A very special week in the studio
Last week was very special here in the studio because not one, but two big wishes of mine came true. I finally got to meet in real a good friend and artist who has always been an inspiration to me, Domonique Alesi. We've been writing for years, exchanging ideas, planning and manifesting a meeting that finally happened when she came to Portugal. The time we had together was short but we made the best out of it, balancing perfectly our work with visiting around and having such a good time.
Domonique is a book conservator restorer and bookbinder, owner of the Book Restoration Bindery. At a young age, she already has a fine artist career that goes many years back and her expertise brings together various fields of knowledge, such as design, illustration and metalwork - that is to name just a few. She is currently expanding her experience to fine and design bindings, and she was curious to learn more about leather painting techniques.
I on the other hand, wanted to learn traditional gold tooling, that is, the old craft of decorating leather bound books by tooling with real gold leaf, not foil. Gold tooling stands out as one of the most difficult, admired and luxurious decorative techniques in bookbinding, requiring craftsmanship, precision and a lot of patience. That is, besides a wild range of materials that are nor cheap or easily accessible. But it is by excellence, the technique that makes a binding valuable and unique.
Domonique explained in great detail how this process works and demonstrated various ways to achieve the final result, giving me an overall of the practice which was extremely useful. We went through the all the stages together, starting with setting up the materials and the workbench - which is more important that one would imagine, on to cleaning and preparing the tools, blind tooling on dry and wet surface, followed by hot tooling, glare application, gold tooling, and last but not least, gilding book edges. One could spend weeks or even months practicing and expanding on these techniques alone. I am thrilled by this knowledge and excited to apply it on my future bindings.
In the part of the workshop dedicated to leather dyeing and painting, I explained the use of various types of leather dyes and the difference between them, starting with vegetable tanned to chrome, waxed or oiled, on sheepskin and goatskin. We tested alcohol and water soluble aniline dyes, oil dye and acrylic leather paint. We made samples on which we then tested various leather finishes using different sealing products. The purpose was to observe how each dye and each coating behaves with gold tooling. So we did some more tooling, this time in both gold foil and leaf and actually obtained some great results.
It was so nice to share experience with a likeminded professional, not only because the level of knowledge was so advanced, but also because it is truly rare to find someone who works and thinks on the same wavelength. All this, within a light atmosphere, filled with joy, excitement and laughter.
I'm so grateful to Domonique for coming from overseas to visit me and for the wonderful moments we shared. She came as a friend and went away as a bestie. I really hope we get to reunite and work on a binding together very soon!
If you want to see us doing our magic, I put together some clips here.
