Here’s some photos of the Frontex-moving operation:

Loaded onto a forklift…

and onto the trailer…

Carefully driven over to the church (studio)…

Sadly, I didn’t get pictures of the most delicate part of the procedure: Getting the press up those five steps and inside the room. (I was too busy biting my nails). We had to get a forklift with a boom. We drove the lift over to the steps, and extended the arm into the room. (It just barely extended far enough… I’ll spare the details of how tricky it actually was). Then we had to move the press with a pallet lift across double boards to support the floor and keep the press at the level of the two boards where it would be placed. Anyway, here it is in its new place, next to the frame of the C&P and the Vandercook (since, then, Michael’s already put the C&P back together again! What a man!)

The studio is slowly coming together. We’re trying to do a lot with a relatively small space, but we’re thrilled to have the presses all together in once place, and as I keep saying, I’m very happy to have a space to work on my books.

I’ll post more as the studio continues to come together…

-Lili

I have a vested interest in these developments, because I will be sub-letting some of the space so that I will have my own workbench for bookbinding. I’m very excited.

And so begins the moving of the presses. Here’s what we were doing last week:

Here’s the C&P before moving it. It was in a little room of an elderly woman’s basement (her husband had been a master printer and this was his at-home hobby press). There was no way the press was coming out without taking the press apart…

So here it is stripped down.

And here we are hauling the letterpress frame up the stairs.

It fit through the door, literally within millimeters.

Now to just get it into the truck.

We did it! Getting the press into the actual building went quite smoothly. The door was 5 steps up, but it happened to be the exact height of the truck, so we were able to just back the truck up to the threshold and slide the press onto a pallet jack. I don’t have photos yet, but I’ll be sure to check in as the studio continues to come together.

The new studio will be equipped with the three presses, a light exposure unit, a small book press (mine) and a large book press (loaned from a friend), a guillotine loaned from my boyfriend (it’s been sitting unused in a storage unit), a board shear loaned from another friend, as well as three large 4×8 foot community tables (as well as individual work stations). It’s enough to get started. Did I mention I’m excited?

Anyway, today (confession time) I spent a good hour and a half going through the entire archive. She’s dug up a lot of fun and beautiful stuff, it was inspiring going through it. Maybe I’ll share some of my favorites later. For now, here is a fun video of a commercial bindery in 1947:

(The book is available for sale at my Etsy Shop)

The project officially has a title and website now, with beautiful studio photographs of the artists’ works: Manulua Bookart. Be sure to click over and check it out.

The show is already slated to exhibit in the UK, but if you’re aware of any galleries (anywhere!) that would be interested in exhibiting the show, please let us know.

And here’s my finished book:

Book Arts in Tonga part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4

Joe is working to get some exhibitions of the show put together, hopefully internationally. I’ll keep you updated with what happens with the show.

Update: The project now has a website with studio photographs of much of the work:

http://manuluabookart.wordpress.com/

I am sad to say I don’t remember our Tongan art instructor’s name. But he showed us the basic principles behind Tongan design and their names. The sketches below are his. Each design/ pattern has its own name.

The seed thing below is used as a paintbrush. It is dipped in the koka dye, and the designs are then painted on the tapa cloth.

These women had obviously worked with tapa all their lives. They painted their designs very quickly and without any hesitation.

For special occasions or people or rank or special guests or ceremony etc, tapa cloths are laminated together with tapioca glue to make huge tapa cloths.  When a large tapa is made, the stencil below is used to make a sort of template for the tapa design. The stencil is placed under the tapa, and ink is dabbed gently on top, the transferred ink effect is similar to a crayon rubbing.

Here is a large tapa that was laid out for us to see.

It was fun that we had just made the tapa and understood the process, because on our flight back from Vava’u to Tonga Tapu, the queen of Tonga was on Shannon’s and my flight, which explained why they were laying out a huge tapa outside the plane (for the queen’s boarding of the plane):

I didn’t get any photos of me and my friends Shannon and Jenny giving bookbinding demos. Go figure. But we made several fun little models and demonstrated how to put them together. We tried to stay basic but offer enough options to get creative juices flowing. Next up was printmaking techniques.

Jenny and Linda demonstrated how to make a photopolymer plate using a scratch board and the sun. They rigged up the contraption below to use as an exposure unit. (The design is Joe Ostraff’s)

Processing (washing out) the plate:

I have to say it worked like a charm (as long as the sun was shining) ;)   They had also brought a couple of those little to-it-yourself letterpresses/ kits that you can buy at the craft store, and the end result was not bad for do-it-yourself printmaking on a remote Tongan island (sorry I didn’t get any photos of the printing process, but some of the printmaking will show up in the post showing the finished books).

Our Tongan artist/instructor whipped up the linoleum carving below: (A bunch of us used it to make tee-shirts) :)

And finally we were ready to get down to the business of making our books. Below are photos of people hard at work.

Ethan made his woven book cover out of snack chips packages.

Maddison’s book was made by adding one folded tapa section at a time, the sections progressively growing. As they built up, it curled like a snail shell.

The next Tonga report post will show the final works of the artists. I’ll try to have it up soon. :)

Book Arts in Tonga part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4

grangerize \GRYEN-juh-rahyz\

verb: 1. To add to the visual content of a book by inserting images not included in the original volume, often by mutilating other books.

2. To mutilate books in order to get illustrative material for such a purpose.

(Above: Grangerized book by Brian Dettmer)

“He looked up from his reading, ‘An Illustrated History of Sparta,’ which he proceeded to grangerize.”

– Roger Rosenblatt, Beet: A Novel

“If, however, Mr. Lindsay is determined to grangerize his collections, I would suggest that before he does so he should examine the illustrated Clarendon in the Bodleian Library which has the character for being the most magnificent grangerized book in existence.”

– William White, “Regimental Messes,” Notes and queries, Volume 82, 1890.

Grangerize is named after James Granger (1723-1776), an English clergyman whose “Biographical History of England” (1769) included blank areas for additional illustrations.

And more definitions from online dictionaries:

-verb- to illustrate (a book already printed) with engravings, prints, etc. obtained elsewhere, often by clipping them from other books.
-verb- to damage (a book) by clipping such engravings, etc.

(Above: Grangerized book by Yuken Teruya)

——

A lot of artists these days are using the book as their medium. While I’m not sure all of their work exactly matches the definition of the word grangerize, when I first read the definition, I thought right away of artists such as Cara Barer, Yuken Teruya and the master of book mutilation–uh–grangerization, Brian Dettmer.

I’ve wanted to do a blog post (or individual blog posts) on artists whose medium is books (and paper) for a long time. And while I would still love to feature more artists in this blog, in the meantime there are plenty of great online galleries of grangerizers’ works.

Check out this link, this, this, this, and this (bearing in mind that there are some repeats) for some really great art made from books.