Six years ago I posted the first part of the work on my own copy of the 1931 Limited Editions Club ‘Iliad’ (see ‘It was going so well…’). I still have the book, but I also have its companion volume of ‘The Odyssey’ and I have finally got round to re-binding it – like the Iliad it had a plain cloth binding that in no way does justice to the quality of the printing and the paper.
In fact a couple of years ago I bound another copy of the same edition of the Odyssey for a client who was pleased with the design I put on it:
The covers are plain blue buckram cloth. The simple design suggests a circuitous sea journey. The titles were blocked.
I will use the same design idea for my copy but for the covers I have a good piece of dark blue morocco goatskin and I will use the same blocks for the spine and cover titles.
Now for a bit of heresy: surely a ‘fine’ binding must be hand lettered? Nonsense! First of all it is fiendishly difficult to hand letter vertically and to achieve an even depth of impression – important with gold work as uneven impressions reflect light differently. But a metal block gives perfect spacing and perfectly even depth.
There is still a challenge, though. You can block on to a flat cover, so long as your blocking press can be raised high enough to take the thickness of the book – my old Mackay press certainly can – but how to block on a curved spine?
The answer is to block the spine before covering the book. It takes care to position the impression exactly in the vertical centre, and there has to be a firm lining to the leather so as to get a sharp impression from the block.
The result is sharp, perfectly aligned, and ready for covering.
With luck, it will be done by next week.
The Rebindery 