We decide to start the bookmaking process by cutting all the pages (all sixty of them) to size in accordance with our decision yesterday – that is 1 and ½cm width stitching allowance with a 3cm border to the image on all sides including the spine side. As Corinna wielded the vintage guillotine, I held my breath as she cut the first sheet. After a few sheets, she started to encounter some pages that had not been cut square by the papermaker. Many were good, but some boxes had clearly been cut very marginally off square. She expertly made a tiny adjustment to rectify the problem. It took most of the morning to cut the images to size and return them in the right order and orientation to their boxes awaiting punching and stitching, attaching back and front covers and then making their presentation boxes.
The Page Cutting Process – Alison Price, June 2023
The afternoon’s work was to create a template for the punch holes and then to make seven punch holes on every page in the same place. This required Corinna to make a template to hold the paper square and to ensure each incision was in the right place.
The Hole Punching Process – Alison Price, June 2023
By the end of the afternoon, the holes were punched in all sixty pages, and we had prepared the images for their transformation into a book.
The following morning Corinna provided an update on the spines and shared her concerns about the potential that the images might rub against each other in the book and cause damage to the paper surface. After returning to the bindery, we decide to interleave each page with glassine paper to protect the images. A decision that for me would add drama to the revelation of each image as the viewer turned the pages. But nonetheless an additional step in an already time-consuming process. In spite of these setbacks, Corinna agrees we can collect the three books and boxes on 4 July.
