The How and Why we are here!

Hi everyone. I've added this "Blog" or rather an updates and news section to the site to fill you in on what we are trying to achieve here and a little bit about how we got here.

First of all I love imposing books for bookbinding. I don't know why I enjoy it so much but I do. It is a job that I can do in my downtime that doesn't require any special equipment. I get to layout public domain books in a format that I find beautiful and motivates me to bind.

As with most beginner bookbinders, I was making a tonne of blank notebooks. And after a while it kind of gets boring. Having a story or a text to bind a theme to helps direct the colours, decoration and even method of binding. The Queensland Bookbinders Guild has a competition each year, the McNicol Dean Bookbinding competition. It is a competition open to members where a set text is provided and a book is created using that text. The first time I did this I realised that my days of making empty notebooks were finished.

Since then I have supplied the guild with their competition texts each year. To see the amazing books created using the text is just great. This year we did Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I have never seen a more creative year in the competition and was amazed at the outcome. Once the guild puts a gallery up of the entries I will link to it here.

Last year I was off work after surgery and stuck on a couch for 3 months. During this time I setup the store and it was a huge success. I want to thank everyone who helped with this. Over the Christmas holidays however when I returned to work I had to close the store so I could get some personal bindings done and manage my return to my "day" job. Well I have reopened the store now with lots of new books to come. Keep an eye out for any updates. The best place for updates is my Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/binders.editions/.

What does all this mean? Well I am trying to provide the same experience for all other bookbinders. Whether it was just to give motivation to your own bindings, or to produce a binding for a client, I'd hope that our product will always be the best for the job. I always use what I think is the best paper for the job and hope that my typesetting and use of images really represent what the text tries to portray.

This dedication to quality however has meant that I've removed a few books from the store. I'm not happy with the plates that were scanned for The Wind in the Willows, and The Legend of King Arthur and his Knights. I will try and redo these as soon as I can to the high standard that I expect.

For the moment there will be two new texts that will be added for purchase, Thinking and Doing by Harry Roberts and The Enemies of Books, by William Blades. These are two great books that I think will be fun for people to bind.

I hope this answers a few questions about our site. I will be back with huge news next weekend however so stay tuned for that one.