tedorigawabookmakers

This is the Triangle Book. It has wooden covers, coptic binding and about 168 pages of an off-size: as tall as A4 but not as wide (because the wood wasn’t as wide and I didn’t feel like gluing more wood to it.)

It also has five strings the same color as the binding hanging down from the edge of the triangle to near the bottom. This is ‘artsy’ with a capital F, verdad?

But it only took lots of sanding, two or three varnishings and more sanding to get it to look right. For some reason I couldn’t get a handle on it. The inlay on the back, for example, took a week to get right and it’s still not completely what I wanted.

Practice, I suppose, is next on my agenda. In fact, next week we will have three books from my Chinese - or is it Japanese - Stab Binding Series.

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The July book was going to be a book with wood covers and an inlay of a different kind of wood, coptic binding, lined paper, with pictures on some pages and nicely carved. Ha!

Now it’s August and I can’t get the inlay to lay right. What a life. I mean, straight line. We shall see what becomes of it. Meanwhile, I made a bookshelf to house my…. cooking utensils. Okay, it’s a counter more than a bookshelf. But it Looks like a bookshelf.

Photos of the July Book to come. (Before the August book is finished, one would hope, wouldn’t one?)

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This is the June 6th Book (part of a plan). It has yellow lined paper and wooden covers. That darker strip is mahogany while the rest is a lesser wood. Coptic binding, of course, with green waxed linen thread.

It has six signatures of six folios for 144 pages and, if I do say so myself, it is quite what I was hoping for: regal yet useful, understated yet vociferous.

What was learned from this is that it takes longer to make a nice book than a quicker book. And measuring is important. As is being in the right frame of mind.

The plan? You ask. It is to make a nice book on the golden day of each month. What is the golden day of each month? For example, the 6th day of the 6th month (June 6th), or the 12th day of the 12th month (December 12) and so on. Well, it can’t go too much further. The First plan was to complete it on the golden day. I’m lucky if I complete it in the month of the golden day. The June 6th Book was completed July 5th, for example.

Here we see the signatures. There should be six as this was the Book of the Sixth Month (June, for those counting.). The paper is heavier than copy paper and slicker. I don’t know how well a pen will work on it although a pencil will do just fine - getting back to a simpler technology here, I suspect.

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In the last month or so I got carried away with making editions (more than one book) and this is the second set. Yellow blank notebooks with a coptic stitch, red inserts to add color to the spine, and endpapers I made myself from two photographs of the local area: a temple and a bunch of cherry trees in full bloom.

I liked them, although I ripped the snot out of a hole in one cover thereby botching in terribly, but the other four turned out well. I gave three away as gifts for favors done for me (two interviews). I gave a fourth one away because one endpaper wasn’t a photo of the cherry trees but of the person I gave it to.

She was quite surprised when she opened it and saw her face because a) she wasn’t expecting to see herself in a notebook and b) I took the photo on Thursday evening and gave her the notebook on Friday morning.

I don’t say, actually, that I ‘give’ my creations away; I say I ‘release’ them. Sounds more… catch-and-release dramatic in a macho kind of way.

Here are the covers of the Yellow Notebooks. The first one, with the busy work on it, is the one I gave to a friend - the one with her picture inside.

More photos of both the Yellow notebooks and the Green notebooks (described in the post below) can be found at Tedorigawa Bookmakers. Please enjoy.

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Zipped through five green notebooks last weekend except I ran out of green book cloth so one is actually beige-yellow using Japanese paper. I learned a bit about making hardbound books and am eager to start making more. Another set of five. With a different amount of book cloth. More book cloth. And better end papers.

Meanwhile, I’m coptic stitching a smaller notebook with end papers that are photos I took of a nearby city. Very local. Very nice.

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Last week I saw an empty cereal box then a pile of unwanted (sob, sob) paper which had been used only on one side and my brain said: Book! Book! I thought at the time my brain was warning me away so I ran six and a half miles in the wrong direction. Dragging my way back, I saw the paper and cereal box again and this time my brain said, Yo, Dummy. Book. I grabbed the box and paper and scurried home like a … very tired of running old man. I grabbed a needle, some thread, some Japanese sake (for medicinal purposes) and set about making a notebook.

I botched the threading, I botched the holes, I botched the pattern of threading. The end result was beautiful in the way a new born camel is beautiful to sub-Saharan camel traders. But not to me. So I ripped it apart and did it again. By this time the sake was working its magic, so I managed to make a fairly nice notebook - if opening is not a priority. (Japanese stab bindings are like that. Which is why I do so love coptic binding but when you’re working with folios (one page folded over once) what can you do? Run six and a half miles in the wrong direction, maybe?)

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I went to a book/stationery story to check out diaries and desk calendars today to find out how other people handled the odd-number of days in a week. Most had an extra column for ‘notes’ making their calendars 8 columns wide, four on one page, four on the other. This seems like cheating to me. Others had MTWTh on one page and FSS on the other. Usually Thursday flipped between one page or the other. Seems all to be a personal style.

Another attribute of desk calendars is padding. How do the major desk calendar makers pad out the number of pages to make the diary seem thicker than it needs to be? By adding lined pages, calendars for future years, weekly schedules, “Resolution of the Month” pages, and in one case: a few pages of words in five different languages.

Why, you ask, am I looking at desk calendars and diaries now? Because now is the time I usually get started making my for next year. It takes me a looong time to design, photograph, print, and bind my desk calendars. Much too long.

And I’m Still working on Monk’s Scroll!

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I finished making a box for a book and two small notebooks using Islamic bookbinding; Islamic bookbinding has, as you know, a little flap that rests over the cover of the book to protect the text block and can be used as a bookmark. I’m still working on a scroll. My first scroll - Monk’s Scroll - is taking longer than expected which means my Bach’s Scroll is going to be more complicated than I expected. I hope to finish — Famous Last Words — Monk’s Scroll in the next two weeks, he said hedging his bets. Speaking of bets:

The question is asked: “When did you get started in bookmaking?” By which I assume they mean making books rather than taking bets for horse races.

Here is a 66-second drama about the above. Cool.

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Currently in production at Tedorigawa Bookmakers: Monk’s scroll - using the music of Thelonius Monk (”Straight No Chaser”) on a scroll. Rock ‘n Scroll - using rock music (Maybe “Stairway to Heaven”) on a scroll. Bach’s Scroll - using a Bach piece on a scroll and putting the whole thing in a box, of course.

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A short 50-second audio introduction of things not to come on Tedorigawa Bookmakers.

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