tedorigawabookmakers

I will be working on my Crapsey Quintain Coptic Book of poetry tonight as I have delayed working on it for quite some time, and don’t you just love the name?

Adelaide Crapsey created a type of poem she called the quintain - a 5-line poem of 22 syllables total. Eacy line should get progressively longer but that doesn’t always hold water, not even for Ms Adelaide. I don’t know why I got interested in her, her quintains, or her biography. Could it have been because of her surname? Am I that shallow?

Here’s an example of one of her quintains called Night Winds

Night Winds

The old

Old winds that blew

When Chaos was, what do

They tell the clattered trees that I

Should weep?

On a business note, I am planning to sell my books and will be setting up an online shop for a variety of finished books shortly. As an added bonus to early visitors, I will be throwing in - free - other stationery items such as pens, notebooks, simple notepads, and a 1959 250 GT Berlinetta Ferrari. Oh, wait. I made a mistake. Sorry, no notepads. Or the Ferrari, gosh darn it!

Not open yet, watch this space for future developments and the opening day.

_______________________

music from Sonnyboo.com and composed by Peter John Ross. Check out his movies! Especially Relationship Card - it’s hilarious.

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I am going to continue work on an original, handwritten, handbound novel that I have put off for several months now because of either a) writer’s block or b) laziness. I think writer’s block sounds better because it gives the impression I’m pacing back and forth in my studio trying to wrestle with the creative beast instead of laying on the couch running through blogs and Tweets and things.

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Is the book on life support? Newspapers are folding left and right - not that many people care. Independent bookstores are closing or being bought up (Shades of You’ve Got Mail!)or being usurped by Amazon. Audio book suppliers such as Audiobooks.org, Audible.com, librivox.org, and gutenberg.org provide books for the audio-phile (free if the book is public domain in some cases). And it’s especially easy if you’ve got a Kindle sitting around your couch next to the remote.

But what of the old-fashioned paper-bound book? Are we buying more or fewer books? I think the generation that turned 18 this year will buy fewer paper books. They are the generation that is used to looking up everything in wikipedia (and believing what they read), reading from a computer monitor, cell phone, or game console, and not buying books.

Therefore, will those involved in bookbinding and the book arts perserve the book much as monks did with scrolls in the Middle Ages? A beautifully bound book is more than the words inside it. A beautifully bound book is something people will want to show off, to put on their coffee tables, to brag about. And, perhaps, read. The next 25 to 50 years will be interesting to watch; I hope I’m around that long.

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This Is… used to be called Invisible Rhino, eh? But because there are no invisible rhinos in the entire book, the title has been revamped.. But there is life? Well, with the aid of a lot of huge and small corporations, I have recycled a bit of this and that. This book has eight signatures of four pages each for a total of about 128 blank pages.

Included are three cords that keep the notebook closed - two cords circumnavigate the tome while one just leaps over the front edge and wraps itself around the pink button.

What’s the purpose? Keep it closed? I think I need one for my mouth. Actually, my last book was quite plane: green cover and nothing else. This is a reaction to minimalism. Clutterism, I think I’ll call it. The endpapers are rough and torn which gives the book a bit of character.

On the back are the Japanese words: 手取川. This is pronounced: Tedorigawa. This is a sake manufacturer near here. It is also a river and the site of a major battle in a major war about 400 years ago. It is also the kanji for Tedorigawa Bookmakers.

What did we learn from this book: I like long stitch and will attempt it again. I also learned I need to much more careful whilst sewing it together; the long stitch is nice but the link stitch at the top and bottom are not very pretty. Downright ugly, if you ask me. But still, a cute little book with a lot of cheerful smiles about it.

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Here we have a couple of shots of a Work In Progress. (I love that phrase; it might mean: not finished yet - may never be.) Cool. Anyway, here is a shot of the parts including pages that are as of yet blank. They will, hopefully, be filled with ramblings, stories and drawings before the book is ‘finished.’ I have the ideas, not the time.

There are eight signatures of four pages each for 16 pages per signature. I’m going to beeswax some colored thread, in the foreground, there, and use a long stitch (exposed) binding.

Next, details from the front. Here we see a fish-like creature with a fishline-like object jutting out of its southern mouth area. With ‘Premium roast coffee’ and a couple of buttons. This book has three cords - two wrap around the whole book while one is content with just flipping over the front edge. These two buttons are what the cords will wrap around once they circumnavigate the book. Both the coffee boast and the ‘ECO’ (Enron Company Officer?) are from a McDonald’s takeout bag, hence the existence of half the easily if not readily identifiable ‘M’.

Besides the insides, I need to put on the endpapers and drill the holes for the exposed binding. Hopefully, someday soon this will no longer be a “Work in Progress.”

Some sounds (some? Most!) from FreeSound.

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Hopefully by this time next week I will have a few snaps of a fun book I’m in the process of making: A non-blank notebook - a doodle book, if you will - that is going to encompass all sorts of new techniques that I haven’t even come close to mastering or even non-mastering. An experimental book to go along with the experimental nature of Tedorigawa Bookmakers. All part of the master conspiracy in my mind. Oooh, that sounds ominous, if I do say so myself.

The new book will have a linkstitch exposed binding, a cool cover, eight signatures of four sheets each for a total of 128 pages, and about B6 in size. And a cool cover, I hope. The cover will incorporate found objects, at least two different kinds of paper, and an odd doodle or two.

Content will include stories, drawings, receipts and other stuff I haven’t decided yet. Blank notebooks are good and I get a lot of practice from them but most people don’t pick up a blank notebook and think, cool binding. They pick up a blank notebook and think, uhn, nice?

Anyway, hopefully next week. What should this book be called? I’m partial to “The Invisible Rhinos of Tokyo.”

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I added three more notebooks to my Cereal Series (see the post right below this one) and Finally! Finally! I got a coptic binding I like! On the fifth of five blank notebooks, the binding came out very nice. That’s a 20% success rate or, in baseball terms, I’m batting 200. Not so good, eh? Well, I was excited that the fifth one came out good so I don’t care if I’m batting .200 or not; it’s the Success of the Week. Pictures of the cover look like the ones from below so you can just flip between this post and that one.

Thanks for reading. I hope to get some audio up soon. Enjoy your week, too!

Two more books from Tedorigawa Bookmakers‘ famous Cereal Series. These are blank notebooks with coptic binding and about 100 pages each.

Actually, one is 100 pages and the other is 120 pages but I don’t remember which is which. I suppose I could look it up….

The covers are from two cereal boxes. The book on the left says, “Genmai” (brown rice) “Flakes.” Like corn flakes except made out of genmai. The book on the right has, in small letters at the top, “Salad Cereal.” And then a series of pictures to show you how to make a salad on top of your cereal in three easy steps: put the cereal in a bowl, put salad fixings on the cereal, add dressing. Viola! Salad in a bowl!

On this pair of Cereal Series Blank Notebooks, I tried a different way to sewing the coptic binding: more precise and complex on the tail and head pieces (bottom and top). I liked the head and tail sewings but not the middle three. Usually I like the middle three sewings but not the end ones.

Things we learned on this project? Measuring and cutting straight are important. Also, just because I have black waxed thread, doesn’t mean I have to use it. i.e. Another color thread might have been better. Finally we learned that measuring, folding, and sewing is best done while not simultaneously watching a movie on cable.

Here you can see the basic size of the Cereal Series Blank Notebook. It fits quite nicely into an overcoat pocket and opens out flat for full use of the entire page. (200 grams of this cereal will get you 50% of your daily requirements of seven essential vitamins, iron, and calcium, according to the front.)

By the way, this cereal is made by Kellogg’s.

Thanks for reading and we hope to hear from you soon.

I whipped up my first miniture book one bright and shiny non-snowy December night. (And cut off all my hair and my beard.) The miniture is holiday-themed. For Halloween. Because I recycled a box and it had housed a jack-o-lantern of the plastic and small variety.

First, I folded the signatures in what has been called a Hot Dog fold. If you click the link and then look to the right, you can click on a YouTube video that explains it all. But let me back up. First, I drew a bunch of Halloween-related pictures and wrote a short essay about Halloween on some very thin Chinese-style paper. THEN I folded them in the hot dog fold. This meant that some of the pictures and some of the essay were not visible - they were buried in the folds. This made it a surprise book, even for me.

I used what is called the perfect binding, not because it was perfect but because it looks like a ‘real’ book, with back, spine, and front. All of those were taken from the jack-o-lantern box

Then everything was hastily and sloppily glued together so that I could get back to my holiday wine. It dried overnight and then I showed it around and people (okay,one person) was suitably impressed but it really was sloppily glued together. It’s…. cute, though.

What did we learn from this little excursion into miniture-ness? Folding is fun. Writing and then folding is more fun. Making small things is fun. Sometimes, but I prefer to make more useful things such as calendar or diaries (I’m actually working on one for 2010 as you read this. If you’re not reading this in the dead of the night.)

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Just in the nick of time. Today, December 28, 2008, I managed to finish a 2009 calendar/diary. It has blue Japanese paper as a cover, with light blue paper as endpapers. Coptic binding with black waxed thread and white pages.

This was supposed to have been finished as a Christmas present but all sorts of delays ensued, not the least of which was me spending four hours handwriting the dates only to discover while writing November that I skipped a day back in March or April. Usually I don’t mind skipping days but when they are in a permanent document that will be used over and over again as the year progresses, well, I felt I had to do something. So I started over and my, wasn’t that fun.

Here, if you turn your computer sideways (here’s hoping you have a laptop), you can see the handy (pun alert!) size: fits well into a jacket pocket or the pocket on some briefcases. Also, in a purse, if you carry one.

What did I learn from this escapade?

Well, first, start your yearly diaries and calendars early. Well before December 24th, I’d say - just as a rule of thumb anyway. In fact, I just finished the weekly calendar for a calendar for 2010. Thinking ahead, I am. Also, be very, very careful of dates and days. For some reason these are important in calendary/diaries. I don’t know why.

I like the hand-written monthly calendar but I didn’t like the hand-written weekly calendar, so I xeroxed a page and used that. Not the best solution but workable. Overall, I’d say this rates 3.5 stars out of five.