Val has her say: Coptic binding

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Coptic binding

Today I attended a workshop on how to make a book using coptic binding, an ancient Egyptian art. This book took a number of hours to make, but the time and effort were well worth it.

10 comments:

Alice said...: Glad to see that you are working hard at retirement already. Great result.; June 27, 2006 10:33 pm
Kali said...: Oh, how fab. :); June 27, 2006 10:51 pm
Val said...: Wow, excellent. And how lovely to have a link back to the early days of books, and indeed libraries (Alexandria) Good old Egyptians. They say that the Copts today are as close to looking like the Pharoahs of old, as they liked to keep themselves to themselves over the years. Certainly a good looking lot as I discovered on one of my Nile trips....oooh that sounds bad haha!; June 27, 2006 11:30 pm
Susie said...: Beautiful work! So glad you spent your first day of retirement doing something you obviously love :-); June 28, 2006 12:24 am
Val said...: Yes, I thought this was a good activity to start my retirement with. It fits so nicely into my immediate past life as librarian, my lifelong love of paper and stationery, and my future plans for scrapbooking, photo organising, journal writing.

This kind of binding would be a bit too difficult for children, but they could definitely do the oriental bookbinding which uses the Japanese stab stitching. See my post Val gets crafty in April for some photos of those.; June 28, 2006 9:16 am
Kerri said...: Lovely job Val! I like this...sounds like a very interesting craft.; July 02, 2006 1:37 pm
DellaB said...: Hi Val... these are really special - and you are learning to do it? will you be taking orders? can I be first? or probably, I would think, it's too late already....?; July 04, 2006 10:49 am
Val said...: Thanks for the expression of interest in these books, but I'm afraid my work rate is 'way too low to go into business, at least for the time being. I look at all the papers and fabrics and the examples I see in all the books I've borrowed (SO librarian-like)and my brain goes into meltdown!; July 04, 2006 10:58 am
Ampersand Duck said...: And is that rusted paper on the covers? It looks terrific!; July 25, 2006 5:49 pm
Val said...: Rusted paper it is. I'm going to use this book to record my road trip around Victoria, probably around March next year.; July 25, 2006 9:11 pm