Christmas is for children

One of the jobs that we at Libre Livre enjoy the most is binding stories written by children of our customers. Lively and imaginative, with spellings all their own, each story has a charm of its own. We transform them into single section bindings, with boards covered in vibrant Japanese paper - they make great presents for grandparents, not to mention heirlooms of the future.

Christmas is coming

Christmas is upon us, and it is time to stock up on wrapping paper, mince pies and cards.

Libre Livre has a range of hand printed cards that are an ideal way to bypass the increasing standardization and commercialization of the season.

A salutary tale

This week I have been grappling with IT problems - seemingly intractable at one point, which had an oddly simple solution.

I use the Ubuntu operating system, and this week I decided it was time to upgrade to the next distribution. without me realizing it, my broadband service was disrupted by the recent poor weather with the result that the upgrade files did not download correctly. The result was that the machine crashed every time I tried to boot up, giving just the mysterious comment that "Postfix" was being reloaded.

Matters got worse: although I could access the boot menu the upgrade would not load correctly from the CD I had made. The final course left open was to boot into recovery mode - for which I need to be able to access the "grub" menu. This menu is accessed by pressing Esc at an early stage as the machine starts up, but the pc would not recognize the Esc key and although I could access the BIOS it would not register any changes.

Stuck! ... after several hour of head scratching the solution turned out to be simply changing the BIOS battery (cost £2) lodged deep on the motherboard, a bit unnerving, but easy enough, and after that everything was downhill.

Traditional Clay Marbles

Libre Livre has recently introduced a new product: hand decorated clay marbles made by Marbled Arts of Florence

To find out more about these fabulous antiques of the future, click Marbles

The Wedding Cake Church

Not a great picture - my mobile phone is getting long in the tooth, but several people have asked me why St Brides is known as the wedding cake church - and, hopefully, this will show the tiers of the tower sufficiently to give the answer.

St Brides Printing Library

Had a splendid day at St Brides. They have an exhibition hall which houses a good collection of antique printing presses, ranging from an original wooden frame, similar to the one(s) I imagine Gutenberg used, through examples of the Columbian, Albion and Stanhope. The library itself has an excellent selection of books on printing and related subjects, and a pleasant light airy and peaceful reading room.

Printing Library

In the next few days I'm off to visit St Bride's Printing Library. This charming library - one of the few vestiges of the printing industry still located around Fleet St - is just behind the "wedding cake church", whose towers resembles, and by all accounts was the inspiration for, tiered wedding cakes. The workshop of Wynkyn de Worde, Gutenberg's first and greatest assistant, was just a few hundred yards away, so for letterpress folk this is hallowed ground. Let's hope a bit of the magic rubs off.

Display cabinet

This week we put up a small display cabinet in the Star Brewery in which we will be showing some of the products featured on the Libre Livre website, letterpress cards, notebooks and some marbled paper.

New Website - done

At last, I've completed the new version of the Libre Livre website. One new feature that I am particularly pleased with are the small icons that accompany opening pages on browser tabs and address bar. They are a great way of giving the site some identity.

My drop down menus and "action buttons" may seem a bit clunky, but I hope that they will be reasonably intuitive to use.

The main purpose of any website is to make the content accessible, and the Libre Livre content is very much focused on the fabulous Florentine marbled papers that we have started selling. Do take look: Florentine Papers

New Web Site

One of reasons this blog has not been updated as regularly as it ought of late is that I have been working on a re-design of the Libre Livre website, to reflect our recent appointment as the official retailer of Marbled Arts of Florence.

The website is more or less completed now, and I am particularly pleased with the mini-icons which should show up in your address bar when you access it - or save it as a bookmark: not a bad idea for anybody who is interested in book arts, marbled paper etc.

I've stayed at home

I have not been to Afghanistan recently; in fact I have never been there, although I did once get close, the top of the Khyber Pass. Be that as it may, I have certainly not seen service in the Afghan army. So when a friend sent me a picture he had found online showing "me" in uniform I was pretty sure he was joking, though I have to admit the likeness is not bad. Anybody interested is welcome to take a look and judge for themselves: Afghan Patrick

Resolutions and websites

I admit it, I have been remiss of late in posting updates to this blog, but I am resolved to be better in future. Well, I'll try.

Last week I visited St Bride's Library, one of the few remaining landmarks of the Fleet St newspaper and printing industry. It is a splendid library, calm and peaceful, possessed of a thorough range of reading material, and with some printing presses to inspect to boot in the "exhibition area" in the basement. For anybody interested, here's the link: St Bride's

Meanwhile, we are working on an update of the Libre Livre website, intended to be released later this month. Amongst other things, it will include full details of the marbled papers from Marbled Arts - for which Libre Livre Ltd is now the (sole) UK retailer - but for anybody who can't wait feel free to contact us, just click here: Libre Livre

Marbled Paper from Libre Livre

Some friends came round for supper last night, and we showed them the marbled paper that we bought in Italy. They thought it was fabulous, which it is.

Libre Livre is extremely proud to have been appointed as the exclusive retail outlet for marbled paper produced by Marbled Arts of Florence. To see some of the Marbled Art products and the techniques of paper marbling click: Marbled Arts

We're Back

For those who had not noticed that the Libre Livre team was on its annual vacation I've got news for you - we're back.

We drove down to Florence over the Alps - crossing near Briancon, thought by some to be the route used by Hannibal, and came back more slowly through southern France. In Aix en Provence we stumbled by chance on a book fair - tremendous range of antiquarian books, though in my unschooled opinion prices were on the high side.

I was particularly pleased to find a letterpress printing business in full swing. Unfortunately the printers did not speak English and my Italian is confined to "amo te" and "grazzi, vino", neither of which seemed appropriate, but I can confidently report that they were using an Original Heidelberg - I will post some pictures in coming days on the Libre Livre Photo Gallery

My newly restored press

Since my recent blog entries described my antique nipping press and its restoration I have been deluged with requests for a photo of it - well, OK, but I have had one or two.

So, for all those interested: Here it is

SOB Conference

The Society of Bookbinders biannual Conference takes place this weekend, but we're not going - since I resigned as national Treasurer I have found rather limited appeal in Society events, and the prospect of the AGM fills me with.....yawn!

Problem solved

In Lewes we are lucky enough to have a town blacksmith, and a splendid fellow he is. He has repaired my press, welded the wonky handle and got the sliding tray moving for the first time in goodness knows how many years. All this in just a week, and he carried it back and forth to his forge, for a modest sum.

Now all I've got to do is start using it....

The Hogarth Press

One of our inspirations in setting up Libre Livre a couple of years ago was the development of the Hogarth Press by Leonard and Virgina Woolf. Like us they came to printing from a love of books, some experience of bookbinding and the desire to be creative. Unlike us their friends included T S Eliot, Katherine Mansfield and E M Forster, which helped; a bit.

Another difference is that the Woolf's bought their equipment new whereas much of ours came to us at second hand, or more. We too have spent hours sorting and organising type, not to mention de-rusting, dusting and oiling.

For those interested, an entertaining account of the early years of the Hogarth Press can be found here: Hogarth

A pressing problem

A few years ago I bought, for a modest sum, and old iron blocking press of a design I have never seen before. There is a small removable iron frame which slots onto the bottom of the main screw, and can be lowered down onto the surface to be lettered, leather or whatever. Meanwhile, the surface itself is laid on an iron bed which slides across the base plate of the press to enable it it be located precisely. Or it would if it was not jammed solid.

Following my success with getting the stapler mended, this morning I had the blacksmith round to see whether he thought he could get it all freed up and moving again.

Turning to another subject, I was rather embarrassed this morning when walking round our local auction house. I was just drifting into a dream of bidding for, a splendid collection of wooden elephants when Julian, the auctioneer, shot out of his office and addressed me by name. It seems that I had bid, and bid successfully which is unusual for me, on a small pine set of drawers in an auction 3 or 4 weeks ago, and then forgotten all about it. I have to give him full marks for remembering, spotting me and putting two and two together, quick as a flash.

Make do and mend

My saddle stapler is back already, mended. The cost was £12.95, a replacement would have been around £500. As mentioned in this blog a few days ago the manufacturer had told me that it was so old it was almost certainly beyond repair. Makes you think.

A warning

We have, I'm not boasting, a stainless steel kettle. Made by Wesco it has a spun steel sheen attractive, I imagine, to those who like kettles. It does have the design flaw that the handle gets so hot you have to pick it up with a tea towel or suchlike wrapped around it, but that apart until yesterday I thought it was more or less functional. Now I am not so sure.

In making a cup of coffee for myself yesterday I tipped the offending kettle slightly higher than usual - there was still plenty of water inside - and the lid slipped out with the result that a scalding blast of steam went all over my fingers which are now red, blistered and very painful. Luckily I dropped the kettle onto the table, but if it had fallen to the floor things could have been much worse.

Accidents, and I've had plenty, happen when you least expect them, but fore-warned is fore-armed, be careful with Wesco kettles.

Hello hello hello

Did you hear about the printer who never married, because he couldn't find a girl who was his type?

A late spring clean

I have finally got around to trying out some electric goods I bought second-hand several years ago. The tooling stove (basically just a hot plate which heats up the bras tools used by bookbinders for gold tooling) worked fine, but my "saddle" stapler left much to be desired.

A saddle stapler for htose not in the know is a powerful stapler the bed of which can be otated so that books or pamhlets sit astride it, enabling the staales to be inserted true and straight. Well, hat is the theory, instead of banging the staples through with a great whoomph, my stapler launched into a noise like a machine gun and not astaple moved. Using my new Skype phone connection I rang the manufacturer, up in Yorkshire, who expressed astonishment that anybody was still using a machine so old, but then I remembered the old electrician who works round the corner from my workshop and took it in to him for a look-see. Now I'm waiting for the verdict, fingers crossed.

Once more unto Oxford

Libre Livre was in Oxford again this weekend, albeit briefly. Charming it wa not, hordes of tourists everywhere, traipsing along by the busload and generally getting in the way. Saturday had the additinal irrititations of intermittent heavy rain and students marchng round in mortar boards and gowns. Still, the second- hand bookshops are excellent, and I bought a pair of heavy duty leather boots in the sales - having dropped various bits of printing equipment on my feet over the years I have gradually learnt that sandals and printing do not go too well together.

We also thrilled to add to our collection of wood type, and to be introduced to the Journal of the Printing Historical Society, whose website can be found here: Printing Historical Society

Apprentice makes good

Readers of this blog may remember that last summer we took on an apprentice, albeit fleetingly, Long Tom. He did well, showed promise, but decided to return to his studies. And this year he has proved that a wise decision by getting first class honours. Well done Long Tom from all at LLL.

I have just about finished sorting through the 22 trays of blocks I brought up from Dorset a couple of weeks ago - at the cost of the rear suspension in our car. It was a pretty unpleasant job, all the trays covered in dust and grease and the blocks themselves jumbled and muddled. Still, it is done now, trays cleaned and the blocks sorted by subject. Now the real work should begin....

Going off the rails

At Libre Livre we are going off the rails. Or to be precise, we are getting more and more fed up with the poor service on Southern Rail, delays, cancellations and persistent failure to give passengers the information they need to plan their journeys during times of disruption. Other people must be getting fed up too, as on a train last week the ticket inspector was acccompanied by an armed policeman!

We firmly believe the responsibility for the service quality lies with management, and strange to say the contact details for the managers of Southern Rail are not that easy to come by. After some searching around, however, we did find the name and address of the Managing Director and here, as a service to our customers and others, it is:

Mr Chris Burchell,
MD, Southern Rail
Go-Ahead House,
26-28 Addiscombe Road,
Croydon CR9 5GA

tel 020 8929 8682
email chris.burchell@southernrailway.com

Cost Control

Libre Livre being a small company we have a constant eye on costs. It is astonishing how small, seemingly trivial costs add up. Post and transport are a couple of examples, but communication is another. Telephone bills creep up insidiously, even for landlines. So by the time you have added in a few copper for the odd call to a mobile, a few more for line rental etc the monthly charge can often be quite substantial. We have recently been experimenting with Skype, a piece of software that requires no additonal line cost and where the cost of each call (calls between two pcs made from Skype to Skype are free, though calls to/from other 'phones are charged) can be seen deducted from the remainnig balance in your account. So far so good, but don't take our word for it, take a look for yourself: Skype

And when you've done it, if you do, don't forget to drop us a note of your contact details.

Cobblers

A visit to my local shoe-mender has alerted me to the fact that cobblers use hammers more or less identical to the backing hammers so beloved of bookbinders. That is not to say they are necessarily any cheaper, but you never know what you may find.

Incidentally, on another topic altogether we at LLL have decided to boycott Boots, whose new chief exec is the boy blunder of British banking - he didn't know his limitations in that industry and we are far from convinced that he knows them in this. "Pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap" may work ok in supermarkets, but it is not the philosophy we fancy underlying the purveyors of our medicaments.

A word of caution

I bought a new laptop last week from a local shop, small but apparently reputable. I don't consider myself a natural cynic, but in an idle moment I did check that the size of the RAM and the hard disc were in accordance with the specification. And though the RAM was ok, the hard disc was 40 gig smaller than it should have been. It's all sorted out now, but has left a nasty taste in my mouth. I'm just not sure; accident or design?

Down to Dorset

Just back from a trip to Dorset to collect some new type and blocks. East-west is not the easiest direction to travel in southern England and the journey took around 7 hours door to door to door, but it was worth it to get some fabulous blocks covering sports, vintage cars, cartoons, animals..... and as for the fonts...

Letterpress equipment is getting scare, and Livre Livre is always keen to expand our collection. If you have any, or hear of any , looking for a new owner please drop us a line - for contact details click here: Contact Libre Livre

(T)rain (t)rain go away....

The LLL team were up in town yesterday, worse luck. The rain was torrential all evening, and by the time we came to catch our train down to Sussex the rail network had become one vast soggy mass of inertia. Victoria was chaos. The esteemed management of Southern rail had made available no information that passengers might want concerning such complex questions as when the next train to the coast might depart, and from which platform.

On our train, when we eventually caught it, we noticed the "managing director of Southern rail" - if ever there was a misnomer...- huddled in a corner.... working hard at his emails. Good for him, a lad who knows his priorities, not talking (God forbid I should suggest apologising) to his customers for their inconvenience, his lack of a half-way decent contingency plan etc, not ensuring that pertinent information was broadcast, but diligently working away at his emails. A veritable Churchill of our age: I don;t think

A Private View

This weekend the head marbler and I visited a private view of the work of some local artists and printmakers at Pelham House hotel in the centre of Lewes. What an enjoyable evening. We met up with a number of old friends and binders from around Sussex and were particularly pleased to meet one of the artists, Charlotte Matthews, whose work is outstanding.

The theme of the exhibition, the prints of which have been bound together and are available as a book, is Tom Paine in Lewes. Charlotte's print is of the historic Market Tower, only a couple of hundred yards from our atelier.

Good-bye Website(s)

I have just found out that during October Geocities on which our test-bed website Lyons La Foret, a small town in Normandy is hosted will be withdrawing its service. if anybody is intersted, now is the time to have a look.

At the same time the hosting of our other site Garden's of Sussex is looking increasingly problemmatic. The link works for the moment but....

Nothing in this world is constant, but it does seem disappointing that services we were happy to use and in which we invested our time should be withdrawn

Cambridge

Just back from a day in Cambridge where I visited three teams of crack conservators, based at the Colleges Conservation Consortium, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the University Library. All were very generous with their time. It was interesting to see the studios and the fabulous books on which the teams are working. Rather salutary to learn how much work is required to correct poor binding done in the past, some from as recently as the 1950s; books with spines so rigid they will scarcely open wide enough to slip in a finger, let alone read; edges ruthlessly trimmed and so on.

Learning to read

Beautiful and evocative they may be, but old documents are often very difficult to read. Scripts have changed markedly over the years, from the clear elegant capitals of the Romans, to Carolingian miniscule, Blackletter, uncial and so on; eventually arriving at today's seemingly universal scrawl. On top of these changes, clerks used various abbreviations and short-hand forms and of course, many documents are written in medieval latin or french.

An excellent guide to reading such difficult documents is "The Handwriting of English Documents" by L.G. Hector

Old Friends

Over the years the Libre Livre team has built up an amazing network of friends and advisers, and we are enormously grateful for all the help they have given us. We recently heard from one of our oldest letterpress friends, Sharon, who moved to California a couple of years ago where she is doing brilliant work - we hope to bring you details of Sharon's business, website etc in coming days.

It is sad to say that although so many have been helpful and constructive one or two folks of whom we had high expectations have proved disappointing and downright mean. One, for example, with whom we spent hours on the 'phone earlier this year helping sort out various problems has'nt bothered to drop so much as a "thank you". Let's hope their cheeks burn a moment if they read this - I know mine would.

Vandalism at LLL

Over the weekend somebody smashed one of the windows in our workshop. Actually, they didn't just smash it, they must have belted it one, as broken glass stretched 10 feet across the carpet. (Incidentally, one of the first pieces of advice I was given when I started printing was always have a soft flooring in your workshop.)

We would like to record our thanks to Terry, the premises manager of the Star Brewery, who had already replaced the window before we ever saw the damage, then cleared away the shards of glass and re-frosted the new pane. All for a coffee - an interesting contrast to some others to whom we have done good turns in the past who've struggled - and failed - to send so much as a postcard in acknowledgment of our contribution. There are times when you learn who your friends are!

The Recession Approaches

The Libre Livre workshop, freshly cleaned and tidied, is in Lewes, the county town of East Sussex. A little further up the line towards London lies the commuter town of Haywards Heath, where we happened to find ourselves last weekend. A salutary walk: we counted getting on for 20 empty shops, and there was office space galore available to let.

Workshop Tidy-up

We've been doing a spring clean of our workshop over the last few days. Although we have only been there for a year it is surprising how much junk has built up - old corks, wooden spatulas and some rather oily spare parts for various presses. Still, its more or less done now and we are spruced up and ready for our next customers.

Letterpress Revival

At Libre Livre we believe in supporting traditional crafts, not just out of sense of history, but because we think they set a standard that has never been matched - but don't just believe us, read this article in Forbes: Letterpress Revisited

Children's Books

At Libre Livre we are passionate about books, buying them, borrowing them, making, holding & mending them; and above all, reading them. We believe that life without books would be much the poorer for it, and are shocked to read from time to time how many people do live virtually book free. A love of books cannot be started too young. A few of my early favourites were:

The Little Grey Men by BB
Jennings and Derbyshire by Anthony Buckeridge
Just William by Richmal Crompton
Five Children and It by E Nesbit
Biggles by Captain W E Johns
Billy Bunter by Frank Richards

before I moved on to Wodehouse, John Moore's Brensham trilogy, Kipling and so on.

But, that's nothing. A favourite posession of my 2 year old nephew was, long before he could read, "The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde"

On the Road

The Libre Livre team hit Oxford this weekend. What a fabulous city. And what a wonderful literary heritage it has. Binding and printing have been carried out here for generations. At one stage Oxford was more or less the only city in the country, London apart, in which the mysteries of book arts were part of regular city life. Certainly some of the earliest printing houses in Europe were based here.

On Sunday we headed back Lewes-wards where we attended AS Byatt's talk at the Charleston Festival, an afternoon not to be missed. Her latest book is based around the production of Children's literature a topic which will be addressed more fully in this blog in coming days.

Spot the Head Marbler

At Libre Livre we try and imbue our work with a spirit of fun, but our Head Marbler pushes it to the limit sometimes. This picture was taken on the way to a recent "board" meeting; wood'nt you know?

A Shadow World

The problem of turning a 2 dimensional image into functional 3 dimensional form is in a way the essential challenge of bookbinding. Over the years it has generated myriad solutions, many of great artistry, ranging from scrolls, clay tablets and slivers of birch bark through limp vellum and gold tooled leather to mass produced "case bindings" and paperbacks. The variety of materials used has been enormous, all designed to protect the content of the written word, and in many cases to illustrate and illuminate. There is no perfect solution. Books do not last for ever, though many have survived hundreds of years in astonishing condition.

These days so much of the written word is in the form of computer file, or electronic mail. Well suited, perhaps better than the solid 3 dimensional book, for the purpose of preserving and allowing access to script. But how lamentably functional. It is hard to imagine a computer file viewed 1,000 years hence being seen as a beautiful cultural object.

A Test Site

At Libre Livre we, not surprisingly with name like ours, adore France. Why not visit our test site at "A Small Town in Normandy" to see some images of this delightful part of northern France and to get an idea of how we can help you to market your image, personal or corporate.

Adana Leaflet

Still on the subject of the Adana publicity leaflet referred to in yesterday's entry, another interesting item is the list of suggestions for suitable subjects ofr the "Five-three" press ("five-three" incidentally refers to the size of the chase in which the type is held for printing). Here goes:

Admission tickets, Business Headings, Club Cards, Greetings Cards, Invoices, Postcards, Private Notepaper, Visiting Cards, Wedding Stationery, Menus and "numerous other items".

At Libre Livre we welcome customer enquiries for any of these items, all of which we can produce in a wide range of colours and fonts.

Adana Presses

At Libre Livre we have over 20 presses, many of them made by the Adana company, whose most popular models were the "Five-three" and the "Eight-five" - table top presses about the size of a sewing machine.

One of our equipment suppliers recently gave us an old brochure for these fabulous presses. It is not dated, but was almost certainly produced in the mid-1960s. At the back is a list of some of the organisations then using Adana machines including British Railways, Glaxo Ltd, Marks & Spencer Ltd, C.Nestle & Co Ltd, Royal Ordinance Factories and a number of universities; Bristol, Cambridge, durham, Glasgow, London and Oxford to name a few.

Seems like we are in good company.

Some Old Friends

I went down to Chichester yesterday where I met up with a couple of old friends from West Dean. One has recently set himself up as a book and paper conservator specializing in 18th century maps, which he is repairing, flattening and colouring in. This contrasts to the philosophy at Libre Livre where we firmly believe in minimal intervention.

My other friend has recently come across some family papers dating from 1840 onwards which are in need of conservation, and de-acidification. "Of course" he said to me "they are of no value, but....". At Libre Livre, however, we recognise that all the documents we work on are of great value to our customers and their personal heritage.

Lets Preserve Conservation Resources

So, the Textile Conservation Centre at Southampton University is to close. What a retrograde step - we deplore it. The Centre worked closely with West Dean College where I trained in book conservation sharing, for example, a course on the Conservation of Leather.

Conservation training is important for preserving our cultural legacy. Once an item has been ruined there is no way it can be replaced. What a tragedy that the country's resources are channeled towards paying sir Fred Goodwin's distended pension rather than training young people and giving them worthwhile careers.

A Busman's Holiday

Anybody who thinks the Libre Livre team's idea of a good break is a few days with never a tome in sight could not be more wrong - we are almost always spend holidays checking out the local book shops, especially second-hand ones.

Yesterday I picked up a very interesting book "Leathe Dressing, Dyeing and Finishing" by D Woodroffe for less than the price of a pint of beer. It is a very thorough explanation of different tanning, and curing techniques and then outlines alternatives for dyeing and coating.

A particular favourite of mine is alum-tawed "leather" (strictly speaking one should speak of an alum-tawed skin as it does not undergo the tanning process needed for leather proper). This wonderful creamy hyde has a distinctive slghtly sharp smell which I find rather attractive, but more imprtantly it has wonderful supplety and resiliance. Books bound in alum-tawed skin as many were until around 1450 are often still in superlative condition showing no signs of cracking or broken joints so common in later bindings. It is not easy to get hold of, or cheap, but is still available and is used, amongst other purposes, for long lasting conservation bindings.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to all our readers.

Lino Print

At Libre Livre we are interested in all sorts of prints and print making. sorting through some old family papers recently I came across this picture, which I think is a lino print made by my mother, Pauline Colwell.

There were several other drawings and skethces she had made, which I will be uploading over future days.

I hope you enjoy them.

Living up to a Name

It's an odd thing, but names can sometimes be appropriate beyond all imagining. Take for example, the greedy and incompetent erstwhile Chief Exec of RBS, currently grabbing his distended pension as hard as he can go. His name? "good win". Come to think of it, Royal Bank itself is another example; it's certainly in a right royal mess.

Be that as it might, our company name is Libre Livre, which is French - well, loosely. As a matter of fact, the name was chosen to indicate that our range of notebooks and albums have free, blank, open pages, so customers can use them however they choose.

Picking up on the French theme - and keen readers of this blog may have stumbled on our sister site "Lyons La Foret, A Small Town in Normandy" - we have decided it's high time to brush up our French. A charming lady is due to visit our workshop this morning for my first hour's lesson, must dash...

Au revoir

Printing Course

As mentioned a few days ago, last weekend the Head Marbler and I both went on a printing course in Lewes. It was hard work. We carved our designs into sheet of plywood, inked up, set the press to get something like the right pressure and let it roll.

The results were not good, here is one of our better efforts:

Vellum

One of our favourite materials at Libre Livre is vellum; animal hide which has been soaked, limed and dried. This fantastic translucent material has been used by scribes since Roman times - it has been suggested that it first came into use by the ancient Greeks as an alternative to papyrus, which was confined to Egypt.

Used for a range of binding styles perhaps the most famous application is as "limp vellum bindings" which served as the medieval filofax. Libre Livre offers limp vellum bindings, including some with Scandinavian style rigid wooden spines, examples of which can be found on our website at Libre Livre

For a magnificent example of a lavish vellum binding click here

This weekend the Head Marbler and I are both going on a course on basic wood-block techniques run by Carolyn Trant. I'll let you know how we get on

Duc de Berry

Another wonderful example of medieval work is found in the Book of Hours of the Duc de Berry. To see some of the glorious illuminations click here: Duc de Berry

The Luttrell Psalter

At Libre Livre one of our regrets is that we do not get many books of Hours through the workshop door. These wonderful medieval volumes, often written on vellum, are lavishly decorated - the charm of the Luttrell Psalter is that it contains a number of scenes of daily life in the Middle Ages - as well as mythical animals and Biblical scenes.

To find out a little more about it click here: Luttrell Psalter

Angels

Those who know me will be aware that as well as printing and binding I also do some consultancy work from time to time. Yesterday was one of my days in town, and on the train home I was delighted to discover a bumper puzzle page in the Evening Standard, a new feature.

The Head Marbler, who was on the same train, and I grappled unsuccessfully with the names of 25 Wimbledon champions, and failed to work the Magic Square. Then I saw a trivia quiz that I was sure we could do. The first question was along the lines "in the Jewish and Christian religions, what is the name of the senior angels". I know, I thought: Seraphim, or was it Cherubs? Turning it over I was startled to read the word "Shrimps".

Careful proof reading - and the above is an example of the kind of mistakes that can occur when the eye jumps a line or two - is vital for a printer, as we discovered yet again this week. We spent an entire day printing a short work of prose for a new client; justifying the ten lines took well over an hour, then we mixed the ink to the exact colour she had specified, put new rollers in the press, and produced our proof. After some time jiggling around to get even pressure across the paper the result looked fine, so we took a sheet of the beautiful, and expensive Somerset Velvet paper the client had chosen, damped it and let the presses roll. After several attempts produced a copy we both thought met the high standards we impose at Libre Livre.

Only then did the Head Marbler do a final proof check and discover a mistake: an "ell for an aye" - or to put it another way "Oh, 'ell my eye". Re-justify, re-balance, re-proof and print. Two hours later and we were done, and knackered, both.

Erbil Ervil

Our Head Marbler couldn't believe her luck this weekend; the opportunity to attend a course taught by Carolyn Trant, of Parvenu Press, on print making. We normally keep the HM away from too much creative work, but I was laid low with flu and this an seemed innocuous chance to give her an incentive in these dark days of Credit Crunch.

There were only 2 beginners on the course; but the HM was rather thrown when Carolyn asked what she planned to do. The honest answer would have been "nothing", but gallantly she pointed to a piece of plywood and gasped "a poster".

Kindly, if unwisely, Carolyn passed her a chisel, explained which was the business end, blanched when she placed her hand on the table in front of the blade, and left her to it for a moment or two. Long enough for the HM to get stuck in. And the chisel. Six hours later she'd done: the words "Libre Livre" gouged out of the ply, backwards..ish.

Carolyn said it looked fine, but "odd" somehow.

The HM inked up the ply, a natty green with an orange stripe along the middle, applied the paper and put it under the press. "Erbil Ervil". No two ways about it, the letters clear and bold, the words reversed. Irretrievably reversed.

The HM is hereby confined to marbling duty for some time to come.

Erratum

A few days ago in the Libre Livre Gallery I described the landscape photographer James Ravilious as "grandson" of the artist Eric Ravilious. An eager reader has pointed out that he was in fact the son of Eric. My mistake. Apologies folks.

A Testimonial

We recently received the following customer testimonial:

"I thought that you would like to be the recipient of the first letter written on my new writing paper. I'm very grateful to you for preparing it for me, and look forward to writing more letters with it..." Father Paul Arnold.

Libre Livre is pleased to prepare personal stationery for our discerning customers. We offer a wide range of fonts and inks - for those who want to stand apart from the herd. See our website for more details: Libre Livre

Russia Leather

New Year, New Stock, the mantra at Libre Livre. We recently bought some new skins, mainly brown and red to build up our stock, but try as we might we could manage to justify buying what we really hankered after, Russia leather.

For those who have not come across Russia leather before, it is leather tanned with vegetable tannins taken from birch bark. The process takes months. In my personal opinion, the finest Russia leather is reindeer skin, although cow, horse and goat have all been tanned in this way. The leather has a rich brown colour that has been described as "old walnut", certainly the oils in the skins have rendered them remarkably long lasting. Used for a variety of purposes as well as bookbinding, Russia leather can be identified by light diagonal cross hatched scores. The only trouble is this wonderful material is no longer made.

In 1973 a wreck of a ship, the Metta Catharina, sailing from St Petersburg to Genoa around 200 years before was discovered off the cost of Plymouth Sound. Its cargo, bundles of hides, was almost entirely undamaged and skins can still occasionally be bought, though they're not cheap mind you.

New Feature in the Libre Livre Gallery

Our accompanying blog, Libre Livre Gallery was set up to showcase some of the photos taken by the team at work, and at play. We use our own photos in our website, and for those interested in using us to design and build their sites we thought it might be helpful to see a few more of our efforts. Simply that.

Of late we have been deluged with requests for information about the places included in the gallery; so, from today by popular demand each picture will have alongside it a short note explaining where it was taken and what, if any, relevance the picture has to the world of books, binding and printing. We hope this will make the gallery more interesting to our customers past, present and future.

Now is the winter

Snow may not be lying deep and crisp and even along Castle Ditch Lane, but the Libre Livre workshop is perishing cold these days. Night time temperatures well below zero make the morning shift a tough one, and the afternoon not much better.

Everybody seems to be going down with flu, and we would like to say a particular "thank you" to she who will remain nameless, who passed it on to us free, gratis and for nothing.

On second thoughts

Some time ago I was working for a small company whose staff were less keen on administration than action; or not. The company manager, quite rightly, insisted on introducing a few basic reports, each of which became less and less meaningful as the staff adapted the format he had specified to make life easier for them. Eventually, driven to distraction, he told them not to give him any more meaningless schedules - since when he has received....nothing.

A thought for the New Year

Over the Christmas holiday I chanced into a lady who set me thinking about work ethics, New Year resolutions and such like. Somebody mentioned to her that they had trouble getting a seat on the train into work each day "No seat? " she inquired sweetly, "No problem... Go in earlier"