6.2 x 11.1 x 0.4 cm
Although I haven't been photographing or documenting them, I have been making some simplified Japanese stab-stitched books to use as logs in certain types of geocaches. Unlike ordinary caches, which are generally in Tupperware boxes and can take normal notebooks, it's hard to find logs to fit inside what are known as "micro caches". My solution has been to make tiny Japanese stab-stitched books out of rice paper. For my smallest micro cache, I used a film canister as a container, and created a logbook to fit inside. The Dean Bridge cache is somewhat larger, made out of a "splash box" of the kind you take to the beach to keep your wallet dry. After a year or so in place, the first (paper) log was full. This was the replacement.
I love the green leather I used for this book. It's a goatskin that Hewit's prepared for an upholsterer. The sale fell through, and Hewit's staff tried to scrape the uphostery finish off of the hide (it was unsuitable for bookbinding). The scraping process was not entirely successful. The hide is a mix of pea green suede and slightly darker patches where the finish didn't scrape off.
After the tooling, I treated the leather with some leather food. This darkened the suede portions but left the un-scraped bits light. The effect reminded me of dappled sunlight shining through leaves. The Dean Bridge cache is by a small stream, under a canopy of broadleaf trees, so in the spring the path to the cache is bathed in just the same light as appears to shine on the cover.
The cache itself is in a dark place, so it seemed appropriate to add some black leather to the spine... No, actually, that's post-event rationalisation, trying to sound like an artist. The truth is that I just liked the look of the black leather.
T
he book used Yotsume Toji stitching, the simplest of the stab-stitching styles from Bookworks (my most wide-ranging binding book). Although I have the definitive book on Japanese bindings (in English), with dozens of types of beautiful stitching, I wanted a simple style for this log.
Another factor that influenced the stitching style was the material I used for the process. I had already decided to tool the book with silver foil, and wanted some sort of stitching that complimented that. I found some fine-gauge silver beading wire in a craft shop. The trick was to get something thick enough to be strong, but thin enough to flex through the complex stitching pattern.
The stitching itself was easy enough with the aid of a pair of needlenose pliers.
I'm almost ashamed to let the tooling on this be seen. The lettering is quite gloopy, unfortunately. I did like the effect of the silver on the leather.
My main point of pride in this area was the flexibility of my handle letters. The small numbers are from an 8 point set I assembled from an assorted lot of tools bought on ebay. It's almost complete (but for the letter A, which I create with by turning the V over and drawing a crossbar with a full stop). But no set of bookbinding handle letters has a °. They usually include ligatures such as Æ, but who tools with degrees?
Apart from me, I mean.
My solution was to use the full stop from my 22 point set of handle letters. Although it's a solid circle rather than an open one, it is the right size and looks good in the superscript position.
And hey, if the eye is used to interpreting my gloopy tooling, the reader will assume the filled-in circles are just another example!