Episode 86: The βιβλίο Book

Here is a finished book about the people and events responsible for how books look now. A simple book, not an in-depth treatise on typography and the like. It includes Cai Lun (inventor of paper), Bi Sheng (inventor of movable type), Choe Yun-Ui (inventor of movable metal type), the Abbasid Caliphate (responsible for spreading papermaking from China to the West), and Gutenberg, Griffo, Manutius, Garamond, plus the Aztec and Mayan codices. The book has 9 signatures of five sheets each for 180 pages but they are not bound one on top of the other. There are two parts to this book: left and right. Four are on the left side while five signatures are on the right side. The book has two fronts that open out like double doors. It only has one back, however. I used coptic binding to hold everything together. The reason behind that was coptic binding tends to open better than casebinding. Plus, coptic is older. (I didn't use papyrus, although it is mentioned early in the book; with pictures!). Yellow paper was used as endpapers. The original idea of the double book is that the content on the left side would complement the content on the right side. For example, there might be a picture of Nicolas Jenson on the right and a short paragraph about him on the left. Or a Mayan codex on the left with Diego de Landa pictured on the right (they're connected). For the most part, this was done. But towards the latter part of the book, the sides took a random approach. Indeed, the two books can be read independently from each other. Also included in the book are lined pages for note taking, if one so desires. While a good idea when I first thought of it, upon reflection, writing in a book of this rigidity and structure is a bit difficult to do. Possible, but not as easy as I at first thought. However, there are plenty of pages if someone wants to scribble away. Below on the left you can see two pictures. On the left is paper money first printed in China in 1215. On the right is a picture of the four Mayan codices that Diego de Landa didn't destroy. The picture on the right is attempting to show the coptic binding. I used a fairly thick, unwaxed, hemp thread from Nepal that was a bear to thread through the needle and kept kinking up something terrible. But the color (a mix of red and blue) matched the green book cloth I used on the cover.