Tuesday 5 May 2009

Japanese Stab Bindings with Mizuhiki Cord - Book No 0012

A couple more experiments with the Japanese Mizuhiki Cord. I made these two simple Japanese stab bound books. One has very stiff and thick coconut fibre paper? covers, the other has stiff card covers. Both have pages made from a handmade sheet with petal inclusions.
As with the Keith Smith pamphlet binding, I didn't use a needle, but just had to re-stab the holes each time i pushed the cord through. As the cord is slippery, the trick was to bend or crease the cord at each turn around the book. This just about kept the cord tight. This time i did tie the cords off - on the back!, rather than try to tie off inside the spine area as is usual with these books.
The decoration on the coconut cover, is just the cord strung through holes pierced in the cover. The image at the bottom is the inside of he cover, where this time, I didn't tie off, but used the trick from the pamphlet, where I bent the cord back on itself at the end of the sewing, and looped it around the sewing without re-piercing the cover. This is very tight, and won't come loose in general use.

Book No 0012 - 8 x 5.5 inches (20 x 14 cms)

2 comments:

Jan Allsopp said...

This cord is really interesting. I've not seen it before. So it's like wire is it?

Simon said...

Thanks Jan for all your comments. Yes, i suppose these cords are a bit like wire. Quite stiff, but don't stay bent, if you see what i mean!