Designer Bookbinders Exhibition, Newcastle

So as part as my fresh creative start for 2012 I made some creative 'resolutions' if you will... my main aim is to keep fuelling my creativity, inspire my design work and get involved in what is happening locally in the north east region.

So last Friday I took myself through to Newcastle to visit the Designer Bookbinders exhibition currently being hosted as Newcastle Library... (I had noticed a feature on the exhibition in the Metro a few weeks ago, worth a read on the way to work to find a hidden gem like this!) Anyway this sparked my interest as I did several workshops and projects on artists' books at University so I was very interested to see what book binding would be featured in the exhibition.

So six floors up and tucked away in a dark little corner of the library I found the exhibition... on first sight it was a little smaller than I expected but then I suppose that is the nature of books and this type of traditional craft being in decline.

I have to say all the work was beautifully crafted, detailed stitching, fine papers & leathers and traditional binding methods applied with modern innovative twists... on the whole all the books were a delight to see... With the exhibition being so small I honestly thought I would fly around it but found sitting on the chairs reading through the catalogue and scribbing down my favourite pieces.

I had 6 pieces I thought really stood out to me;

• Mayflies of the Driftless Region, by Hannah Brown (page 11)
• Butterflies, by Hannah Brown (page 12)
• Taliesin and the Mockers, by Jeff Clements (page 14)
• London 20 Poems, by Stephen Conway (page 16)
• Finger Prints, by Eri Funazaki (page 18)
• The Garden & Other Poems, by Angela James (page 23)
• The Dead, by Christopher Shaw (page 33)

For full details of the books featured in the exhibition you can view the catalogue online here.

I could probably go on all day about the various inspiring pieces I saw in the exhibition, but I don't want to bore you! So I am just going to take a minute to talk about the work of Hannah Brown, her pieces feature in the exhibition are Mayflies of the Driftless Region and Butterflies. These pieces are the first ones that initially stood out to me, the detail within the books are amazing... Firstly Mayflies of the Driftless Region... fine goatskin leather is hand stitched with golden thread, the cover and the casing beautifully depict the delicate nature of the Mayflies wings through the fine stitching. Again the beautiful delicate nature of butterflies is captured through Hannah Browns work... the outer casing presents a traditional method of displaying/cataloguing insects although these are in-fact origami paper butterflies, crafted from various pattern papers. The book contains a 'how to' guide on how to create your own origami butterflies the book crafted in a concertina binding with hand illustrated pages that truly reflect the delicate nature of both butterflies but also origami. 

So there was my glimpse into the Designer Bookbinder Exhibition, its currently on at Newcastle Library until March 23^rd but is currently touring around the UK... It is definitely worth a visit! I am very pleased with my visit as it led on to so many other creative things that day... Things I will be blogging about soon no doubt!!