Handmade Paper in Handmade Books

Bookbinding is becoming a studio priority with the Philadelphia Art Book Fair coming up, as well as a few other projects, so I thought I’d share part of the newest experiment in the studio.

All three of the beautiful handmade papers.

Interior cover

These little beauties are 5.5″ x 3.5″, and use 3 different kinds of handmade paper. You might be wondering why this book is broken in half, with 2 signatures stacked vertically. The answer is reuse.

Each year, IAPMA (International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists) produces a full-color Bulletin with articles and news, and this year in honor of our 30th anniversary, our Bulletin editor and I trimmed down almost 14,000 swatches of handmade paper to include in the upcoming anniversary edition Bulletin. Trimming papers of varying sizes of course results in paper scraps of various sizes, and it just so happened that we had these lovely accessories after the trimming process! And don’t they make lovely books?

These handbound books will be available in the near future, as a means of raising funds for the continued success of future Bulletins.