#bookbinding sg

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The Watermelon Bible

Some months ago, I was approached by a lovely lady who lives in Australia. She wanted to gift her friend a gift certificate to get her bible repaired and rebound. I have never considered offering gift certificates, but yes, it is now available for a binding to be done for a loved one, family and friends.

The recipient of the gift certificate, also the owner of the bible, came to me with a bible that was in a terrible state. Many of the pages were loose and dog-earred. The entire book was barely holding it together. After looking at a stock of fabric that I had, this cheerful young lady chose this watermelon fabric, paired with a matching green for the outer skin of the fruit.

Bound using the disappearing spine Bradel binding, the bible is now a cute and cheerful watermelon! It gives me a lot of satisfaction seeing how straight the pages are again, and the neat edges of the book. It is often hard to imagine how a very broken book can be revived into something that looks almost new. But it is possible.

For gift certificates, email me at [email protected] or Whatsapp me at [phone], and we can talk about your gift ideas.

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Full House! 

On 20th January 2018, I held my first mass bookbinding workshop, organised jointly by the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre and Singapore Press Holdings’ Chinese newspaper Lianhe Zaobao (联合早报). I was extremely surprised that on the morning of the newspaper article on the 7th of January, the workshop registration was already full. 

At 4pm, we started with the video that was done by Another Beautiful Story, followed by a small slides presentation of what I do: Design Binding (精装书) and Book Restoration (修复). My greatest pride was when I introduced my teachers, Mark Cockram and Yamazaki Yo, and showed a picture of me meeting them both together in Hong Kong in 2015. One was the first bookbinding teacher I had, and the other, basically changed my life, in my skill set, artistic approach and my crazy, whimsical and quirky character.

After a short Question and Answer session, we proceed to the workshop proper, teaching participants how to use Chinese new year red packets as the covers for a simplified traditional Chinese Thread binding (红包线装书). The main quote to aid one in attempting this binding is 先上后下，缝横必转, which translated literally means; When you sew, go up first, then down. When you sew the horizontal, you need to turn.

Other than a small mishap of a participant pricking himself, the workshop ended very nicely, on time and everyone brought home their own hand sewn book. 

Most importantly, I have to thank 2 very important people who helped me with this big workshop. My (spanking new) husband, Louis, and my wonderful student, Hyunhee. They assisted in making sure that everyone got their materials and that there was no fighting, and also taught some of the slower participants by explaining the technique privatedly. I am very thankful for this experience, and glad that it was such a turn out. Looking forward to more of these in time to come. 

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Currently on my work bench: Men And Books

Happy 2017! This is the first post of the year. The first month of the year has been a lovely start, meeting new customers, completing some recasing from last year and finally now, I can lay my hands on this book. This came in together with Three Men In A Boat, having suffered the same fate of being chewed by the family dog. It has taken me some time to start on this because I had to do some studies and observations about the condition of the book and decide whether I am able to partake this restoration, as well as getting the go-ahead from the customer with what I have proposed to do. 

This is a very beautiful book covered in tree calf marbling and lovely tooling. The front board has been chewed up by the dog, leaving teeth gash marks on the lower left with a piece of the leather presumably eaten. I will be doing a modern touch to this book by celebrating the history of what this book has been through, by using a technique similar to the Japanese technique of Kintsugi in pottery, using gold to mend cracks. Therefore, I will be using a contrasting leather that matches either the spine label or the marbling to build up the missing leather as a loving reminder to keep the books out of reach from the family dog. 

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In the Medieval ages between 13th to 16th centuries, most books in the Western world were bound using wooden boards, sewn on leather thongs or cords and laced into the wooden boards and the laced-in leather held in place using pegs. 

In the last 2 days in Studio 5, I decided that I wanted to have a go at binding a book with wooden boards as close as what was done in the Medieval ages, using some modern tools, but understanding how it was done when people had basic and simple ironmongery. 

Bound using oak boards, the textblock was sewn onto leather thongs at 3 sewing positions, and endbands were sewn using the single needle method. This is one binding where the endbands have a structural use and the core of the endband is laced into the boards. Covered in a royal purple suede and the endpapers are not put down to show the construction of this binding. The holes that were made for the lacing in of the leather thongs were deliberately made to be jagged because having holes in a straight line can cause the wood to weaken significantly. A simple clasp or fastening was made using a brass nail, a hammered brass link chain (by Mark Cockram) and a small decorative stud that came from the row of studs often seen to hold upholstery down on Victorian chairs. 

There was a discussion about why wooden boards were used during that period of time. Wooden boards do not warp and are stronger to hold onto the pages, which were often made of parchment. Parchment is greatly affected by humidity and will tend to move and warp very adversely. Moreover books that were made during that time were hand written and decorated by a scribe and usually hold important religious text and are deemed as highly important documents, therefore every expense and material will be used to create a wonderful and durable binding, that after more than 500 years, still exists in its true form. 

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In my quest to save more books, this bible came to me, in a rather bad condition. You can see my post on the work in progress of this bible here. But after working on it, I am very pleased with what a beauty it has become. 

I went to deliver this bible to Pastor Joshua on a Sunday after a service, and he told me the story of this bible. Back in the 90s, a disabled church member gave him this bible and said to Pastor Joshua that this bible accompanied him through his life and he wish that someone worthy can carry on using it. After many years of heavy usage, the covers gave way. It was only 2 years ago that the bible was then passed on to an elderly man who used to do bindings for legal journals to get it rebacked. But Pastor did mention that this elderly man was retired and that he was not as nimble with his hands as he used to and was not able to do a good binding. 

Bound in full navy blue Harmatan Fine Goat in half Yapp binding, and blind tooling of the title on the front cover. 

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Super Fierce French Style Laying Press

It took almost a year, made over two countries, England and Singapore, and now it is complete. My very own French style laying press. Though all laying presses comes with a wheel, we wanted something that would shout out more, that gave a statement, that a bookbinder does not have to have boring equipment, and decided that a skull would be a very fierce addition to the handle of the laying press. Made entirely by hand by Louis of kjung woodworking. The wonderful press is now on display and use (by me), at Keepers until mid November. 

Thank you, Louis, for building me this one of a kind, extremely fierce, laying press. Now I can strut my bookbinding in style!