Monday, February 27, 2017

The Art of the Maze

Here  I am on the road to  completing the "Maze book with Rod -edged Bindings", yet another of my hand made books.
 That's a a complicated title, isn't it? Simply stated, this is what is known as an accordion style book which uses metal rods along the edges  as a means of attaching each page another. Yes, these are pages, blank as of this moment .Later, perhaps it may contain my calligraphy about some theme that inspires me. 
I cut out each of my ten pages  from mat board, cut into four inch squares.Then comes the hunt to find tiny little metal rods , no thicker than the diameter of that board. The cover is slightly bigger, decorated with  that fancy paper  you see peeking out. Each rod is covered in book cloth, which is then meticulously glued to each side of my standing page. Holes are pushed out with a Japanese  hole punch, a nifty little device that I had to borrow to make this project.Finally, each page must be sewn to another, both top and bottom to make that binding frirm. Very elegant to look at, I think.
 I'm part of a group of extremely talented book makers, who are generous with time and materials as we all take turns teaching a new book to the others.We artists work so much alone, it can be very inspiring, as well as informative to observe how we all interpret the same book in our own style.This is a work in progress. I will see what turn the maze next follows!.

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