1776 Field Journal

At the end of May, I attended a workshop given by Marlene Pomeroy at her studio in Kitchener.  We were going to recreate a historical binding from 1776.  Marlene had seen this binding in a museum and took the time to study its construction and create a prototype.

The binding uses accordion fold guards for the text blocks and for the fold out map inserts.  The original book contained maps for the troops in 1776. It was a field guide that was issued by the army.

Here is the result of my labours with Marlene:

The book is sewn over cords and has a leather spine and corners.  I used one of her decorative papers (that I thought looked appropriate to the history of the book) to cover the book board.

We used Arches text wove in a cream colour for the text block and the map fold outs.

This foldout was attached to the accordion guard and was folded both horizontally and vertically.  The fold dimensions were staggered so that the folds would not create undue width at the spine of the book.

We just sewed the endpaper to the text block instead of doing a traditional hinged tip in.  My endpaper choice was weak and the thread tore the paper at the top and bottom.  You can see a bit of this at the top of this picture.  Upon reflection, I should have reinforced the fold before sewing to prevent this.  The endpaper on the text block is 1/4" wider than the page and folds over the first page of the text block in the French tip in manner.  It is secured with glue only on the vertical edge of the paper.

This was a two day workshop and even though Marlene had pre-cut the text blocks and map pages, we spent two full days putting the book together.

The leather that I was given was a bit dry and cracked when pasted to the spine.  Luckily, that was at the rear of the book and just gave it a distressed quality that was suitable for this kind of book.