Conservation assistant Aveyah Craver gives us some tips and tricks on traditional bookbinding in this exciting conservation-centric blog!
I recently made an enclosure for a set of three, blank, Japanese accounting ledgers. The books were bound in a style that I had never seen before, and I took some time to inspect how it had been done. The construction is a variation of pamphlet stitch binding, and it is a good option for someone’s first book binding project.
Some commonly used bookmaking terms that are helpful for beginner bookbinders are: folios, quartos, signatures, and bookbinding. A folio is a single sheet of paper that is folded in half to create two leaves and four pages, while a quarto is folded in half once more to create four leaves and eight pages. Signature can have a variety of meanings, but for the sake of clarity, in this tutorial, I am going to define a signature as a gathering of pages. Bookbinding is the method in which signatures are bound together.
A pamphlet stitch book is a single-signature book. Once you nest your pages together into a signature, you poke two or more holes through the fold at the center, sew some string through the holes, and tie a knot connecting the beginning and end of the string. These Japanese accounting books from the Lilly Library’s collection are essentially four pamphlet stitch books glued together.
Materials
To make this style of book, you will need the following:
- 16 sheets of 8.5×11” paper
- 2 sheets of 6×4.25” card stock
- A cutting mat
- A box cutter or Exacto knife
- A ruler
- A pencil
- A bone folder
- Glue and a brush
- Some waxed string (preferably two different thicknesses)
- An embroidery or bookbinding needle
- A pair of scissors
- Optional: an awl
Step 1: Folding Your Paper
The first step in replicating these books is folding the quartos. To make a quarto fold, take a sheet of paper and fold it in half lengthwise, and then fold it in half again along its width. The signatures in the Japanese ledgers I examined are very thick, containing dozens of signature pages. I am using printer paper, which is thicker than the paper in the original books, so I am sticking to four quartos per signature. Once you have folded the sixteen pages into quartos, group them into four signatures of four quartos each.
Step 2: Creating Holes
The next step is creating holes in preparation for sewing. Another characteristic of the original ledgers is that the maker did not poke holes through the signatures with an awl but instead cut the paper along the spine-edge. Considering the thickness of the original signatures, slicing was easier than poking holes, but because my signatures are smaller, I can choose between slicing the pages or using an awl. I chose to slice the pages, but if you would rather use an awl, just poke holes in the same places I set up my cuts. I made two cuts along the spine of each of my signatures at 1 1/8 and 3 1/8 inches.
Step 3: Sewing
The next step is to sew. I sewed two signatures with the thinner thread from the inside, and two with the thicker thread from the outside. For the signatures with the thin thread, I opened the signature to the center and poked my threaded needle through one cut to the outside of the signature.
Then from behind the signature, I poked my threaded needle through the second cut, back to the inside center of the signature. I tied the beginning and end of the thread together and trimmed the excess, only leaving a short tail.
For the signatures sewn with the thicker thread, I started from the outside of the signature, poked my thread through to the inside center of the signature, and poked it through the second cut back to the outside of the signature. I gave the thicker thread extra length so I could replicate the large knot on the spine of the original ledger. This thread was also too large for my needle, so I used an awl to help push it through the cuts.
Step 4: Glueing
The next step is to glue the cardstock to the signatures with the thinner thread. Your cardstock should be cut to the same size as your folded signatures with enough extra length to wrap around the back about ¾ of an inch. Use a signature to mark where to fold your cardstock and score it with your bone folder.
Use this fold as a mark for where to apply the glue and attach the cardstock to the signature. This completes the front and back covers of the book. The last step is to glue the outside and inside signatures together.
The last step is to glue the outside and inside signatures together.
Again, I used the folded cardstock as a guide for where to apply the glue, and I estimated a half inch of space along the spine for attaching the two halves of the book together.
Conclusion
And that is the completed book! I was interested in making this style of book partially because I had never seen it before, and partially because I like that this style of book was designed to be hung from the cords in the back.
References
The books I examined to learn this style of binding are the Japanese accounting ledgers at the Lilly Library, under the call number HF5680 .J37.
Kōjirō Ikegami. Japanese Bookbinding: Instructions From a Master Craftsman. New York: Weatherhill, 1986. Z270.J3 I3713 1986
Leave a Reply