A Thousand Books

It’s not exactly true that I had never made a book until two months ago — my childhood dolls possessed a fine library of tiny hand-made school books and storybooks. They were bound very simply; a handful of pages secured in the middle with a well-placed staple. I was far more interested in the stories and illustrations contained on each miniature page.

Bookmaking hadn’t crossed my mind again until this past June, when I had the opportunity to participate in an informal workshop led by the incredibly talented Rachelle Woo Chuang. I was instantly hooked — and (given my history of working in multiples) somewhat jokingly declared that I intended to make a thousand books.

Thus began the Thousand Books Project, which currently consists of… a name, and the intent to make a whole bunch of books. Even the name is a bit misleading, as there’s nothing particular about the number 1,000.* Conceptually, the project is even more uncertain. I do know that I’m much more interested in books for their formal elements and symbolic meaning, and less interested in the actual content of any given page. I may leave the pages blank entirely, or fill them with some kinds of markings that would give an abstract suggestion of content. Or I may invite viewers to write or draw their own content into the books as a part of the project.

Last week I hit up Lexington’s excellent public library for some resources to learn more about bookmaking techniques and processes. This morning, I set up a very makeshift sewing frame in my studio, and set to work experimenting with some binding techniques. Working in multiples creates the added challenge of figuring out how to rapidly produce the object. I’ve learned that it’s easiest to plan for efficiency at the beginning of the project, so part of my goal right now is to discover which processes and techniques will be easily adapted to production mode.

All that said, I made a book this morning! It took me about 2 hours. Now that I know the process and have the tools gathered, I could probably replicate it in about 1/3 that time, and a well-planned assembly line might be able to shave it down to 20 minutes. That’s still rather slow — I’m aiming for a 5-7 minute process that would still generate a fairly bulky book — but the form is quite nice. It’s a cover-less book with an exposed spine, made from black construction paper with rough edges (spritzed with water at the very end of the process to make them curl a bit) and black ribbon tape for the binding and closure.

Every project has to start somewhere, right?

*Previous experience suggests that I have a difficult time accurately counting objects in quantities over about 300, anyway. This may or may not be related to my performance in 5th grade math class.