Growlygracepress's Blog

I got a tiny insight about how a make things. It’s not massive but I’ll take anything.

I have never been able to ‘do’ cute or lovely. I don’t do ‘lady’. I wear dungarees and boots and I look that I might be living in my allotment shed.

I cant make books that are lovely. It’s not in my DNA.

It’s not going to happen.

Just checking in to see what kind of condition my condition is in.

I have not given up on bookbinding I have worked through the whole of not being successful and I have come out the other end. Even saying ‘successful’ is a bit showing you my scabs. Forgive me.

So what I think is this. People need to buy gifts, I have a need to make books that would be welcomed as a gift. My needs are a validation of what I think the well made book should look like, how it should feel in the hand, it’s colours, how it functions as an object and that the books purpose is signalled by a title which has been executed well. A little bit of a graphic would be good and please me.

I’ll come back to this later.

I am struck by the idea of ‘do good work’ mainly because I so familiar with my ‘bad’ work which moves to ‘bad’ to ‘awful’ to ‘dreadful’ and it goes in to the bin. I know why it’s ‘bad’ all to well. The measurements are ‘out’ by 1 – 2 mm, the cutting out is a bit ‘crude’ the effect is a bit ‘rustic’ the colours are ‘wrong’, the boards are too ‘thick’ the thread is too ‘thin’, the paper is ‘nasty’.

I am fortunate in that I have done ‘good work’ the bookbinding gods are smiling down at me. The book is true, the colours are in harmony, the cut outs are smooth, the end papers are amazing, the size is intimate and the book is tactile. I also got paid money.

So leaving the money aside for the past couple of months I have been at my bench and trashing materials and in a really fundamental way I am doing what I usually do. I am making books that WILL FAIL and WILL NOT BE GOOD and this will reinforce the the identified patient.

What I am now going to focus and to recreate the ‘good’ books and introduce the changes I need to make.

At the start of this I thought that if I make the books with only ‘natural’ materials and ‘dull’ colours but that just starts to annoy me.

I ran out of weight and colour of linen thread I was using and I used a waxed polyester braided thread instead and the book practically sewed it’s self up, it was a joy to use and pleased me greatly. It was a better book for it.

Back in the day when I was banging out books and was working with artists when ever I got paid I bought tools and materials. Then I got ‘distracted’ by gardening and in a good year I made one or two books and ploughed it back in to paper and board.

In the past month I have bought paper, boards, cloths, printing plates will be made, embossing tools made and a good time will be had by all. I am interested in making herbariums and books to record seed purchase.

I think that reading and selecting seeds for a garden represents scientific experiment and it should be recorded.

Besides people need to buy presents.

The elephant in the room is that I’ve just seen the most amazing jacket and I cannot justify buying it as I have about a million jackets so I am going to do the eBay sale that I have been putting off and I am going to buy the jacket. Simples.

Going forward into the future this is what I am planning.

I am bookbinding demon and I am working up a storm. I am looking at new methods to strengthen book spines. I was always found of building up a spine but I am more sure that a good spine needs linen, scrim and hemp paper and a good rub down with a bone folder. I am moving away from ploughing the edges of the block and I am liking deckle or torn edges. I remain convinced that a 50% cotton paper in the 250 to 300 gms is the way to go.

I prefer goatskin for covering but I am looking at vegetarian linen, cotton, hemp.

I want bold endpapers and I was at the corner shop getting photocopies and have sent them to a plate maker because books need powerful and lovely endpapers.

I have ordered, paper, boards, scrims, linens, cottons and ribbons.

Books will have flowers and or skeletons.

I still have the enormous allotment and I have decided to use a half of it for a flower cutting garden. I want to be able to draw, paint, print, press and photograph flowers and establishing a massive cutting garden is the way forward.

Obviously I am returning to blogging I was going to have a new one called ‘Growly Grace Garden Project’ but I might as well stick with this one.

I will make a concerted effort to record what I am doing because ‘writing stuff down’ is actually effective. Who knew.

I was never that keen on the whole flowers on the allotment thing. I was so hard core. But life is too short and when you see a chance take it.

You do realise I am going to just continue to spraf bullshit on this here blog and twitter feed because I am trying very hard to get back in to my bookbinding life and thoughts occur to me and I am going to type it.

Apparently according to the photo library in my WordPress account that technique / method of the little blocks against painted backgrounds got to this stage of a pair of endpapers which went somewhere I sense that I am displeased by the pink / purple boy where as the orange is strong.

This was a try out for an idea for endpapers and for reasons I can’t quite understand I wrote the experiment off as a failure. I committed a major crime against art as I failed to write down the process and how I achieved it. I can guess the materials because I have become predicable. I guess the paper is a 50% cotton. Guess I applied the colour with a sponge. What I am at a loss to understand is did I apply a Japanese paste to the paper before hand and allow it to dry before I applied the colour and then the little blocks. So I am going to have to do the whole thing again and write down the formula and send it off in a letter to myself.

When I look at the photo it does look a bit good.

Handsome endpapers try outs.

The green book is the original hinny. It was from a series of books on Geordie terms of endearments. In the course of this work I came to realise that my ability to cut of letters by hand had become impaired I was getting older, I needed reading glasses and my thyroid condition blah blah blah but wasn’t happy with what I has doing so I developed new methods and this photograph show the grey and black hinny with the little die to place the letters in the correct place.

So far so good.

I made these ten hinny books and on a fateful day went out to Newcastle to show them to a couple of galleries and it was shit. Worse than the time with that cow from the arts council dismissed me as a person who performs services for artists.

I was in this now defunct gallery and I has treated quite badly by some young people and I crawled out to walk to the next struggle session and I goes in to the gallery and I could not face it and I seen a regional arty magazine and I knew a friend who was interviewed in it and I am reading with out spectacles as you do and I seen I am referenced in it and I felt a bit better so marched out the gallery. Stormed up Warwick Street pledging that the first person who knows me can have the whole series.

I did not meet a single person I literally could not give them away. Could not get arrested as a bookbinder.

In fact I did go on to sell two of them. the other eight I gave away.

The size of the books are so right and the weight and shape of them in your hand are perfect.

I went on to think about how to get the position of the lettering better.

And that’s why I have started blogging again. Because that technique is being tried out right now on a redesigned press with new metal plates and glues and is is called ‘seed book’ and I am going to make ten of them.

One of the original seed books with a little Crawhall block.

Going to look in the press now.

having a good work light.

having pretentious ideas and promoting self pitying drivel

having to many tools

the glorious hinny books and when I realised that I could not give them away!

I loved the printing of labels for little books and printing on hand coloured paper

I am just messing about here getting to understand how much wordpress has changed and how it works.

I’ve got a pasted out leather on the bench to try out my ideas on putting letters on to leather.