Sewing on different sorts of leather strips
One of the traditional materials that was sewn on is leather and parchment. While parchment is often used like bands are nowadays, leather offers different options due to it’s flexibility. Direction wise any strip will do, but it helps the stability and durability to cut the strips with the less stretchy direction running parallel to the long side of the band. Now the leather can be used as a flat band, or curled up to a cord. Top to bottom we have
- a calfskin strip with a slit from a bit longer than the book block is wide and the thread passing through the slit in the leather, wrapping around it with the loop passing under the thread and back through the slit into the signature.
- the same procedure but this time on pigskin, you can see the three ‘holes’ left in the skin by the thick bristles that grow in a characteristic triangle pattern that reaches all through the pig skin.
- goatskin. the strap is slit and then twisted by pushing on end of the strap through the slit a few times until the sides curl before being sewn just like it were two cords. Any sewing technique for two cords works here and it doesn’t matter whether the smooth or the rough side is on the outside
- cowhide, a strip of leather without further preparation rolled up a bit when firming the first loop and pulled in shape by tightening the loop. The sewing can be any as mentioned for the single cord binding. Shown here is the thread wrapped as high as the signature.
- goatskin, in contrast to any other binding this one has the bands half sunken into the signatures. The signatures are clamped and rasped in a semi circle. The strip of leather then gets moistened, rolled up and simply sewn over.
When opening the middle of a signature the band is visible as a small dot of colour with this style.