Manhattan End Bands.

 

My biblionautic chums and friends.

Many years ago, when I was a Licentiate of Designer Bookbinders, I had the chance to get up close and personal with a binding of Moby Dick by the late Philip Smith. Many things impressed me, the use of materials and the way he had shaped the head end band to form a spine profile that continued the wave design across the boards amongst other things. The end band sort of stuck in my mind.

A few weeks later I was faced with the binding of a text block that had beautiful hand made paper, deckle edge and all to the fore edge and tail, you know the sort of thing. And, as such, one does not trim a text block that had beautiful hand made paper, deckle edge and all. So..... I wanted to have sewn end bands and it was then that I remembered Smith's shaped end band... what if I were to reverse it? To follow the contours of the text block at the tail, to have an end band that fitted the text block? Any way, I gave it a bash, why not? What could possibly go wrong?

I made up a practise text block and bashed away. On completion I looked at it and thought that it looked okay. One of my students came over to see what I was up to, he too thought it looked okay. Then asking how I had done it he asked what the technique was called. I had know idea, I had just done it, so in one of those casual moments I replied that it looked similar to the Manhattan sky line. The name stuck.

All of this because I reversed what someone else had done.

A Picture of Dorian Gray, hand sewn, Manhattan, single needle end band with Pip beading in silk to the tail.

Please note.... I realised, of course that there is little that is new under the sun... I felt pretty sure that in the 2,000 or so years of the codex that someone some where would have done the same.

Please further note....there are other end band styles, studios/binderies doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts.