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6646 Hollywood Boulevard
Hollywood, CA, 90028
United States

(213) 223-6921

Stephanie Gibbs, a bookbinder in Los Angeles, CA, offers edition and fine binding, book conservation, custom boxes, and paper repair for contemporary and historic books, manuscripts, and documents to clients throughout California.

studio news

custom artwork specifications

Stephanie Gibbs

It is customary for the title and author to be stamped in foil on the cover and spine of a book. Foil is available in a range of colors.

18 point Caslon is typically used for scripts and thesis bindings. Handset type is uppercase only. See image to right.

Some clients wish to use custom artwork, logos, and images. This is possible by having a magnesium stamping die made. Images of this type of project can be seen below.

Specifications for custom artwork:

black and white line artwork [no grayscale]
format: PDF, or PSD or TIF with layers flattened
600 dpi
100% scale
maximum size per die, 5.75" x 9.75"
multiple dies can be combined

Stamping dies are engraved off-site, and pricing starts at $175.

Gibbs Bookbinding is happy to assist in creating print-ready files from your artwork, but design fees will apply.

18 point Caslon, handset studio type

Samples of artwork from digital files altered to fit requirements for engraving, magnesium dies, and finished items:

a flicker, a flame

Stephanie Gibbs

IMG_6076.jpg

2017 was ... 2017.
It was universally referred to as "a dumpster fire."

Then my state caught on fire. Everything, everywhere, there was soot and ash. (Benefit: some nice sunsets.)
However, it felt like a metaphor made real; it's hard to be an optimist when everything is, quite literally, burning. (In a twist of Robert Frost's Fire and Ice poem, while the west coast is on fire, the east coast is encased in ice.)

Petrarch-smm2-glasgow-09-phoenix.jpg

Into all this, enter the phoenix, a bird who rises, renewed, from the ashes.

This year's holiday edition pulls from the full history and mythology of the phoenix,
from the medieval Aberdeen Bestiary
to the eighteenth century London Encyclopedia
to the twentieth century poet May Sarton

As the complications of last year's holiday card were still fresh in my mind, and in the hope of timeliness, I drastically simplified the construction of this year's edition, and used a very basic cut-and-fold technique.

It's a great pattern for introductory book arts classes and turning monotypes and prints into little books; there are many online patterns and tutorials: here's one. Here's another (click on one-sheet-books).

IMG_6346.jpg

And, in the spirit of getting things done, I embraced the relative simplicity of the project, and have sent the phoenix flying through the postal system. The stamps for the eclipse -- a cosmic death and rebirth cycle played out this year -- seemed most fitting for the bird who is born in flames.

For 2018, a wish for flourishing: creatively, personally, spiritually.

Calvino / Six Memos

Stephanie Gibbs

Six Memos For The Next Millennium
Italo Calvino

. . .  When the human realm seems doomed to heaviness, I feel the need to fly like Perseus into some other space. I am not talking about escaping into dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I feel the need to change my approach, to look at the world from a different angle, with different logic, different methods of knowing and proving. The images of lightness I’m looking for shouldn’t let themselves dissolve as dreams do in the reality of the present and future . . .

In the infinite universe of literature there are always other avenues to explore, some brand-new and some exceedingly ancient, styles and forms that can change our image of the world. And when literature fails to assure me that I’m not merely chasing dreams, I look to science to sustain my visions in which all heaviness dissolves . . .

The New Year's / Memorial Day Extravaganza

Stephanie Gibbs

Happy New Year!

This is quite the latest that my holiday edition has ever been completed. There are events a-plenty, on the world stage, and in the studio, that caused the delay. The files were designed and printed back in December — I picked up the completed stack on the same day that the pages for Family Style were ready.

Then the Family Style edition construction began, and it had some slowdowns related to margins and covering material, then I needed to finish the Amissa Anima ouiji boards, because I had postponed figuring out how to make the plinth-and-planchette window, then there were the deluxe versions.

And there was politics, which resulted in a certain amount of hiding under the bed.

Also there was / is making a living. Conserving books, binding some editions. That’s pretty much ongoing, which makes my landlord happy.

Many people advised me to simply postpone or cancel the 2016 / 2017 holiday edition.

I knew I wouldn’t make my traditional January 1 mailing date; and the Chinese New Year came and went; then Valentine’s Day, then President’s Day, and I swore, oh, I swore, that I’d get them finished for the first day of Spring, or, at the latest, Easter. Then May Day came and went.

Oh, and I moved my studio down the hall. Pallet jacks being fit into the trunks of Honda Civics happened.

You know what, though? I BEAT my last deadline, which was the summer solstice. Perhaps this is the first time that Memorial Day can be considered “close” to New Year’s Day. Whatever. I’ll take it.

Announcing the 2016-2017 Holiday Edition!

Kites!

Last autumn, I was working on a vintage copy of Mary Poppins, which always makes various show tunes lodge themselves inside my head. “Let’s go fly a kite / Up to the highest height / Up where the air is clear / And send it soaring ..”

Also last autumn, Hiromi Paper held an afternoon kite making workshop, which I didn’t attend, but I wanted to attend, and I should have attended, and I still kind of hate myself for not attending. But I was already taking the Tim Ely workshop at the Getty, and so the learning-calendar was full.

My first website results provided kite templates that were definitely simple, but also, well, uninspired:
http://rhythmofthehome.com/homemade-kite/
http://www.redtedart.com/how-to-make-a-beautiful-kite/
http://www.handmadecharlotte.com/lets-go-fly-a-kite-2/

So then I went to the library, and found some lovely books, but they didn’t really have instructions, and a lot of the text was in Japanese. The best of these was Kites: paper wings over Japan by Scott Skinner and Ali Fujino, but, once again, there wasn’t much on How To.

What this book did provide was (a) the Italo Calvino quote that made it onto the wrapper; (b) proof that miniature kites were completely legitimate; (c) good outlines for the different shapes of kites. So many shapes! It also provided insight into the content that appears on the face of kites, and information about kites being particularly associated with the New Year celebrations (concept confirmation!).

Thinking about visual metaphors in Japan associated with the New Year, the Rabbit and the Wave most closely aligned with my own aesthetic interests, and combined two of my experiences from the previous summer: bunny tiles (bunny tiles!!!) at the Hearst Castle, and the beach. The wave itself I shamelessly stole and tweaked from a maybe famous woodcut series.

Yet more internet research provided a wealth of information about the shapes and patterns of different kites, but quite a few of the articles were in German. This didn’t matter, too much. I knew the name of the kite (rokkaku) would be the same regardless of language, and I didn’t need the text: just some decent diagrams!

http://www.drachen.org/teach/lessons?level=All
http://www.kiteplans.org/planos/rokkaku12/rokkaku12.html
http://www.kiteplans.org/cat_1/sub_17/
http://www.my-best-kite.com/make-a-rokkaku-kite.html

These answered my basic layout, proportions, and materials questions — originally, I was going to use bamboo skewers, but, after realizing how large a 1/8” diameter skewer was in relation to a very small kite, I decided to find something thinner and less bulky, and bought polyester boning, as used in textiles and costuming. I knew that it was specifically designed to be sewn through, and wouldn’t need to be notched or drilled like the dowels.

However, I was still having problems with the bridle — these are the strings that connect the spool of thread one holds on the ground, to the piece of paper flying up there in the sky. Where does one tie the cords? What knots does one use? How much slack or tension?

There are lots of online resources for rokkaku kites, but by far the best is Larry Green’s PDF from 2004. I wish I could find the page where I originally downloaded the file, but here’s the closest I can get:
http://www.johndobson.info/John's%20Kite%20Site/pdf%20files/Rok%20Bridle%20Guide.pdf
also at: http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/discuss/index.php?p=/discussion/2651/rokkaku-tipping-and-diving (this is probably where I found it)

However, even this compendium of information left me somewhat baffled. I took a field trip to visit Dave at the Kite Connection on Huntington Beach Pier, and he gave me confirmation about how to balance a kite so that it would actually take flight, and not just spin on the ground.

It was back to Larry Green’s knot diagrams (neither a Boy Scout nor a sailor am I), but they finally worked.

Lift off! We have lift off!

now with more words

Stephanie Gibbs

Please see these PDF downloads for further explanations and context for the artist's books editions currently for sale. Full prospectus here.

Amissa Anima

Between, Among, Within

Family Style

Natural Philosophies

Lost Souls, Some Closure

Stephanie Gibbs

After a year of the creepy eye project marinating -- as an artist's book for the California Guild of Bookworker's "Look A Book!" exhibition, then as an edition of fifty created for the Codex book fair, the fifteen deluxe editions are finally completed. Two of them have been acquired by institutional libraries; two are not for sale; eleven are available for purchase.

Amissa Anima: the book of the dead

Two volumes in clamshell box.

Eye engraving, Dioptrique oculaire, Chérubin d’Orléans, 1671. The Spirit Photographs of William Hope, the National Media Museum. The Ouija, Kennard Novelty Co., Museum of Talking Boards. Printed on Asuka on an Indigo printer with Joss paper endpapers. Bound in laminated Asuka paper over marbled paper.

The deluxe edition contains a bell (Hearts (fractured)), book, and candle (Life (spark of)), three essential tools used in summoning of the spirit world; and a set of bottled emotions, as strong emotional memories link the spirit world to the corporeal. The bottled emotions contain metaphorical representations of human experience:

Animal magnetism: Felis catus vibrissae; Anticipation (concentrate): coastal sand; Disbelief (suspension): rosehips from Rosa multiflora Thunb.; Hope (kindling of): phosphorus sesquisulfide and potassium chlorate on a balsa wood base; Memories (suppressed): Buddhist incense; Misdirection: antique key; Promises: seeds from Symphyotrichum lanceolatum; Rage (bottled): seeds from Asclepias syriaca L.; Resentment (shards): shattered family china.

Deluxe edition of 15. 2016.

This concludes the creepy eye infestation of the studio.