shanmonster | Judging Books By Their Covers

I love books. I like reading them, collecting them, looking at them, touching them, smelling them, and making them. I took a book-making workshop years ago, and discovered why so many paperbacks fall apart. In that workshop, I learned what makes a good binding. Someday, I'd like to make more books, preferably from my own handmade paper.

When I go to an antiquarian bookstore, I love looking at the gorgeous bindings and covers. They really don't make 'em like they used to, do they? Take a look at this gallery of antiques, and you'll know exactly what I mean. These images have been taken from Sotheby's Six Centuries of Book Binding. Unfortunately, I don't know what these books are, the years they were made, or who bound them.

I love the metal work on this book, with the set cabochons. Maybe I'll use some of my stone-setting samples in a similar way.

I'm not sure what's going on here. It could be an apotheosis. The photo quality is pretty bad, so I can't tell if this is made from embossed leather or chased metal, or a combination of the two.

Three books which are teasingly too small to get a good look at. But I keep looking anyway....

I have some details! One of these two beautiful books (I'm not sure which--maybe even both), is a French binding by Badiejous, Langle, Ferdinand, and E. Morice. I think both date from the 1800s.

After looking about some more, I also discovered the Museum of Bookbinding in Loket. This Czech museum has some imaginative work. I'm fond of HERZOG by Hadlač Jiří, ZLATÝ SKARABEUS by Perůtka Jan, and Malý zlatý nebeklíč, and ČERTŮV KÁMEN (Devil's Head) by Jan Sobota. The Sobotas are a bookbinding family, and two display cases of their work is currently greeting visitors to the museum.

And while we're talking about books, why not buy a copy of the award-winning Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom? "According to Guinness World Records, at over five by seven feet (and 133 pounds), this staggeringly beautiful photographic book is the largest published book in the world--about one of the world's smallest countries." It's a bargain at just $10,000.