Man, oh, man. Sheila (“my” Sheila?) just pointed Cooper Renner to a page of book bindings at A Caballo Artes del Libro, who got them from the Guild of Book Workers 100th Anniversary Exhibition site.
The Billy Budd one. By Jerilyn Glenn Davis. I’m in love with it.
Farmers by Sarah Creighton is also very nice.
Claudia Cohen‘s Schriftgiesserei im Schattenbild.
To Remember Ray Frederick Coyle, by Jeannie Sack.
Livre D’Amour, by Peter Geraty.
De la Dominoterie à la Murbrure, by Joanne Margretha Sonnichsen.
Spaces, by Catherine Stanescu.
The page is still loading, and I think I’m hyperventilating . . .
(And I’m now even more disappointed by the staid case stamp I just did for a gift edition of one of our books. BO-ring!)
I finally had to clap a paper bag over my mouth in order to stop gasping myself.
(Your very own Sheila)
Ohmygod! These are wonderful! Looking at them makes me really happy, but also a bit depressed, because we nevernevernever ever put any extra money into the binding.
Yeah, I’ve only been asked to design a front stamp twice. The first was a blind stamp, and I didn’t get to choose what it was—just a logo the authors had devised. Last week, though, I was asked to make a fancier stamp for a gift edition. We do a fair number of these—sometimes slipcased, sometimes with ribbons, usually in very small runs.
This one was to be just fifty copies, though I think that’s been increased. And since it wasn’t to have a slipcase, we needed to do something extra cool. Of course, I went to look at the Rochester show again, but the book is a military/political thriller set in the present day. I couldn’t do anything that would look retro, you know? And the jacket illustration didn’t lend itself at all to a one- or two-color version. So I picked out one element from the cover and blew it up, with the title in pigment + foil across the bottom. It’s not offensive, but not a great beauty, either. Oh, well.
Maybe next time I’ll come up with something cooler.
That Billy Budd. So simple. So awesome.
I remember one of the first jobs I did after I was hired. I made a front stamp on one book I designed without asking first … MAN was I in trouble. Never did that again. :-D
Bindings are one of my favorite thing to look at on new hardcovers; once every 40 or so there’s some kind of blind stamp, or a nicely done spine. I’ll try to remember to write down any current books that have had the budget or ingenuity to attempt something. Never seen anything like those from the exhibition though. And agreed, the Billy Budd one is awesome. Changed from a noose to a harpoon it could for Moby Dick.