Process #2

My degree project was a book documenting the Irish Diaspora’s journeys from Ireland to England. I photographed and interviewed people in the various Irish centers around London: the London Irish Center, the Luton Irish Forum and the South London Irish Association. The book itself was hand-printed and bound but my bookmaking skills are very lacking! As such, I enlisted the help of my friend Chloe (a 2015 UAL Wimbledon graduate in Print and Time-based Media) to help me fix the binding and structure of the book itself.

Chloe won the Wandle Studio Prize for 2015/16 so she has use of a studio space at Merton Abbey Mills where she runs an “alternative book-makery” called Object Book.

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Original book
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How it stood
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Lying flat

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Attempt at attching the covers

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I attempted to attach the covers and put too much glue on the front
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The binding was too loose so pages would move
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Cutting the binding off each folio
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Placing the first cover
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Sewing the first section
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Tying a kettle stitch at the end
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Sewing the fourth folio to the third with a kettle stitch
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The cross stitch was made by putting the thread through two layers of thread on the folios and making a X shape and tying a kettle stitich
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Exposed biding
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Kettle stitches at the end of each folio

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Flattening in the nipping press

PS: I’m doing photo-book narrative workshops at Object Book on the 6th of August. More details to follow.

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