Escaped Emus in Iowa
The Book Arts Club of Iowa City sponsored a February 5 and 6 workshop on sewn board bookbinding. This is the first time this structure has been widely seen in Iowa. Like the feral, raptor-like emu from Texas, this wily structure, long considered extinct since before the invention of movable type, is now returning, in time for the post-print book making scene.
Twelve participants along with workshop leaders Anna Embree and Gary
Frost, completed two projects from the sewn board family of bookbindings. The books; a desktop transfer tape binding and a sewn small edition binding, exhibit the sewn board characteristics: (1) equitable, even acting leaf attachment, (2) boards attached as if they were outermost leaves, and (3) cover and text trimmed to the same size.
The workshop also introduced contemporary reconsideration of a
fundamental feature of the invention of the codex book. Specifically, this was the use of papyrus to produce both the loose leaves and the pasted cartonnage of the early north African codex. This option of adhered and unadhered sheets introduces both a minimal and a compounding design system. A strange diagram is supposed to explain this.
