Making Book Cloth

Book cloth making time! I first did a few sheets following the directions I learned a long time ago from a book, using rice starch paste. Then I experimented a bit.

[Please be patient and try not to get confused, since I took pictures at various times when I was doing different cloths. We might jump around from florals to squirrels without notice.]

First, you need a smooth flat surface to work on. I've saved my old worn-out cutting mats and use the back sides of those. Spritz the cloth with water--get it good and damp. Smooth it out with the right side of the fabric facing down:

On a piece of scrap paper (here, newsprint), brush an even layer of paste onto the backing paper, which should be just a bit larger than your piece of cloth. Always brush from the center out to the edges and be sure not to miss any spots. I'm using basic Japanese kozo:

Smooth backing paper, paste side down, over the fabric:

Using a dry brush helps smooth the paper:

As does using a rolled up towel to tamp down the paper onto the fabric. This also, especially, helps create a better bond between fabric and paper:

I also use another method to smooth down the paper onto the fabric, but almost hesitate mentioning it. This could potentially stretch your fabric and push too much glue onto the side of the fabric you don't want it on. That said, I've discovered that carefully using a roller (going, as you always should, from center outward towards the edges) will give you incredibly smooth and well-bonded book cloth (you might not even want it that smooth--this could partly be a matter of what you desire):

The original method I was taught was that one should now carefully turn and smooth the book cloth over onto a new, clean surface, right-side up, then paste around the edges to hold it down flat as it dries:

From recent experience, I can report that this is also an excellent way to drop your wet, newly-made cloth and ruin it. (I did not take a pic for posterity.)

So what I started to do was just leave the cloths in place--don't 

touch!--right-side down to dry, without an extra turning step. (Do you know why we are supposed to turn over the cloth? Does not turning increase the likelihood of paste getting onto the side of the fabric you don't want it on?) Regardless, I've found that, at least for the dropping-prone, the leave it alone method works:

When dry, peel it off, trim off the extra paper edging and voilà--book cloth:

Modern Book Burning

http://www.xkcd.com/750/

1940 Map Model of San Francisco

From the National Archives...Via sfgate.com

An interesting map story appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle the other day.

A giant museum-quality three-dimensional relief map of San Francisco as it appeared 70 years ago has turned up in a UC Berkeley warehouse, stored in 17 wooden cases...

If assembled, the relief map would be 41 feet long by 37 feet wide and would show the whole city from the bay to the ocean, the Golden Gate to the San Mateo County line. It's an exact-scale model of San Francisco as it looked in 1940.

The model is carefully detailed, showing every street, and every building, all of them hand-painted. There are even tiny trees in the backyards and the parks...

Book Arts Guild at Eureka Books, plus Donner Party Digression

Last night was the opening for the North Redwoods Book Arts Guild exhibition at Eureka Books. This has become an annual event over the last few years, and this was the best yet. It's great that we have such an enthusiastic and supportive local spot for book arts here in our little corner of the world. Most of the books will be up for the month, including my pharmaceutical piece and the cat book noted below in recent earlier posts. If you're local, come see it while you can. Members from as far away as Thailand submitted books. The books have also been posted on Flickr.

One of the problems, though, of having a show at one of my favorite bookstores is that I, not being so big into large social gatherings, had to keep fighting the urge to duck upstairs to hide among the shelves. At one point, temptation was too great and I discovered a marvelous FBI manual from the 70s on forensic investigation. I owe my friend Shirl, who likes to alter things with a deliciously irreverent eye, a present. I hope she's not reading this. 

Nothing to do with art, but I tend to digress...during the evening my eye fell upon an old favorite, Ordeal by Hunger by George R. Stewart. The book is an account of the Donner Party, and in this particular version, there's an appendix with a letter that 12 year old Virginia Reed wrote to the folks back home after surviving the ordeal. "My Dear Cousin I am going to write to you about our trubels geting to California..." 

Young Virginia ends by offering this bit of sage advice: "Dont let this letter dish[e]a[r]ten anybody... never take no cutofs and hury along as fast as you can." 

Words to live by. Especially for those of us prone to digressing.