Visit to University of King's College Library

Fifteen bookbinding enthusiasts were delighted by Patricia Chalmers’ unique guided tour of King's College Library's Treasure Room on June 12, 2025. Patricia has been Assistant Librarian at King's for many years; the Rare Books and Special Collections have been a particular interest. She has also lectured on The History of the Book. We were given a brief history of the collection, Canada's oldest surviving colonial library. While King's College was founded in 1789, it wasn't until 1800 that a young man, John Inglis, was given a budget and sent to England to acquire books for a library. He did a superb job of purchasing a variety of valuable and rare books, and he did an even better job persuading British institutions to donate items. In the end, he acquired books valued at more than four times his original sum and more than 90% of that original collection is still at this library. Once the group descended to the Treasure Room and was seated around a large table, the show and tell began. Patricia had pulled fifteen items from the collection and she focused on unique bindings. One by one, she displayed the items and then, after ascertaining that we all had clean hands, she allowed the item to be passed around the table, so each person had a close encounter with a historical treasure. What a treat! The items included: an Ethiopian book of psalms, in parchment, with exposed binding, chain stitch, wooden boards, undated a single sheet of parchment, probably 15th France, illuminated with gold leaf two paper books bound in recycled medieval parchment covers incunabula including items that were printed but also had hand illuminated capital letters and decorations full leather bindings with elaborate gold tooling on the covers and spines an enormous Low German version of Luther’s Bible, 1578 (this book can be see in the photo at top with Patricia, and heavy enough to be a murder weapon, she mused) a leather sprinkled panel binding with holes in the cover, indicating that it had come from a chained library, probably Oxford a flora of Denmark and Norway that contained hand-coloured illustrations from engraved copper plates a book published in Halifax in 1832, that included a binder’s ticket on the inside front cover Thank you, Patricia, for sharing your rare book expertise with the group, and especially for letting us fondle all the books! You can read a bit more history of King's College and the King's College Library on their website.

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Submitted by Marilynn Rudi

Card Exchange 2025

Thirteen of our creative group members signed up to participate in our second card exchange. Each participant made a full set of cards so they could give one to each of the other participants. This exhange has no specific guidelines and everyone is free to employ whatever book arts or paper arts skills they like to use. The results include a wide range of techniques including painting, illustration, collage, stitching, letterpress, pop-ups, rubbings, stamping, paper cutting, and more.

Some participants created an edition with twelve cards that are all the same and some participants made each card unique, in which case only a few are shown here.

	Stephanie Morley A set of cards featuring a sewn fabric bunting and stamped text.
	Tabatha Cass And edition of handmade cards printed with an original lino block design in two colours.
	Sally Crawford Handmade cards each featuring a unique eco-printed paper.
	Barbara Dugas And edition of handmade cards featuring a time-themed collage and stamped text.
	Sara Davison A set of handmade cards each featuring a unique collage.
	Rhonda Miller An edition of pop-up cards with a lino print on original marbled paper and a quote, printed black on black, using hot foil.
	Marilynn Rudi A set of handmade cards featuring illustration, watercolour, and stitching patterns each with a customized envelope.
	Julie Rosvall An edition of cards featuring a debossed pattern printed from original knitted textile and a letterpress quotation inside.
	Catherine Vardy A set of handmade cards painted with watercolour washes and embellished either with embroidered landscape lines or Tree of Life rubbings.
	Emily Doucette An edition of handmade cards featuring an original lino block print with customized envelopes.
	Heather Loney A set of cards each with an intricately hand-cut letter customized for each recipient.
	Rowan Theakston An edition of handmade cards featuring a hand-drawn illustration on mulberry paper.
	Wanda Squire An edition of accordion booklets titled Art, Science, & Politics

Julia Landry on the Challenges and Rewards of Historic Paper Conservation

Books and paper have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. It is a source of satisfaction to be able to marry one's passion and one's vocation together to any degree.

                                                                              ~Julia Landry, The Paper Lady

Things fall apart, but if they are made of paper Julia Landry can probably fix them. 

On February 24, paper conservator Julia Landry gave a talk to a healthy crowd of NSBAG members and friends about her work on a unique restoration project at Government House that she has been involved in for the past twenty years.

The Morning Room at Government House had a problem with its wallpaper.  Installed in the 1930s, the wallpaper is a tin-foiled, handpainted mural of botanicals and birds that meander along and up the walls of this jewel of a room in the residence of Nova Scotia's Lieutenant-Governor.  Known as "tea papers", the wallpaper is made from hand-pieced rectangles of paper, transported from China in tea chests, that were glued together into panels for applying to plaster walls.  In 2004, Julia was called to Government House to assess damage to the wallpaper resulting from a leaky pipe behind the plaster wall.  And so began the twenty-year dance with the wallpaper, the walls and the various challenges to seamlessly restore their integrity.

In her talk, "Still Vertically Challenged", Julia described the diverse ways that recurring damage to the wallpaper has been painstakingly repaired over the years.  From water leaks to black mold, missing panels and "mystery goo" (the technical term), Julia and her colleague, fine art conservator Michelle Gallinger, have managed to analyse problems and devise solutions for their careful restoration.  Noting that the job is "one of those things that looks worse until it gets better", Julia and Michelle have worked to make invisible their repairs to delaminated wallpaper panels, fissures caused by cracked plaster, and damage from mold and a few decades of ill-advised cleaning products.  Describing the labour as a "huge, vertical jigsaw puzzle", the team have employed many solutions, including careful handcleaning, studied inpainting, foil application and plaster repair and all on the vertical plain, a particular challenge to the necessity to apply weight to the repairs while they stabilize.

Julia's in-depth slide show demonstrated, however, that the team's handiwork has been worth it.  The Morning Room is one of the grandest rooms in Government House; it is where the government of Nova Scotia is formed, it is where dignitaries and guests are received and it is a space that exhibits the history, grace and hospitality of our province.  And, thanks to Julia and Michelle, it does so, without peeling wallpaper.

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Submitted by Stephanie Morley

Stitching Patterns

In spite of that snow-day cancellation last week, our group met this weekend to explore some stitching patterns that could be used for making exposed bindings. Heather Loney told us how she had spent some time working out many different stitching patterns for binding. She shared her planning process and some tips for us if we want to try making new patterns in the future.
Heather had, very helpfully, prepared a few patterns for us to try. She came equipped with several pre-punched sewing cards and a dozen spools of thread for us to use. Everyone made at least three of these following her instructions.
Heather and others also brought along a variety of handmade books that demonstrated a wide range of exposed binding styles for discussion, comparison, and inspiration.
Thank you, Heather, for sharing this with the group!

Book Swap 2024 - Marilynn Rudi

Marilynn Rudi created this handbound book for our recent book swap. It is a case binding with coordinated Japanese Chiyogami on both sides of the cover boards. The binding is an exposed lattice pattern sewn through the case.

Book Swap 2024 - Katherine Taylor

The next book to be featured from the NSBAG book swap is a hardcover book by Katherine Taylor. The cover is custom book cloth. The book is a rounded spine case binding with brown endsheets and matching striped endbands.

Book Swap 2024 - Jeffrey Cowling

Next in our book swap lineup is this handbound journal made by Jeffrey Cowling. Jeffrey's contribution is a flat back, case binding in full cloth.

Book Swap 2024 - Sally Crawford

Sally Crawford's contribution to our book swap is a Chinese Thread Book or Zhen Xian Bao. Sally made this using her own eco-dyed papers. Her thread book creation consists of over thirty individual folded boxes.

Book Swap 2024 - Emily Brown

This unique book was made by Emily Brown for our book swap. It is bound in full cloth as a case binding, featuring a rasied frame and bee on the front. The cover boards and the pages are all cut as hexagons and the tricky hexagon endsheets feature a coordinating bee print.

Book Swap 2024 - Joe Landry

Next in our lineup of books from the 2024 book swap, is this book made by Joe Landry. This is a millimeter binding with goatskin leather spine and corners with cream-coloured paper for the covers and endsheets.