Design Binding Commission - Week 2: Sewing Up The Maquette
In all of my design bindings, I will always make a maquette. A maquette is described in Wikipedia as “a small scale model or rough draft of an unfinished sculpture. An equivalent term is bozzetto, from the Italian word that means "sketch". It is used to visualize and test shapes and ideas without incurring the cost and effort of producing a full-scale product.”
Creating a design binding involves a lot of experimentations, testing of various binding structures, covering applications, design ideas and such. To just do it directly on the actual textblock might lead to a rather costly mistake. So all tests should be done on the maquette. And of course, to keep costs down, a smaller scale model is made.
My maquette for “Singapore through 19th Century Photographs” is exactly 1:2 of the actual textblock. For the design of the binding, I have decided that I want to create a photo frame with a 3-dimensional photograph inside. And this will mean that there will be a lot of weight on the front cover. The binding structure has to be able to take such a stress and that it will not cause the book to warp, or the cover to fall off. Therefore, the decision is made to sew on tapes, and a hybrid binding using a leather spine lining, just like a Western Asian (commonly known as Islamic) binding.
I do not often sew on tapes, but this is one rare occasion that my sewing frame comes out of storage. This sewing frame was beautifully made by my husband, Louis, of Kjung Woodwork, and he has been rather disappointed that I have not used the sewing frame much. To mark out the sewing positions, I used a Greek Gauge, which was also incorporated into the sewing frame. But since this maquette is much smaller, I had to draw the Gauge and extend its end so to match the height of my small scale model.
For the maquette, the tapes are jaconette, whereas the actual book will have vellum tapes. After the textblock is sewn up, I lined the spine first with jaconette, followed by a piece of goat leather. I then slit the leather to allow the tapes to come through to the back, which will then be used to lace into the boards.
As this is a maquette absolutely to test the binding structure, I decided not to add the design elements in until I am sure that this binding method works. If it does not, I have to think of a better structure that suits my design ideas. As for now, it seems to be going quite alright.
