Clamshell Boxes

Clamshell boxes are a way of protecting books or documents. The tray that the item sits in is made to the exact dimensions of the book, which protects the book from any wear and tear from handling. The tight tolerances in the box creates a consistent micro-climate inside, protecting from changes in humidity and temperature as well as from damage from UV light and dust.

The boxes I make are entirely out of archival quality materials, which are great for long protection for your precious items. The box is crafted from a strong, high density, binder’s board. The paper is acid free. Great care is taken in the design of the box to uniquely compliment the books inside.

You can view more examples of boxes here as well as starting prices.

Paste Paper Today

Eric Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar

I’m sure your first thought when you read “Paste Paper” was, “What in the world is that?”  I guarantee you have seen it and, if you have kids, you probably have copies of it in your home.  Go find some Eric Carle books such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar or Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See. Those beautiful, unique illustrations, many of those are made from paste paper!

Collection of paste papers made with combs, stylus, and folding and pulling paper while wet.

So what is it? Paste paper was created from the 16th-18th centuries, with a revival of interest in the early 20th century. Prior to the invention of the printing press, books were copied and bound by hand in monasteries. As part of that process, beautiful marbled papers were created to decorate the covers and the paste downs of books. Often, books could be identified by the designs and colors of the paper marbling.  Each monastery used unique colors and patterns, a secret guarded very closely.  

After books became more common, their creation started to move away from monasteries.  Marbled paper was still unique and took time, the process for marbling is very intensive. It requires unique ingredients like ox gall and is temperamental, conditional to the surrounding humidity and temperature. As books were being created in higher numbers, bookbinders created higher demand for decorated paper. The binders looked around their shops.  They had pigment. They had paste. It was an inexpensive and simple way to decorate books, and the result is stunning. It gives the illusion of a three dimensional pattern, on a flat surface.  The paste is thick, and when it’s wet designs are drawn on the surface of the paper using wood cutouts, stylus, combs, even fingers. As it dries, the paste flattens and smooths. In a way, it really is glorified finger painting.

Paste Paper made by Madeleine Durham

Looking at modern paste paper artists, Madeleine Durham is my favorite and extremely talented. I couldn’t write about paste paper and not mention her name. Taking her inspiration from the American Southwest, her pages are works of art.

Why even bother reading?

I work closely with college students and, over the past several years I’ve overheard countless conversations where they’ve talked about how reading is not a priority, literature, especially classic literature is obsolete and out of touch with today’s society, or it’s simply not worth the time spent reading. What?! Until very recently, I hadn’t realized the gift my parents had given me teaching me to love reading. My parents had the constant battle to figure out where to put a new bookshelf, trying to keep up with the ever growing collection of books we had. I couldn’t help but fall into a book if I was bored, I was surrounded by them where ever I went, and it was beautiful. Books and reading became a huge part of my identity. There was the unspoken expectation that we would read, and that’s exactly what happened.

According to the National Center for Education, only 13% of the US is actually proficient in reading. The number of people actually reading literature at all - novels, plays, short stories, poems - is declining to only about 40% of the population EVER within a 12 month period. (That was four years ago, I can only assume that number has continued to decline!)

I truly believe that reading is one of the most important things we can do with our time. To start, reading allows us to experience things we would never have experienced otherwise. We can sail the ocean with Captain Ahab, float the Mississippi with Huck Finn, experience the horrors of slavery in the Civil War with Frederick Douglass, or know what it is to have a kindred friend like Anne and Diana. By reading, our potential for empathy increases, we can better understand people with vastly different backgrounds or beliefs. In an ever increasingly divided country, that need for empathy is as great as its ever been.

In my own home, reading brings my family together. Just a couple of weeks ago, we took our dogs to go swimming in the river near our house. In the whispy, aw-inspired voice that only a three year old can do, my sweet little girl saw some tall spindly flowers growing. “Look Mama, Miss Rumphius was here! There’s lupines!” Those simple, exhausted flowers definitely wouldn’t have made the same impression on my little girl if we hadn’t read Miss Rumphius together. We then spent the next few minutes inspecting the petals, comparing how tall they are, and just enjoying the beauty around us. Reading is an activity that unites and bonds us together.

The cutest thing is listening to my little girl whisper, “Mama, I’m going to go be impertinent…” right before she runs to go bounce on her daddy. That’s not a word I would have ever used with her, but she learned it from reading Beatrice Potter books. Through reading every day, even if it’s only for a few minutes, her language has grown in leaps and bounds. Most people in a day to day setting, speak at a 5th grade reading level, and I’m the first to admit that my grammar isn’t always the greatest. By reading, I can model to my girls how I would hope they will learn to speak and communicate, and so far, it’s working.

Do you remember plugging through Orwell’s 1984 in high school? Instead of saying something was great or better, it was plusgood. Instead of excellent, amazing, or benevolent, it was doubleplusgood. Reading is a way to expand our vocabulary, so we can then become better at communicating or even become better at experiencing ideas. I would argue that as language becomes less complex, thinking then follows suit. (If you want to learn more about this, Andrew Pudewa’s talk Nuturing Competent Communicators is brings up some interesting thoughts.)

Books completely fascinate me. I hope to share with you through this blog here why books are some of my most treasured possessions, a little about their history, and why these “archaic” pieces of literature still impact us today, as well as a little bit of a glimpse into my world of bookbinding. (If you want to talk about archaic, I’m actively using tools made in the 19th century, and they’re amazing!)

E.H. Shepard's Copies of Winnie the Pooh

This box was a fun one to create. It‘s to house two copies of the Winnie-the-Pooh series belonging to EH Shepard: Now We Are Six (1927) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). His illustrations have become iconic. His own son’s teddy bear, Gowler, was the inspiration of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Signed by Queen Victoria

My newest clamshell box was so much fun to work with. Queen Victoria commissioned a book to be created after her husband’s death, of a collection of stories about his life. This particular copy “Early Years of the Prince Consort” was signed by the queen herself in 1867.

I love the classic look of linen, and used that to match the cover. I laser engraved the board before covering it with the bookcloth to match the Victoria and Albert insignia on the cover. The inside needed to be regal, elegant. Learning about Victoria through this project, I surprised my client with a drawing done of their wedding day placed on the item tray.