Website up!

We have a website!

ABA's website, www.americanbookarts.com, is now up and ready for perusal. It also has a store with many pretty pictures. There's no way to buy anything through the website yet.

Building this website was a large undertaking because I decided that I was going to build it myself, and before I could do that I had to teach myself HTML, XHTML, and CSS. With the help of a good book on those three languages, I believe the end result was well worth the effort, and I hope you agree!

It's best viewed in Mozilla Firefox due to a funky display issue with IE which I am working on resolving. There are a lot of features and additions that I plan to add to the website in the future, including a Paypal store. The website is still in development and can be expected to change for the better. Enjoy!

**edit 9/8/08 All funky display issues are resolved, I think. *crosses fingers*

Port City Pottery & Fine Crafts

Port City Pottery & Fine Crafts is a fantastic juried artist's co-op in the Cotton Exchange, a series of historic buildings in downtown Wilmington, NC that house many specialty shops. As of August 1st, I am officially a member of this co-op.

Also, the Cotton Exchange offers its customers free parking, a genuine rarity in downtown Wilmington. If you are in the area, check it out!

The co-op's hours are 10-5:30, Monday-Saturday, and 12-4, Sunday.



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When to commission

Commission when you have a particular book in mind.

• Say you have found a paper that is just right, and you want a book made out using it.
• Or, say ABA had a book on display that was just right, but then it was sold to someone else.
• Let's say you want duplicates of a certain cover paper/thread combination.
• Perhaps you want to impress your friends or business affiliates by stuffing goody bags with our journals, and you need a large number of books by a certain date. Let's assume you're going all out and you want limited edition high quality Japanese papers or hand marbled papers for the covers.
• A different day, you want a product that is designed exactly to suit its new owner. Perhaps you want a memory book for your eldest living family member. You want to pick out the thread color and the cover paper. You want to see what I have available and choose for yourself. You might even want a different size book than the standard 5"x7".
• Then you decide to open a bed and breakfast, and you want a guest registrar in every room. Through ABA you could customize the exact size, thread, and cover paper for these registrars. You want custom calligraphy on the opening pages to give the name of the establishment and the room. ABA can do it for you.
• Or, you are an artist and you want a tougher paper than text weight, which holds up to writing but is not designed to withstand the strength of your drawing hand.

All of these possibilities, and more, are available if you commission a piece.

How does one place a commission? Easy. Email me with the details about what you want. Put "journal commission" in the subject line. I will get back to you with a quote or questions, and we will make further arrangements from there depending upon the order.

You may be wondering how much all of those ideas listed above would cost you. The price would depend upon your design specifications. If bought directly from me, limited editions usually run around $35/book, depending upon paper prices, and require a minimum order of 3 books. Single copies of books already sold, multiple copies of an in-stock design, or picking out your own design combination based on what we have in stock locks your price in at the standard $30/book. Pretty sweet deal, right?

What makes our books so special?

As a book artist, I made the decision to use only the best quality materials I could get my hands on for these books. Every single book has 160 pages of a superb acid-free text weight paper, top quality binder's board, archival-grade permanent adhesive, and tough 3-ply Irish linen thread. The decorative papers I use to cover the boards are also acid-free.

There are a lot of technical details about how to put a book together in a way that will make it more durable. In short, since most paper products are made up of fibers that line up in one direction (this is called the "grain"), how one handles folding and cutting the papers will affect the longevity of the book. The binder's board, cover paper, and text paper all have grain directions, and you want the grain on all of them to match.

Think of it this way: if you fold the text paper against the grain, it will break some of the fibers and decrease the life of that book. Also, if you adhere a decorative paper in the opposite grain direction of the binder's board, the two will be inclined to come apart.

Every time I craft a book, I make sure that the grain direction is consistent and determined by the way the book is supposed to fold, even if it means getting less use out of each material purchase.