Yes, a photo of a new book.

28 blank pages.
T-shirt cover.
Fun to make.
More at http://tedorigawabookmakers.podbean.com

Two poems by Adelaide Crapsey are handwritten on the rough endpapers, the book cover is another rough paper, the mull is rough. This book is called The Dance of the Fool and is a very rough book - great to touch and feel, though. About 80 pages and most of the papers are cut by hand, i.e. without the benefit of scissors.

B5 sheets folded into quarters. About 30 sheets so this little number pulls in at about 120 pages, mas o menos. Perfect binding, yellow endpapers, yellow mull, and a La Boheme opera flyer used as a cover. The B5 sheets were used, too, so the whole thing is recycled, including the boards for the covers and spine, although the spine board is a tad too wide. Great book. Enjoyed making it. Have no idea what to do with it.

These are two B6-size calendars. Both have 84 pages, hand-drawn 2009 calendar, waxed thread (purple and black), and yellow Japanese washi as endpapers. The purple one has purple Japanese washi as a cover (over bookboard) and the white one is recycled from a small box that came complete with slots. Through these slots you can see the yellow Japanese washi being used as endpapers.

Below right (I hope) is a close up of the purple one. You can see two of the five threads used to bind it coptically. (Is that even a proper adverb?) And you can get a sense of the size of it but please remember people tell me I have small hands.


And finally, you can just make out the hand-drawn calendar in both books. And the yellow washi used as endpapers (especially visible on the purple calendar.


These two are part of a series of three. Third one is larger (A5) and is made of a recycled folder. It is green with green thread and, while nice, is nothing extraordinary so it wasn't included in this post. Poor thing. It will probably be used more than these two as it is bigger.

A rough book made of a very rough fibrous paper for a cover - hard to bend it; great for a cover - and fibrous paper for the 28 pages: leaves are embedded in the paper. This is one very tactile book, my friends.

This is the cover:




This is an open page. You can see the leaves and stems. (Hmmm. 60s flashback.)



Here you can see the rough and torn pages. I need to give this to a poet with a good fountain pen. Or a calligrapher.

colophon:
six (or seven) signatures of six (or seven) pages each
coptic binding
yellow lined paper
wood covers



A wood covered coptic bound blank journal.
This looks suspiciously like the spine, doesn't it? And you'd be right.
The thread is green to match the yellow paper.








Here we have a thin strip of mahogany down the right side of the cover or a lighter wood. The strip is merely glued on, not inlaid as I think it should be. (This is rectified in a future book called, creatively, The Triangle Book (see it here)









Here we can see the paper a bit better. What did we learn with this construction? Printers are important - the lined paper was made by printing lines on the thicker than usual yellow paper. Some of the lines are not straight or parallel with the other lines and some are a bit too thick; too much ink on the jets.
Also, sanding is fun when you have an iPod plugged into your ears and you're listening to Book Artists and Poets podcast, Hokudai/Cast (Fun in Japanese, English, and Chinese) or DinoSoarPix (modern audio noir detective stores) All available on iTunes. To be honest and fully disclosed - sounds slightly wicked, doesn't it? - The last two are of my creation. Please enjoy.

A set of five blank notebooks I finally finished last night. It has about 144 pages, is hardbound and is green. Except the one that is beige-yellow which has a Japanese-style paper for a cover.




This was my first attempt at mass production. I'm testing myself to see how long it takes to make a series like this. (If I worked straight through from beginning to end, I'd have an idea but I keep taking breaks and working on other things. Like blogs. See, for example, "http://tedorigawabookmakers.blogspot.com")

A not-so-recent completion (except when I posted this post) - The Islamic French Inoue Blank Notebook. Here it is closed and here it is open.

The Islamic part is for the folded over cover that wraps around and protects the text block. The French part is for the color and for the fact this is an advertisement for a violinist who lives in France, but is from the Middle East. And the Inoue part is for the conductor who will be conducting the violinist.

And finally, the Blank and Notebook parts are because there is no content. Other than blank pieces of paper waiting to be enhanced with your scribbles and drawings.