My project in Handmade Binding without Stitches course

I am a photographic artist working mainly with my own family archive and I wanted to learn this course to be able to present my various photography projects in book form. This book is called Safe From Harm and consists of photographic collages of childhood photos from my family album together with my own photographs, uniting the various generations through time. As many of them are in landscape format I was keen to be able to use them in this double spread format without losing any information and I think that works well. They are printed on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper which is a lovely matte, slightly textured paper. I decided for this first attempt not to go for leather or decorated paper for the covers but to keep it simple and concentrate on the content. My only decoration is an elastic closure finished off with a vintage 1950s button, the era when many of the original photos were made! The cover paper is a Hahnemuhle Ingres paper and the endpapers Canson Mi-Teintes.

The book isn’t perfect by any means but I’m quite pleased with the result. I had some issues with lining up the bifolios (so difficult!) and gluing them correctly so some of the pages aren’t quite flat. To glue the covers and pages together I used Japanese Nori paste which is made from rice starch. Not sure if that is the best choice but I had used it before quite successfully and you can reposition it whilst working. To glue the spine I used PVA. I’m not totally happy with the cover - it has some glue marks on it, the front cover is bowing slightly (I don’t know why) and in places the paper is not stuck down properly! I don’t think it will wear very well but I hope to do something more creative for my next one. Things I have learnt - it’s important to be exact in measuring and neat in working methods and get rid of scrap paper the minute you’ve used it or else you get glue everywhere!

Thank you Susana for such a detailed and clear set of instructions. I thoroughly enjoyed the course and have learnt so much. I’m looking forward to doing your next course which I hope to make a start on soon.