You have chosen a folding ruler as one of your contextual objects. Why? The ruler has a behaviour which is very similar to the binding, before and after the making: before, the pages were just a series of loose sheets stapled together with rusty staples, and couldn’t open at all... like when you try to pull open the ruler in the wrong direction. Yet, when you do the correct move, then it opens easily like a concertina and you can see it in its full length. That’s why I converted the single sheets into a concertina, to facilitate the opening. The two paper covers meet at the spine with a hinge held together by a wood peg, covered with Japanese paper. The peg can be removed to flatten the concertina for a more comprehensive view of the alphabets.

In your essay ‘Protecting the Alphabet’, you say you want to be ‘respectful of the book, trying to match old and new ideas.’ Would you say that is a Cristina Balbiano d’Aramengo concern or a Tomorrow’s Past one? Surely both mine and Tomorrow’s Past. Being both designer bookbinder and book conservator, this approach is often the only one I can have while dealing with books.

You have described the cover of ‘Art de construire en cartonnage’ as a ‘waiting binding’ can you explain what that means? I chose this structure (‘Reliure d’attente’, namely ‘waiting binding’) to protect the text-block before and during the conservation process. This kind of cover is particularly useful for books with loose gatherings that could be easily lost. It allows a safe and thoughtful choice of the final binding. Double turn-ins provide additional strength to the covers decorated with blind tooling. A page of directions, written in Italian, is placed inside the front cover’s fold. It reads:
‘A quick approach to the state of the volume until a more accurate record can be drawn up. Dry cleaning and paper restoration has to be undertaken. The decorated cover needs slight repair but the sewing is not in bad condition and the spine is almost intact.’

What condition was this book when you came across it?
It was exactly as it is now. Still waiting for any kind of intervention – hence, the waiting binding is still appropriate...

You’re showing maquettes of each of your bindings. Can you say a little bit about how each has aided your making process? In any project I undertake, I always make trials, maquettes, samples. It’s fundamental , as it allows me to understand how the structure will have to work, how the measures have to be calculated, how materials work together. Often a dummy smaller than the book is enough, yet sometimes it’s truly needed to make a sample in the same size of the book, especially for very small or very big books, because the ‘extreme sizes’ have a different
behavior than medium ones. Lastly, I like to keep a model of the binding, for future reference and to show the sample to my customers and students.

Approximately how much time did the making of each of these bindings take? From making a decision on what to do, to completion. The ‘waiting binding’ was rather quickly made, once the idea came to my mind. Let’s say one week, to make first the dummy and then the real binding, allowing some time for the picture of it to settle in my eyes, to eventually deciding how to make the blind tooling. The wooden peg hinged binding took much more time. I would say at least two months: one to get to the point, and one to carry out the repairing process and to make the binding.

1 Art de construire en cartonnage (1834), 2006
Khadi paper.

2 Nuova Raccolta d’Alfabeti Artistici (c. 1860), 2007
Gray Zaansch Bord (Dutch handmade hemp linen paper), terracotta Japanese paper, wood.

Folding ruler.
Carnet.
Calcareous Stone.