I went to a Coptic bookbinding workshop yesterday (a pre-conference part of the A. Dean Larsen Book Collecting Conference, which was today) and made my first book binding:

(You can see more photos on Flickr, by the way.)

So, it’s actually an Ethiopic binding, to be particular, but the generic term is Coptic binding. I’ll admit that it’s not my favorite type — I much prefer books with a spine board, especially leatherbound — but spending a day making one has definitely endeared it to me more than I expected. (The advantage of Coptic binding is that you can lie the book flat open quite easily. With pretty much any other binding, that’s a lot harder to do.)

The whole experience was fun. Very soothing and relaxing — working with one’s hands is wonderful — and it’s delicious seeing the final product. Not to mention that the time completely flew by. Flow state all day. It was great. :)

Most bookbinding classes and workshops use blank text blocks (as you can see in the pictures), which is great for journals (and I’ll use this one as a writing journal, I think), but what I really can’t wait to do is start designing and printing books and then binding those. Mmm.

Today I went to a class on English Bibles and a class on editions of the Book of Mormon (in which my reader’s edition was showcased, I should say :)), and now I’m itching at the bit to publish a pocket-size reader’s edition of the Doctrine & Covenants and Pearl of Great Price. I just need to find a public domain edition of the text… (The texts aren’t on Project Gutenberg.)