Episode 134: San Francisco Bound...

I will be at the San Francisco Center for the Book this August taking a one-week class in making four different kinds of books: coptic, flat-back case, limp paper, and rounded back cloth bindings. I'm looking forward to both the workshop and being in San Francisco. A great excursion for this year.

Here is How to Make this Book, an 18-page B6-sized pamphlet using the Hemp Leaf Binding. If you go to Episode 133 you can read a tutorial on this binding. The book is a combination history lesson about the empresses of Japan; there have been only eight. However, two of the empresses (Suiko and Koken/Shotoku) were instrumental in developing printing, book making, and writing in Japan.

Suiko sent the people to China who brought back the writing system Japan still uses. Koken/Shotoku (the same woman was empress twice so she had two names) encouraged the arts including printing. She imported woodblock printing from Korea so that she could make 1,000,000 copies of a Buddhist mantra. It was the first use of woodblock printing in Japan.


Between the two, printing and writing flourished and with that flourishment (?) came the need to bind the pages together. From that need came what is known as Japanese binding or watoji (和綴じ). Among the more popular watoji are the hemp leaf, the turtle shell, the noble, and the four-hole bindings. Here you can see the pictures that go with the tutorial. Or go down to Episode 133 and see them there, too. Fun, eh?