December 26, 2012

Seems that I have survived not only the 2012 winter solstice, but Christmas as well.  Now I shall continue with another post of one of my books from 2010. 


THE MINOAN BOOK

I wanted to try a process I had just learned of making pages from plaster gauze - the same gauze used to make a plaster cast for a broken arm or leg.  I cut the gauze to the size I wanted (making it long enough to fold into two pages when dry), dipped each portion briefly in water, and laid it on a hard flat surface, using my fingers to gently smooth the plaster into the blank spaces in the gauze.  Then I left it to dry.

When completely dry, I folded the strips in half and trimmed the edges.  Since the dried pages are fragile and need to be reinforced to hold the book thread, I glued a decorated paper to the outside of the folded page.  


I chose several images from ancient Minoan frescos and painted them on the plaster pages.  Since the finished image was very bright, I dabbed them here and there with a muddy colored acrylic, and when the paint was dry, I used a damp paper towel to rub some color off... giving them a more aged look.

  


Now it was time to decorate the side I had reinforced with decorated paper.  I cut coarse linen fabric into rectangles and glued them to the paper.  I painted the fabric with gesso, and when dry, I drew images from Minoan vases on the left side, and Minoan writing on the right (I have no idea what message the writing conveys.)



I now had a stack of folded decorated pages and needed to decide on an appropriate cover.  At first I thought I would use wood, but decided polymer clay would give me the weight and flexibility I wanted .... and I could carve it easily with iconic images.  

To make sure the finished polymer was heavy enough to hold the book, after processing the clay through the pasta maker's thickest setting (a pasta maker is a standby for conditioning polymer), I pressed two thicknesses together.  I baked the two covers before I carved them.  After they were carved, I painted them with acrylic, and when that was dry, I sanded them.  

After I sewed the pages (using waxed linen thread) onto three leather straps, I carved out areas on the cover into which I could glue the leather ends, to make them level with the surface of the cover.

And here is the finished book