finishing design elements were added to the front cover I was able to line the inside of the boards and joint with matching edge to edge leather doublures. The handmade paper fly leaves are a perfect color match and came to me by happenstance from papermaker Katie MacGregor at Standards last year. 

    wildflowers8-erinfletcher

    Part three coming next week…

  4. Client Work: Leather Panel Redesign

    October 15, 2013 by Erin Fletcher

    panelredesign-erinfletcher

    This beautiful leather box was crafted by a student at North Bennet Street School. The green leather panel was stamped with a hand carved wooden block to create the delicate design. Unfortunately, the color and subtleness of the design conflicted with the client’s vision. Placed inside the box is a daguerreotype-style plaque of Johnson Chapel located at Amherst College, where the couple noted on the cover got married. The client approached me to have the panel redesigned using the color of Amherst: purple. 

    panelredesign2-erinfletcher

    The green leather panel was carefully removed and a new piece of purple leather was cut down and pared to the right size. For the new design, I kept the original border layout and text placement, which indicates the location of the wedding, the couple’s names and the date of the ceremony. The center motif is inspired by the Johnson Chapel building. Using simple architectural lines, the tower of the chapel was recreated through carbon tooling. The clock at the top of the tower indicates the time at which the wedding ceremony began. 

    All of the text on the new purple panel has been hand tooled using Gill Sans handle letters and palladium leaf. Palladium was chosen to mimic the look of the plaque inside.

    panelredesign3-erinfletcher

    The design on the box was rather tricky to capture within the limitations of my photo-documentation set-up. But the image below highlights the design through raking light, bringing out the grain of the leather against the blackness of the tooled lines. The client was very happy with the newly completed box and couldn’t wait to present the couple with their overdue wedding present. 

    panelredesign4-erinfletcher

  5. My Hand // Field Book of Western Wild Flowers: Part One

    October 8, 2013 by Erin Fletcher

    During my first year at North Bennet Street School, I stumbled upon this underrepresented category of bookbindings referred to quite accurately as embroidered bindings. Embroidery has been an interest and hobby of mine since I was a child. My research into this style of binding led me as far as Cyril Davenport’s Book of English Embroidered Bookbindings, which is one of a handful of books written solely on embroidered bindings. 

    From my research, I set out to create an embroidered binding using similar materials and techniques. I bound The Crucible in 2011. The overall layout and imagery on the covers are inspired by traditional outlines and iconography seen in historical embroidered bindings. The Crucible was a success (landing me Best Binding from the OBMI Chicago Public Library Exhibition) and ever since embroidery has been a technique that I’ve been wanting to translate onto a fine binding.

    Entering for the first time to the most recent Society of Bookbinders International Competition, I decided to bind a copy of Margaret Armstrong’s Field Book of Western Wildflowers. Margaret Armstrong is notable for designing covers for Publishers’ Bindings during the 1920s. As an illustrator, she also enjoyed drawing life-like representations of wild flowers. Margaret published Field Book in 1915, surveying wild flowers throughout the western hemisphere of the United States. The book includes 500 black and white illustrations and 48 colored plates. For the design of my fine binding I wanted to capture Margaret’s fame as a designer and skill as an illustrator. The cover on my fine binding is inspired by Margaret’s design for Henry Van Dyke’s Out of Doors in the Holy Land.

    07.04

    Beginning with a detailed sketch of the cover design, I labeled each onlay with a number and color. Each flower is taken directly from one of Margaret’s illustrations. The onlay leather ranged from goatskin to buffalo, the colors chosen to best represent the natural color of that specific species of flower. The leather was pared down to almost nothing, the illustrations were then pasted down to the leather and carefully cut out.

    wildflowers-erinfletcher

    I carefully arranged each piece of leather onto the sketch as a means to keep order to the mounting onlays, which came out to a total of 93 itty bitty pieces.

    wildflowers1-erinfletcher

    I cut down the base leather to it’s final size, I chose a dusty pink buffalo skin both for it’s soft, muted color and texture. I glued down each onlay one by one with PVA, pressing it between acrylic boards as I went. Once the onlays were in place and secured, I pared the entire skin to it’s final thickness. While paring the blade is removing more flesh from the areas with onlays creating a ghost-like silhouette, thus the technique of a back-pared onlay. This allows for a smoother transition between the base leather and the onlay leather.

    wildflowers2-erinfletcher

    At this point, the leather was ready to be embroidered and this became my favorite part. Each flower onlay was outlined with a floss that best matched the color of the leather. Additional colors were chosen to add highlights and shadows. Stitching through leather was surprisingly easy. However, a misguided needle could leave a lasting hole, so it was very important to accurately pierce through the leather. 

    wildflowers3-erinfletcher

     Part Two coming soon… 

  6. Free Shipping at Herringbone Bindery on Etsy!

    September 6, 2013 by Erin Fletcher

    readabook-sept6blog

    In the market for a new journal or sketchbook? Need a gift for the writer or artist in your life. Celebrate the Book this weekend at my Herringbone Bindery Etsy shop and receive free shipping on all orders of $10 or more. Just enter code: READABOOK10 at checkout. Have a wonderful and book-worthy weekend.

  7. Client Work // Single Section Half Leather Binding

    August 6, 2013 by Erin Fletcher

    STORY ABOUT THE TEXT: An article titled The Roxbury Defenders Committee: Reflections on the Early Years by the Chief Justice Roderick L. Ireland was recently published in Volume 95, No. 1 of the Massachusetts Law Review. The article speaks about the establishment of the Roxbury Defenders, a committee founded in 1971 to provide legal referrals to those who suffered financially in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The committee was founded by Ireland and his colleague and friend, Professor Wallace W. Sherwood. 

    ABOUT THE BINDING: For my client, I bound two copies of the Massachusetts Law Review journal, one for the Chief Justice and one for Professor Sherwood. The journals came to me straight from the press and bound together with staples. The staples were removed and bound as a single section bradel binding. This structure has been described in a previous Client Work post you can check out here and here.

    masslawreview1-erinfletcher

    Since the journal is printed in black ink only, I chose materials that reflected the gorgeous and vibrant image on the cover. The journals are bound a half leather binding, where the same covering material for the spine is used to cover the corners. I chose to bind the journals in a blue-gray buffalo skin against a taupe Iris bookcloth. For the endpapers I chose a beautiful handmade Cockerell marbled paper from Cambridge, England, in addition to a folio of marbled grey Bugra and off-white Hahnmühle Ingres.

    masslawreview2-erinfletcher

    Setting up my bench in preparation for covering the corners with blue-gray buffalo skin.

    To finish off the bindings, the title and volume of the journal were hand tooled along the spine with Centaur handle letters. The title was gilt with gold leaf.  

    masslawreviewspine-erinfletcher masslawreviewopen-erinfletcher

  8. Client Work: Single Section Full Leather Binding // Part Two

    August 1, 2013 by Erin Fletcher

    musicalscoresbinding8-erinfletcher

    If you missed Part One of this post, you can check it out here.

    After cautiously and carefully paring a rather large piece of goatskin, I was ready to cover. Being that it’s summertime and rather warm in our bindery, I was faced with the challenge of a thirsty piece of leather and quick-drying paste. After wrestling with the leather, particularly the headcaps and corners, the book was successfully covered and put to rest overnight. 

    The design on the cover is quite simplistic, an inspiration from the first musical score titled Three Nyatitis. A nyatiti is a five to eight-stringed plucked lyre from Kenya. The eight lines are spaced wider at the head of the cover then at the tail, where they end to form a partial circular shape. This negative space represents the sound hole of the instrument. The lines have been blind tooled into the leather.  

    musicalscoresbinding9-erinfletcher musicalscoresbinding7-erinfletcher

    The title for each composition has been gold tooled along the visible spine of the leather on either side of the blind-tooled lines. Each title has been hand-tooled with 16 point Centaur handle letters.

    sheetmusic-erinfletcher sheetmusictext-erinfletcher

    An interior shot showcasing the beautifully handmade paste papers from Deena Schnitman.

  9. Client Work: Single Section Full Leather Binding // Part One

    July 30, 2013 by Erin Fletcher

    STORY OF THE TEXT: For his 50th birthday, my client, commissioned two pieces of music to be played during his celebration in Kenya. Each piece is inspired by two distinct features of Kenya, the Talek river and the nyatitis, an eight-stringed lyre instrument. As a commemoration of this event, he approached me to bind the sheet music into a full leather binding.

    ABOUT THE BINDING: The sheet music came to me as 17 individual loose sheets. At the same time, the most recent The New Bookbinder (Volume 32) from the Designer Bookbinders appeared at our bindery. The journal contains an excellent and detailed article by Ingela Dierick titled Single Section Bradel Binding.

    Using this article as a guide, I decided to guard the scores as a single signature. A single sheet of light green/gray Hahnemühle ingres was used to divide the two compositions. A single folio of the same ingres and a folio of pool blue handmade paper from Katie MacGregor was wrapped around the single signature to act as endpapers. 

    musicalscorebinding1-erinfletcher

    Once the signature was ready, I prepared a stub out of the same pool blue handmade paper to the thickness of the signature. The signature was pamphlet sewn to the stub, the layers of the stub were glued together using PVA and then put under weight until the next day. After trimming the text block and stub to size, I was ready to attach my final endpaper. A single sheet of waste paper was tipped onto the stub at the height of my shoulder. The waste sheet is then folded back and the endpaper is tipped onto the same position. The waste paper is then wrapped back around the fold of the endpaper. This creates a zig-zag and leaves a pocket for the false shoulder. This final endpaper will also act as the paste down and is a handmade paste paper designed by Deena Schnitman. 

    musicalscorebinding3-erinfletcher

    A false shoulder made from cord of appropriate thickness is tipped into the pocket between the waste paper that is tipped to the stub and where it wraps around the endpaper. The book is then placed into a press or job backer and the stub is rounded to create the shape of the spine and the shoulder. This is done with a bone folder and some force. From here I added the leather wrapped headbands and six layers of spine linings, which extend beyond the head and tail. Once the spine is dry, it is then sanded down smooth.  

    musicalscorebinding4-erinfletcher

    At this point, I attached a bonnet to the spine. The bonnet included a spine stiffener and was then slit to allow for the leather turn-in at the headcaps. Boards were laminated from 1.5 mm millboard and 20 pt. and attached to the waste sheet. The waste sheet was then torn off and smoothed down. Lastly, the boards were sanded to have a subtle chamfered shape. 

    musicalscorebinding5-erinfletcher

  10. North Bennet Street School // Student & Alumni Exhibit 2013

    May 30, 2013 by Erin Fletcher

    At the annual Student & Alumni Exhibit for North Bennet Street School, the 2013 graduating Bookbinding class* showcased their design bindings for the set book The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. The text is largely a memoir of the years before and after Levi was transported to Auschwitz. Through a set of chapters titled after elements on the periodic table, Levi recounts his Jewish community in Italy and his life as a student and young chemist; exposing how life’s pleasures can resist and endure in the face of tyranny.

    studentalumni-kevinsheby

    Kevin Sheby bound his edition in black goatskin with hand-dyed goatskin onlays, tooled with palladium. The title and author are also hand tooled in palladium. Edges decorated with graphite and irregularly gilt with palladium. Kevin finished off the inside covers with black goatskin doublures and sunken ebonized veneer panels.

    studentalumni-jeannegoodman

    Jeanne Goodman covered her binding in full navy blue goatskin with sunken hexagon panels on either cover displaying two illustrations from the text. Each illustration is created through the use of several decorative techniques including feathered onlays, tooling in blind and gold and surface gilding in palladium. A tooled double border in gold runs along the outer edges of the covers. All three edges are gilt in gold and the interior is finished with handmade graphite paste papers.

    studentalumni-katrinakiapos

    Bound in full black goatskin, Katrina Kiapos, accented her design binding with a minimalist, geometric design. Three onlays in shades of black and grey mirror each other from the front and back covers. Katrina hand tooled the title and author in palladium. Edges decorated with graphite and sprinkled with palladium. The interior is covered with black goatskin doublures and leather flyleaves.

    studentalumni-betsyroper

    Betsy Roper bound her design binding in full hand-dyed goatskin. The skin was dyed to have a mottled look, creating texture and movement. Various hexagons are placed on the front and back cover, both protruding from and sinking into the boards. Title hand tooled in blind. Edges decorated in a soft brown tone. A marbled paper accents the island paste down and flyleaf.

    studentalumni-averybazemore

    Avery Bazemore created a design to reflect the chapters of the book, emphasizing the section about gold with a surface gilt square onlay on the front cover. The book is bound in full grey goatskin with additional onlays in black goatskin. Title and author were hand tooled in carbon. Head edge decorated before sewing in graphite; Avery again emphasizes the chapter in gold by gilding that particular section of the text. The single line continues onto the headband and headcap. The interior is finished off with leather doublures.

    studentalumni-laurenschott

    Covered in full dark green goatskin, Lauren Schott created a design binding reminiscent of the Art Deco era. Hand tooled gilt lines run the height of the front cover, wrapping around the spine, board edges and back cover leaving the outline of a hexagon. The title and author were also hand tooled in gold. Edges decorated with graphite and sprinkled with gold leaf.

    In addition to student work, a small handful of alumni work was also on display.

    libraryofbabel-colinurbina

    Library of Babel bound by Colin Urbina in full brown goatskin and hand tooled in a repeating hexagon pattern. A single hexagon is gilt on the front cover. Edges decorated with alternating shades of brown and chartreuse green.

    libraryofbabel2-colinurbinawhitman-samfeinstein

    A full leather rounded spine clamshell box from Samuel Feinstein. The front cover has a built-in window to house a printed portrait of Walt Whitman in addition to a gold tooled border along the frame.

    shakespeare-celinelombardi

    The Complete Works of Shakespeare bound by Celine Lombardi in full red goatskin. Titling and cover design hand tooled in gold. Each title on the spine is linked to a tab on the foredge of the text block through a corresponding gilt line.

    alumnicase-erinfletcher

    There are four great pieces on display in this case. On either corner are two of my bindings: Fantastic Mr. Fox and James and the Giant Peach. Last year, Marie Oedel paired up with book artist Laura Davidson (whom I interviewed on my blog in April) to make custom boxes for her book Every Nib. Lastly, is Celine Lombardi’s Murmurations, a small edition printed and bound during her year long fellowship at The Center for Book Arts in New York.

    * Nancy Baker’s set book was taken from the exhibit before I could photograph it for this blog post.

Older Entries
Newer Entries
  • 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.
    The StudioNewsletterInstagramEmail me
  • Archives