shackled in bookspace

We got back this morning from attending the wedding of Elaine’s youngest niece in Charleston, SC on Sunday. It was a fun trip, and even though we didn’t get to spend much time in Charleston proper I think it may be the most beautiful city I’ve seen. Not that that’s saying much; my experience with cities is pretty limited. Alice and John had a lovely wedding at Trinity Methodist Church and we wish them all the best in their new life together. Elaine found us a great condo in the aptly named Mount Pleasant, where we had our first experience shopping at the Piggly Wiggly. The only downside was the grueling drive from NEPA: fourteen hours down and even more back, thanks to my navigational ineptitude which put us in downtown Washington at rush hour yesterday. Surprisingly, Elaine is still speaking to me…

Now it’s back to a lot of waiting calligraphy, book repair, and getting ready for upcoming classes.

It’s conventional wisdom that one should provide a valuable book with a box of some sort. Like most binders, I build clamshell boxes for clients’ books as well as  for any design bindings that I do.

A few years ago I did a clamshell for a copy of  James Joyce’s Ulysses. Nothing out of the ordinary; full cloth with a paper lining. The pictures here are of the box after going through a fire and being water-soaked. While the box was pretty well wrecked, the book was completely undamaged which, for some reason, surprised me.

So keep it in mind: boxes work.