Binding The Associated Architectural Societies' journals

I was approached by a client to ask about binding together all of the editions of these societies' journals into a matching set of volumes. Each volume is composed of two years, each with its own individually printed journal. A few of the journals collected had already been bound, some in cloth and some in half leather but they all needed pulling apart in order to ensure that all of the volumes matched.

Most of them came as uncut printers copies whereby the printer had folded the sheets and sewn them onto cords, but had not cut them or included boards etc.; they simply had a paper cover - one edition for each year. The sewing was still good in most of them and so I was able to utilise that when binding them together.

As some were already cut, there was a lot of work in deciding what the size of the volumes should be. I had to check each one to ensure I didn't choose a size which would inadvertently cut through an illustration in one of the editions. I decided to use Roman Numerals for the volume number. I also had to work out what the longest volume number would be and ensure that the gold tooling would fit on all volumes. There are 40 in total, and so I worked out that the longest number would be 38 (XXXVIII). Working from there, I calculated the ideal height for the volumes and spacing of the titles on the spine. As some of the later editions are smaller, we decided on the text running down the spine.

Volume 13 was in a poor state and needed a complete resew. 56 signatures of only two sheets of paper each was a daunting task but it is now back to full robustness as a book.

Each pair of editions, once bound together, was then cut down to size, cutting through the printer's folds, and an individually sized case made for each one. Some of them had only a few articles and illustrations whilst others, particularly volume 24, was more than twice as thick as the thinnest volumes.

Having worked out the spacing for the gold tooling, each one was tooled with its individual volume number and year range. Most sets of brass letters (I used Edinburgh 18 Pt) come with two of each number. The years 1887-1888 caused quite a difficulty as I only had two number 8s. I had to build the years up slowly, moving the numbers along as I went.

I had chosen plain flysheets in a cream colour, and made headbands which complemented the burgundy book cloth which the client wanted.

I am pleased with the first 25 volumes and look forward to working on the last 15.