Designer Bookbindings

Hannah Dunmow, Archivist

The Company supports the endangered craft of hand bookbinding by commissioningfine bindings from establishedbookbinders, and also by supportingand funding several initiatives byDesigner Bookbinders as well as theQueen’s Bindery ApprenticeshipScheme (QBAS).

Three new bindings from established bookbinders have been commissioned over the summer to add to the growing collection. We hope to receive the completed works during 2020. Meanwhile, three completed bindings were delivered to Clothworkers’ Hall this past summer.

First is an intricate binding by Sue Doggett incorporating not just leather (resist-dyed goatskin and gold leather onlays), but also textiles (dyed cloth, machine- and hand-embroidery, and wool felting). By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London (Adrian Tinniswood, 2013) proved to be a great source of inspiration, and alongside the obvious fire theme, Sue was drawn to think about buildings and architecture, culminating in a representation of quadratura, illusionistic architectural painting that appears to extend the actual space into an imagined one.

The general layout suggests what you might see painted on the ceiling of a cathedral – pointing to heaven and presenting you with an image of a world partially beyond the imagination, but rooted in reality. The phoenix, embroidered using Chinese silk, was prompted by one of the chapters colourfully summing up the optimism of those who envisioned the new city-to-be. It appears along the spine of the book, rising up out of a flaming inferno and the wreck of the city into an unnaturally optimistic blue sky.

Pamela Richmond’s response to Chris Ofili: Weaving Magic – the Victoria Miro/National Gallery 2017 exhibition catalogue for our tapestry The Caged Bird’s Song (which now hangs in our Livery Hall) – is her interpretation of Ofili’s design. She felt that the tapestry itself was already an interpretation one stage on from his watercolour designs, so hers is another stage.

A holiday in the Caribbean helped Pamela get a real feeling for the colours in the tapestry, leading her to reject her first design, removing the leather and starting again with richer colours and a vibrant green. The strong curved lines in different thicknesses echo the sweeping lines of the original charcoal drawings, and are gold tooled using six shades of gold ranging from palladium, to lemon, and then to a deep, dark gold.

The tooled ‘stitching’ marks flowing across the binding represent the weavers’ stitches on the tapestry. Pamela drew a template for her design on a grid, which she placed on the leather and blind tooled the lines, adding the gold afterwards.

London, A Pilgrimage, written by Blanchard Jerrold and illustrated by Gustave Doré, is based on the author’s many journeys exploring London in the early 1870s, observing how people lived in both extreme poverty and extreme wealth. Jo Bird was fascinated and, after researching contemporary maps, decided that depicting a map for the cover would work in empathy with the written journey undertaken inside without detracting from Doré’s wonderful illustrations. To further suit the book and illustrations, she chose to tool with black carbon, rather than gold leaf, and recessed leather onlays.

Her design began with the instantly recognisable line of the Thames, and she experimented with various shapes to try to represent the movement of London and the way it was growing. She decided on just two shapes – tiny circles and lines roughly representing people and landmarks – for which she made her own brass tools. The tools are heated and the tip is applied onto a sheet of carbon, which adheres to the tool tip and then is gently pressed into the leather. The same shape is gone over many times. For the recessed onlays, the lines are blind tooled into the leather to create a recessed area in which the leather is applied. Calfskin is pared very finely to 0.2mm and hand dyed before it is cut into strips of 1mm. These are adhered into the recessed areas very carefully. After studying maps again, seeing how major roads, landmarks, parks and the docks created their own shapes and patterns across the city, she paid close attention to the parts of London with greater population density. The front cover depicts densely populated East London, home to the poorer classes; the back board illustrates wealthier and comparatively more sparsely populated West London.