'Contemporary-Medieval'

I had a treat last Friday spending the day at City Lit on a one day bookbinding course. The course was called ‘Contemporary-Medieval’ and the tutor was Ina Baumeister, a professional book binder. I think most of us there were attracted by the idea of the book as sculpture and the idea of using old tyres as covers. Well, there were no old tyres, except in the tutor’s examples, but it was still a good day.

 We started with a basic format, sewing the sections onto cable ties, with instructions on raised band sewing styles.

 In the afternoon we saw the tutors work and were given a range of materials, shoe laces, rope, wire, strimmer tape, and old house signs from which to choose in order to make our own book design. I used a piece of black and silver plastic, not sure of its original use, wire, and plastic thread to work on. It was a packed course, which shows the current interest in book binding and the company was good.