Cuts for printing Spanish playing cards / Planchas de imprenta (naipes)

These snapshots are from the Museu Frederic Marès in Barcelona. Marès was a Catalan sculptor. His statues speckle Barcelona. You've probably seen them at Montjuic and Pl. Catalunya. His home became a museum. The first floor houses his collection of Spanish figurative sculpture. The rest of it is one big cabinet of curiosities--comprised of anything and everything he could hoard.  

Marès graduated from the school I attended last year, and later in his life, ended up directing it. The story I heard was that his hoarding actually gave birth to the book arts program. He needed somebody to bind all of his paper ephemera and photographs into albums. 

Marès was, apparently, deeply quirky. He'd shuffle around his house/studio/museum, checking on his collections in his nightgown, well into his old age. 

Anyway, I loved seeing these cuts for printing Spanish playing cards there. 

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Hice estas dos fotos en el Museo Marès de Barcelona. La casa de Marès, escultor catalán, se convirtió en museo mientras él vivía, y sigue siéndolo. En la primera planta se expone su colección de escultura hispánica. Las demás plantas son un gran gabinete de curiosidades que contiene todo lo que coleccionaba. 

Marès estudió en La Llotja y llegó a dirigirla. Me contaron que, de la necesidad de encuadernar todos los recuerdos y fotos que guardaba, nació el Conservatorio de las Artes del Libro. 

Marès era no solo excéntrico, sino muy así, andando por la casa-museo en zapatillas de casa para vigilar las colecciones.  

Entre ellas hay unas pocas planchas de imprenta, incluso estas. Son para imprimir los naipes. 

I keep finding great photos of Barcelona as I sort through everything. For your viewing pleasure:

My school's old building.

The Basilica in the rain. Beautiful even then.

Pl. Catalunya

Modernisme street lighting + seating

Pl. Espanya

A block east of Pl. Cataluyna

International brotherhood of bookbinders

These are some photos of our end of year party at the bookbinding studio. We really like to eat there and usually have a snack, a merienda, most days. Sometimes for birthdays and holidays people bring lots of food (and wine!) and then we party before going back to operating heavy, dangerous machinery. Did I mention that the shop is equipped with a very comprehensive first aid kit?

Anyway, for the end of year party at school we had a grand time, in between all the music and eating and drinking and last-minute board sheer usage.

I've already mentioned how great the book arts community is ... but this year, book people, I have to say I have been overwhelmed by your kindness. In every place I've traveled, you have shown me your studios, taught me, told me about what you do, talked shop, let me interview you, and fed me. What more can a person who is far from home ask for? THANK YOU BOOK ARTS WORLD.

happy face!  ^

experimental book

Have you ever made a photo album from scratch? Don't.

This is an experiment: a fast and dirty photo album, if you will. Maybe that's cheating, but my sanity is still intact. I thought the weighty feel of these things and the landscape format would be good for photos, although they don't always tend to open very well. This particular book has a 7mm channel between the spine and cover to allow it to open all the way.

My friend Luli screenprinted the endpapers. 

Parallel Lives

I hung out at the Picasso Museum today. Guess what? Picasso and I have parallel lives.

The museum, whose collection is mostly Picasso's early drawings and works on paper, arranges all the pieces chronologically.

So you can see Picasso coming to Barcelona, studying at my school, carrying around a sketchbook, making little paintings of the sea and the city ... discovering Madrid and Paris ...

What does this all boil down to? I'm probably about to make it big as a Cubist painter. Basically I'm waiting for that to happen any minute now.

Here were some of my favorites:

Sant Pau del Camp, with its distinctive mozarab cloister.

The Liceu

La Barceloneta

     
 Near the Prado in Madrid

A café in Barcelona

Barcelona cityscape

The beach at Barceloneta

Images pulled from the Museum's online catalog.

Read what they have to say about Picasso's relationship with Barcelona ... the modernization of the city and the construction of the Eixample began while he lived here.

Although Picasso spent far more time in Paris, Barcelona is "where it all began ... where I understood how far I could go."

Para Cristina

Unas fotos del taller de papel ebru de la semana pasada, y un video corto. Las hojas son muestras de la profesora, Mar.

Se prepara un día antes una mezcla de 5 litros de agua con 60 gramos de algas, y un tapón de formol. La mezcla dura más o menos un mes, si coge un olor raro lo tiramos. Pues se cola la mezcla de agua y algas y se vierte en la fuente, y se preparan los colors. Son polvos diluidos en agua, con unas gotas de hiel de buey. Lo importante es: cuánto más hiel de buey, más crecerá la gota de pintura inicial. Los colores se han de flotar sobre el agua.

Los pinceles son de pelos de caballo y rosal. Empezamos con los colores que tienen más hiel, y luego los colores que tienen menos hiel. Es necessario escurrir bien el pincel antes de espolvorear los colores.

Las burbujas se han de quitar si aparecen en el superficie del agua entre hacer hojas. Son el enemiga. Entre hojas, se limpia el agua con papel diario o con el otro lado del papel que acabamos de hacer. Luego las hojas se han de prensar para quedar bien planas.

Allí las ojas pueden ser obras en si, e incluso pueden ser fondos para caligrafía. Los artistas no firman sus obras. A veces un fondo de papel ebru se usaba para documentos oficiales.

In the studio

The other day I was sewing this book and I knew exactly where to push the needle in and out without having to look. It brought home how much I've learned in class this year. Nada to precise muscle memory.

Miguel Gómez-Ibáñez, president of the North Bennet Street School, writes that “When you become involved in the creative work of making useful, beautiful objects and gain a personal understanding of what is meant by the intelligence of the hands, it transforms who you are and how you think.”

It's hard to explain how doing rote tasks, like tearing down paper or sewing signatures (which is how I spend a lot of my time) is changing me. I guess that making useful, beautiful things just feels ... healthy. That's the best way I can describe it.

The other thing is that going to the bookbinding studio really makes me happy. I hate it when class is over, and sometimes when I'm doing other things I wish I was in class.

BOOK NERD. But that's old news ...

This little textblock got the royal treatment. I marbled the end papers and laminated the book cloth ... it is a rough red silk. The photos don't really capture how rich the color is.

Test run

Here is what I printed for my test run of the platen press we have in the bookbinding studio. The text is the is the name of my school.

I think this wood type is actually Spanish, which makes it special. There were not a lot of forests to make wood type out of in Europe, which is why wood type is very much a new world thing, but in Spain, I guess a lot of wood type was burned for fuel during the civil war. (Conjecture or fact? I'm not sure). The stuff that survives is pretty worn down (some too much to pull a decent print from it). We actually have a tool in the shop for measuring how high a piece of type is, so that we can add pieces of backing to it if it's not type high.

The metal type is Ibarra Redonda.

Japanese ... ish

These are some books I made today. I have sewn these Japanese structures before (who hasn't?) but what what different this time around was making them with a hard cover. This way the books are more substantial. But maybe a bit klunky.

Each time I make these I'm amazed at both how simple and pleasing the effect is, and how elegantly the whole thing comes together.

Happy Endings

At the book arts conservatory we ended the semester with friends, food, and books (big surprise there). Corks flew in the intaglio studio on Thursday night and large amounts of tortilla, chorizo, and empanada were consumed.

The Spanish are big on what they call the "sobremesa" ... lingering over a meal long after the food is gone.

Bookbinders can be shy (they do, after all, spend more time with paper than with people). But they're definitely not cold! I feel so grateful to have found this corner of the book arts world.

What I'm most grateful for this holiday season: my parents and my brother, my grandparents, and the great Seogvian family I'm going to spend Christmas with. I'm getting a shot at living all my bookish dreams, but I know I wouldn't be here without the support from my family, and all the mentoring that goes on in the book arts community.

Internationally nerdy: we've got paper people from Russia, Peru, Chile, Switzerland, Japan, Spain, and the US.

Homemade sushi from one of the other exchange students

How bookbinders catch the metro: with big rolls of paper.

My first batch of nice books :)

"Holandés" binding

Hand-painted endpapers (by me!) with a softcover binding

More snazzy end papers. 

 This red book has a textured cover and more striped paper inside.

An envelope. 

Also on the note of mentoring, I was thrilled to listen to this story on MPR. John mentored me at Leg Up Studio. The article captures John's generosity, and the great things that are going on at Leg Up, which is a community printmaking studio in NE Minneapolis.

Merry Christmas! ¡Feliz navidad! Or, even more Spanish: ¡Felices fiestas!

Older is better

It takes a loooooooong time to make good books. In the two months of class I've had, I've only turned out a dozen finished books (but there are more in the works, so stay tuned).

Here are some photos of sewing some textblocks .... very slowly:

The books are sewn on hemp cords. You get all the holes in line by using a saw on the spine. (TOOLS).

The nerve is level with the pages (not above or too deep).

Even though it takes forever, it's super satisfying to finish sewing textblocks and for them to turn out well. I guess that's what the handmade book still has going for it!