Materials are repeated across these bindings. Each, for example, includes a polyester sheet layer. Is this theme characteristic of your practice? Or is it a Tomorrow’s Past specific concern? It’s really specific to Tomorrow’s Past. The work that earns me a living, that I do every day, is involved with the conservation and repair of books within a more traditional context, defined by historical precedent. Archival polyester is used in that context for encapsulating objects, but not as a part of the process of binding.

I understand the use of polyester sheet in this way is not commonplace. What experimentation led to yourusing this material in this way? To begin with it was just an idea. Although the polyester has impeccable archival credentials, it is rather ghastly to look at, so I wondered if it could be adapted in some way. It turned out that it could easily be laminated to tissue, where its transparency was a great advantage, and the resulting material was versatile to handle and pleasant to touch.

What effect does its inclusion have on the functionality of the book? It has a combination of substance and flexibility which provides an ideal support for the sewn sections of a book without any need for glue. It has a marvellous memory so that it flexes and returns exactly to its original state. That act of opening and closing is the real focus, the primary function, of a bookbinding.

In ‘The Excommunicated Prince’ the polyester layer is shown, rather than being hidden by a wraparound cover. What was it about the pages’ stitching that you wanted to be seen by viewers? Traditionally, the sewing structure of a book is hardly visible – occasionally from the inside if you know where to look. Many styles of binding rely on an abbreviated form of sewing, and the application of glue. The bindings I’m showing do not use glue, so the sewing is much more extensive, travelling the full length of the book inside and out. It is interesting to be able to see that, slightly ghost-like through the transparent polyester and tissue layer.

You select Jasper Morrisons’ glasses for Alessi as your contextual object. One can clearly see similarities in the quietness of ‘Fiori Poetici Barbarigo’ and this product. Can you explain this choice? The traditional French bistro glass - a very recognisable design - is thick and quite clumsy. However full of cultural resonance, it’s not really very nice to drink from, except in the most rough and ready circumstances. Jasper Morrison takes the shape, with all its history, and refines it, turning it into something delicate and more formally elegant. This in turn improves its function, enhances the experience of drinking wine from it. That particular binding is a very simple echo of an earlier form, unadorned but actually an improvement in terms of
functionality. The bindings, like the glasses, are essentially generic - they are meant to be everyday objects built around material, structure and function, avoiding decoration. They are not meant to say anything about the content of the book - only to reflect its origins in place and time.

We’re showing here two other contextual objects which relate to your working environment. A recording, R.L. Burnside’s song ‘Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down‘ which you say says a lot for anyone who works standing up, and ‘Hawksmoor’s Christ Church Spitalfields’ viewable from your workshop window. How much of what you surround yourself with feeds into your practice? Doing this kind of work for a living, and this was always the way, you spend a lot of time in one room, surrounded by the same four walls. We often listen to music towards the end of the day at work... recently a lot of R.L. Burnside’s extraordinarily varied acoustic and electric blues recordings spread over forty years or so. They’re all on Spotify.

Almost all of the activity in binding a book has to be done – or is best done – standing up. It’s also quite myopic in nature, close detailed work on a smallish canvas. When we look up, and out of the window, we see the church.

Can you say something about the design of the binding ‘Avon’? Including the choice of marbled paper? ‘Avon’was the third of Baskerville’s books. Slight in content, it was issued roughly sewn into paper wrappers. The leaves still bear the marks of this sewing. This copy had been bound at a later date and then crudely repaired. All that was really left to work with was the marbled paper, which I reused. The binding is constructed in two interconnected layers – the inner lining onto which the book is sewn becomes the cover, the spine covering becomes the flyleaf. On opening, the text block is suspended within the binding - or at least, that’s the idea.

Approximately how much time did the making of each of these bindings take? From making a decision on what to do, to completion. In general I try to work as quickly as possible. In my day to day work, I handle books that were put together for the most part under intense commercial constraints – time was money – and they reflect the facility and precision of craftsmen well trained in working at speed and with economy of thought and action. It is best for something to look as if it hasn’t been laboured at. These bindings are complicated to think through and you never know exactly what will happen till you try a thing out – but once everything falls into place, making a book shouldn’t really take more than a couple of days, sometimes less.

1 Tragedie, Vincenzo Monti (1822), 2011
Vellum, polyester, linen thread.

2 Fiori Poetici Barbarigo (c. 1700), 2010
Japanese tissue, polyester, linen thread 3 Avon, John Huckell (1758), 2013
Polyester, eighteenth century tissue and marbled paper, Japanese tissue, paste board, linen thread.

4 Speeches of De Mirabeau, James White (1792), 2009
Eighteenth century tissue paper, Japanese tissue, polyester, linen thread.

5 The Excommunicated Prince, William Bedloe (1679), 2008
Eighteenth century tissue paper, Japanese tissue, polyester, linen thread.

Jasper Morrison for Alessi, Old French bistro glass.
Copy of first single volume edition of Henry James, The Princess Casamassima. View from the workshop, Fournier Street, Spitalfields ‘Wish I was in heaven sitting down’ R. L. Burniside.