VPCo Properly Made Books are books, handmade in Scotland, filled with high quality blank paper for drawing, painting, and writing.
They're made in the same way as those made in the 18th and 19th centuries, entirely by hand, using the skills and techniques perfected long before bookbinding machines were introduced in the mid 1800s.
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As the poster above shows, there are numerous steps required to make a book properly by hand. At the bottom of the poster it reads:
"No machine has yet been invented which is able to do any one of these operations as well as it can be done by hand"
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This is a sentiment to which we wholly agree with and the reason we do not use machines - because they're not good enough.
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A brief description of how a Properly Made Book is made, properly.
Every Properly Made Book begins with its pages.
Books with paper for fine art are described as sketchbooks, books filled with writing paper are described as commonplace books.
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Crafting a Properly Made Book means that there aren't any shortcuts taken, or time constraints put in place, our books take as long as they take to complete. The materials used are the best available, and not chosen with cost in mind. Great thought is put into which papers, leathers and prints will be used.
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Our roots are in paper, our passion for it always informs our work. Our paper stock for book pages ranges from paper made in the 1600s (such as the bundle of paper above) through to the best contemporarily made paper available today.
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We even devised and commissioned a range of handmade paper specifically to fill our books when the open market had nothing availble to fulfill our exacting requirements.
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Properly Bound Books begin with the insides, the book block. The pages are folded and sewn with hemp cords integrated. Later into the construction, these hemp cords, when covered with the leather spine material become raised bands.
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Before the boards are attached, the spine is treated with a flexible glue and hammered into this rounded shape.
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The hemp cords are laced through holes pierced into the cover boards and secured with adhesive.
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The insides of the cover boards are lined with paper which pulls in the boards, giving the slightly bowed shape seen in a book when viewed from the top.
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Leather, made wet with adhesive paste is then placed and moulded onto the spine (this is how raised bands are created) and the front and rear covers creating a one-piece structure. The spine of the book block is now permanently attached to the inside of the leather.
The flexibility of the spine material allows the book to be opened flat and beyond to a full 360 degrees.
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As you can see above, a Properly Made Book is a one-piece structure. Breaking them accidentally is very difficult and breaking them through continued normal use, almost impossible.
When the book has reached this stage, the decorative, hand printed paper covers are glued into place and any gold tooling made on the leather spine.
Often, we will make a one-off print just to cover one book. This process alone can account for a day's work, to make sure the colours, registration and imprint is perfect.
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The book, with it's hand printed covers in place then has its spine decorated. The raised bands, made with moulded leather spine over the hemp cords become a decorative focal area, like picture borders, the panels between them being lavishly tooled with heated engraved brass tools and genuine gold leaf.
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When complete, we often create an interesting way to house the bindings in anything from a simple letterpress printed cotton bag, a box or in this instance, a cigar case style housing.
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Properly Made Books vs Case Bindings
When bookbinding machines became commonplace, the common structure of books changed from the technique we use, often referred to as fine binding, or tightback binding, to a structurally inferior, but faster and cheaper style of binding called "case binding".
Case binding is where the sewn pages of the book are bound into a second structure, the case (front and back cover joined to the spine) and are only held to together with glued endpapers at the front and back of the binding.
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This is why, when you see a broken book, most of the time the cover and spine and has come away, torn paper breaking away at the inside hinge of the book.
Ironically, most hand binding these days are case bindings, people copying how machines make books.
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Properly Made Books are far stronger and flexible than case bindings but of course they're more complex and time consuming to make.
In short, Properly Made Books are books made properly.
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