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Posts Tagged ‘erin fletcher’

  1. My Hand…The BFG

    November 12, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    Just 4 weeks remain at Buy Some Damn Art.

    As I reread The BFG by Roald Dahl, it quickly became clear that I wanted to illustrate the dreams and nightmares captured by the Big Friendly Giant. The reader joins little Sophie in her journey to Giant Country, where we learn about the nasty giants, snozzcumbers and the BFG’s vocation as a dream catcher. Each dream and nightmare is collected into a jar where they remain until released into children’s rooms at night. Sophie describes dreams as being small oblong pale sea-green jellyfish, soft and shimmering, while nightmares thrash around as scarlet blobs of gas and bubbles of jelly. 

    I made the decision to bind The BFG as a millimeter binding in the Rubow style so the design could run the full length of the book uninterrupted. Using Sophie’s description as a guide for the color palette, I created a paste paper to reflect each illusion. Each area of color is a mixture of gouache, sugar and vinegar applied with a scrap piece of binder’s board. As the paint mixture dries the partially dissolved sugar crystals burst leaving a textural and dimensional effect. 

    Each color continues along the board edge and the edge decoration visually saturating each side in a single color. The tail board edge and headband are covered with scarlet goatskin from Harmatan, while the head board edge and headband are covered with buffalo from Remy Carriat in amadine (light sea-green). Each edge is painted with acrylic paint mixed with airbrush medium, water and wheat starch paste. The head edge is a sea-green blue, foredge is a light grey and the tail edge is scarlet red.

    The endpapers were so fun to make. I’ve worked with vegetable papyrus in the past and felt compelled to use the cucumber since the BFG eats only one thing: snozzcumbers. I acquired the cucumber papyrus from Hiromi Paper which are handmade by an artist in Germany. Using a thin paste wash I broke up the papyrus and collaged the pieces together on top of light gray Hahnemuhle Ingres. 

    The book is housed in a clamshell box, the trays are covered with light gray Hahnemuhle Ingres and lined with smoke Ingres. The case is covered with silver Canapetta and light gray Ingres in a quarter style covering.

  2. My Hand…James and the Giant Peach

    November 5, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    Five weeks remain for my exhibition on Buy Some Damn Art. There’s still time to add to your library!

    Initially for this binding of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach I had intended on covering it in a peachy-colored pig suede to represent the Giant Peach itself. However, dressing the book up like a peach felt too dry, too safe. The story of James and the Giant Peach is loaded with magic from the overgrown peach to the singing insects, which only became possible through the power of those little, luminescent crocodile tongues. Using smoke Hahnemuhle Ingres, I created a simple paste paper representing the little green things, scattering them about randomly. The acrylic paint was mixed with wheat starch paste and watered down significantly, this allowed for the graduation of intensity with each corkscrew shape.

    I choose to execute this design as a Rubow Millimeter binding. This is one of my favorite structures to work with, mainly because the covering material (most commonly paste paper) can lay across the entire book uninterrupted. The head and tail edge of the boards are lined with buffalo skin in Anis (chartreuse green), which matched perfectly to the green tone on the paste paper.

    The edges of the book were painted with an fluid acrylic/paste mixture to match the red walnut Cave Paper endpapers. After application and once the pigment was dry, I used sandpaper to scuff up the edges a bit giving it a distressed look. The headbands are hand sewn around a single core (bead on foredge) in alternating dark brown and reddish brown. The title was hand stamped through brown foil. The book is housed in a clamshell box. The trays are covered in smoke Hahnemuhle Ingres and lined with lime Moriki; the case is covered in a brown Canapetta bookcloth.

    James and the Giant Peach is for sale at the price of $400.

  3. My Hand…Exhibition on Buy Some Damn Art

    October 30, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    Check out the six Roald Dahl titles I rebound for Buy Some Damn Art. At the beginning of each week I will feature a post on the creative process behind each binding. Check out this week’s post on Fantastic Mr. Fox.

  4. My Hand…Fantastic Mr. Fox

    October 29, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    Starting tomorrow at Buy Some Damn Art, six of my books will be featured and on sale for six weeks. Follow my blog during that time to see a post on the making of each title.  

    I’ve been greatly inspired by Art Deco bindings and wanted to incorporate that style into this binding of Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl. As a child I read this story over and over, imagining blueprints of the underground tunnels created by those devious foxes. In the spirit of Art Deco design I simplified these underground channels, wrapping them around three colorful, geometric farmhouses. 

    The binding is a variation on a German case structure by Peter Verheyen where the boards are covered separately from the book. The spine and boards were covered with earth Hahnmühle Ingres. To make the farmhouses I layered various handmade and commercially made papers which include Moriki, Hahnmühle Ingres, Cave Paper and Lokta. There is a line of red walnut Cave Paper running the width of each board representing the ground and dividing up the levels of the farmhouses; the walnut Cave Paper is the dirt far below the top soil, highlighting the tunnels around each farmhouse. The title was stamped in a sans serif typeface with brown foil.

    The headbands are wrapped red walnut Cave Paper around cord. The edges were painted with an acrylic/paste wash, once dry the edges were carefully brushed with sandpaper to give a more textural look. The end papers are red walnut Cave Paper. I loved using Cave Paper for this binding for a few reasons: the handmade quality, use of natural dyes and the textural characteristics seemed most suitable to represent the living, moist dirt deep underground. The book is housed in a clamshell box. The trays are covered in lime Moriki and lined with rose Hahnmühle Ingres and the case is covered with brown Canapetta. 

  5. My Hand…Exhibition on Buy Some Damn Art

    October 25, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    Check out my show on October 30th over at Buy Some Damn Art.  I rebound 6 titles from the crafty and clever Roald Dahl (my childhood favorite).  All of the books are for sale and would make the perfect addition to your library.

    Stay updated on upcoming exhibitions by signing up to BSDA’s mailing list.  Every week you are introduced to exciting artistic talents, plus at a low cost you can start covering those bare walls or shelves. 

  6. My Hand…Little Birds

    August 20, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    In April 2011, I took my first trip out of the country to London.  While I was there I made my way to the Natural History Museum for their touring exhibition of Sexual Nature, a show on the sexual habits of various animal species from the praying mantis to rams to angler fish to humans. I was intrigued and shocked by the facts and imagery presented in the exhibit, particularly the Green Porno shorts by Isabella Rossellini. On my way out I perused the gift shop and decided on a whim to purchase two books by Anaïs Nin (Little Birds and Delta of Venus).

    Both books are a collection of short stories published in the late 1970s posthumously. Written in the 1940s, Nin and a group of writers were given the task of writing erotica for an anonymous private collector. Her erotic shorts deal with various sexual themes, some quite taboo (varying from pedophilia to lesbianism), all the while she maintains a focus on the study of women and her female characters.

    The cover design for Little Birds was taken from the title pages of the individual stories, a ‘V’ formation of sparrows. I chose a simple color palette for my simple design, red (the color of love and seduction), white (the color of purity and innocence) and gold (the color of luxuriance). The book is bound in full scarlet goatskin leather from Harmatan.  The sparrows are surface gilt in gold leaf with white suede inlays.

    I covered the inside of each board with a leather edge to edge doublure in the same scarlet goatskin. An edge to edge doublure describes a technique where a thinly pared piece of leather covers the inside of the board, stretching from edge to edge creating a seamless transition from the outside to the inside.  The doublure also stretches over the joint and onto the text block creating a very strong attachment. Along with the leather doublure is a sunken panel filled with white suede framed in surface gilt gold leaf. The fly leaf is a handmade Lokta paper from Nepal, printed with a pattern of white feathers on a natural base.

    The book is housed in a rounded spine clamshell box, using the same materials as the binding. The spine is lined with scarlet goatskin with the title hand tooled in gold.  The case and trays are covered in the same feather pattern Lokta paper and are lined with Hahnemühle Ingres in smoke.

  7. My Hand…Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

    August 6, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    This fine binding of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott was completed for the Guild of Book Workers National Traveling show ‘Horizon‘.  The show opened on June 8th at The Great Hall at the Margaret I. King Special Collections Library in the University of Kentucky and will soon be traveling to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City for the grand opening of the Standards Seminar on October 11, 2012.

    I choose Flatland (not only because it’s one of my favorite science fictions novels), but I wanted to challenge myself by creating a 3-dimensional cover for the binding.  Abbott’s novella is an observation on the social hierarchy of Victorian culture set in a fictional 2-dimensional world known as Flatland whose denizens are geometric figures which defines their place in the social ladder (women are depicted as lowly lines).  Readers are guided through the text by a Square who dreams of other dimensions and challenges the authority of the high class Circle.  As you move around the book, a sphere begins to emerge from the cover, illustrating the Square’s discovery of the third dimension.

    The book has been bound in white buffalo skin, while the shapes are tooled onlays of both goat and buffalo with palladium outlines.  A plastic lens was mounted to bass wood to give the right dimension for the sphere and adhered to the front board before covering.  The order of the shapes was taken from the hierarchy listed in the book, while the layout was greatly inspired by Art Deco bindings of the early 1900s.  The edges of the text block are gilt with Palladium leaf over a base of graphite; headbands have been sewn to mimic the color pattern created by the shapes.

    The title was tooled with palladium using a series of line palettes and gouges to create a custom font.

    At the beginning and end of the text block a pop-up of a cube is revealed representing another opportunity to transform a 2-dimensional object into a 3-dimensional one.  The book is housed in an elaborate enclosure, in order to protect the raised area of the cover a spacer was constructed with a circle cutout.  The spacer is lined with leather and white suede on the side facing the book and paper on the other.  A chemise lined with white suede encompassed the spacer and book.  All three components rest inside a leather spine clamshell box.  The title and an image of the Flatlander’s home are tooled on the spine of the box.

  8. My Hand…Talking to Myself

    August 5, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    The millimeter binding (specifically Rubow) is my most favorite structure due to its simple elegance and traditional use of handmade paste paper.  ‘Talking to Myself’ was bound with blank pages to be used as a journal.  On this binding the head edge and tail edge are lined with maroon goatskin with leather wrapped headbands in the same leather.  This paste paper was especially fun to design.  By taking inspiration from Sarah Creighton, I aimed to create an alien landscape with rich oranges and browns. 

    The initial peachy layer of acrylic paint mixed with wheat starch paste and water was applied to the Hahnemuhle Ingres paper with a sponge brush.  Once that dried completely the three other colors (of the same mixture) were applied separately with a piece of binder’s board in order to create the peaks and icicle-like forms.  The title was smoke-tooled with handle letters.  Smoke-tooling is a technique were the face of the tool is greased up with petroleum jelly and then stuck in a flame to collect carbon; the tool is then pressed into the cover leaving a trace of carbon behind.  This give a rich, deep black impression of the tool.

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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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