Bookbinding Today
Photo courtesy of Karen Hanmer
Innovative play made possible with the help of a traditional Ethiopic binding structure that allows for supreme flexibility of the book’s spine. The binding structure has so transformed the text, that the artist Karen Hanmer refers to it as a “medieval slinky.”
Binders, book artists and publishers continue to experiment and innovate, using the paratextual material of spines, covers, book edges, dust jackets, and historical binding structures to enhance and even transform the texts that they envelop. Some of the best contemporary book covers add essential meanings to the texts they hold – meanings that are lost when the text is separated from its material packaging, as in a book that has been microfilmed or digitized without the binding and other paratextual material included.
