Accidental beauty

Discoveries in bookbinding...

“Do you notice anything?”, my friend Carolyn said as she handed me a gift of a secondhand book. I flipped through its beautiful two-colour illustrations and elegant typography… and then felt a fold on the outer edge – and it wasn’t intentional. The foreedge of the book was untrimmed and some of its folded sections made up for the casebound book had remained folded. I had to peer inside to see what was on the pages. “Will you slit them?”, my old college friend Chex asked. “Absolutely not!”, I replied. “I love it the way it is!”

I appreciate this book all the more having learned some bookbinding skills at London Centre for Book Arts, as part of a year when I committed to relearning and extending my design craft skills. Understanding how something works from the inside, I can see it better from the outside.