Dead Doors 1, 2001
Handmade paper, fish skin, suminagashi, glossy photographic paper
7 3.4 x 5 3/8 x 1/2”
This month’s Featured Member is book artist, bookbinder, book conservator, and educator James Reid-Cunningham. Based in Boston, he began his remarkable career studying art and art history at Johns Hopkins University and Tufts University before studying bookbinding at the North Bennet Street School. He then worked as a book conservator at Harvard University and the Boston Athenaeum for over thirty years. Highly respected in his field, Reid-Cunningham served as the President of the Guild of Book Workers (2006-2010), is the recipient of Distinguished Alumni Distinguished Award from the North Bennet Street School (2006), and of the Helen Warren DeGoyler Prize in American Bookbinding (2018). He has published numerous articles and has traveled widely, having taught a variety of workshops, given lectures, and exhibited his work here in the U.S. and abroad.
James Reid-Cunningham has been creating books for almost 40 years. He says, “It was a hobby and quickly took over my life. Initially my interest was in doing artistic and fine binding, but I drifted into conservation in order to earn a living. I am a binder, book conservator and book artist, and I do not view these as separate from one another. I create imaginative bookbindings, conserve rare books and manuscripts, produce period facsimile bindings and build sculptural books. For me they are all part of a single activity, one continuum. Each informs the other.
After all these years, I remain amazed at the ability of the book format to express human thoughts and feelings. The book format is tactile but has an element of duration in the sequencing of pages. My books explore traditional bookbinding structures in conjunction with modern materials and designs. After many years as a book and paper conservator, I find myself almost unconsciously including historical techniques and structures in my artistic bindings and sculptural books. The past is never really the past, it’s never gone or forgotten. I intend for my books to carry the past into the present and future.
I seem to be unable to stop creating books.”
Dead Doors documents an abandoned warehouse in the Docklands district of Dublin. It was built over a hundred years and was slowly abandoned in the postwar period. Because the building had been built over such a long period of time, the doors were all constructed differently, and as it was slowly abandoned over the years, each door was boarded up in a different way. No two doors were alike. Each door had become an abstract image, like a found collage. Each door was a portal to an obscure past.
Reid-Cunningham adds, “In 2001, I began publishing limited editions to provide texts that that inspire me and are printed on good quality paper. The editions are small, and I do a series of interpretive bindings on each text. The first limited edition, entitled Dead Doors, is based on my own photography. The prints are loose in a matchbox enclosure.
Dead Doors 2 – 4, 2001
Alum-tawed skin colored, brazilwood, glossy photographic paper, linen thread, gold and metallic foil
7 5/8 x 6 1/4 x 5/8”
The first binding done on Dead Doors has punctured boards covered in alum-tawed goatskin. The skin was colored with brazilwood, one of the traditional medieval colorants. This resulted in a brownish, mottled surface appearance that parallels the aging of the doors. The structure is based on 15th-17th century archival bindings sewn with a long stitch. The photographs were hinged into sections before sewing. The decoration relies on simple lines in gold, color and blind, focusing on the title.
Love: 12 Devices, 2011
Cold-pressed watercolor paper, calf vellum, alum-tawed pigskin, King’s Formula cochineal ink and blue metallic foil
8 x 3 1/2 x 3”
James creates sculptural books with no text or images to ground the viewer’s experience of the object. Each one is abstract, based on historical structures and materials, but the result is an entirely contemporary design. These volumes are meant to be viewed standing, to be handled, or to be displayed in the round, as though on a plinth. Each viewer creates their own meaning when paging back and forth through the volume.
Love: 12 Devices is a unique book sculpture nested in a paper slipcase. The leaves are attached with vellum tackets through backplates of alum-tawed pigskin. This is a traditional medieval structure that survived into the 19th century. Each leaf has a central fluid shape executed in cochineal ink with stamped lines as accents or markers. The book sculptures are intentionally cryptic.
Miniatures
Reid-Cunningham has been creating miniature books for thirty years. Miniatures pose extraordinary structural challenges, which is why they are so fascinating. The small format draws the viewer in and causes one to focus in a way that simply doesn’t happen with a larger book. For James, “miniatures are extremely frustrating to create and every time I finish one, I swear I will never do one again. But eventually I have an idea, or I come across an interesting text, and I’m back to the miniature format. Miniature books are my secret vice.”
Ralentir Travaux, 2018
Paul Eluard, Ralentir Travaux, 2001, #14 of 20
Goatskin, black Tyvek®, gold foil
9/16 x 9/16 x 3/16”
Ralentir Travaux is a Babel Fish translation of Paul Eluard’s prose introduction to a book of collaborative poems composed along with Andre Breton and Rene Char in 1930. Eluard’s text examines the role of the artist in the modern world. His prose was printed inkjet on an accordion of thin kozo paper in 3-point type. James admits, “Having reached a certain age, I can no longer read it without a magnifying glass. The edition of 20 copies is illustrated with my pen and ink drawings. I planned to do a unique binding on each volume. I still have three left to do after almost 20 years so the edition size on later publications has decreased to 4-6 copies at most.”
Executed with feathered leather onlays, the design of #14 is simple and crisp and clear, which is essential for such a tiny book. The swirling colors reflect the surrealistic prose within.
Ralentir Travaux 3, 2004
Calfskin, palladium leaf and gold leaf
5/8 x 5/8 x 3/16”
This leather binding is decorated overall with palladium, with a central device in gold. This creates a gorgeous effect with shapes evocative of Eluard’s jagged prose.
Pierced Vellum Bindings
Piercing as a decorative technique dates back to Coptic bindings of Late Antiquity. Reid-Cunningham has spent the last ten years doing research on pierced vellum bindings, which were made from the 1590s through the mid-18th century in Europe. This style of highly decorated binding features brightly colored boards with the covering vellum cut or punctured to reveal the color beneath. Early on, the boards were covered with silk or satin, but pigments soon became common because pigments are easier to use. Leatherworker’s punched were used to pierce the vellum in symmetrical patterns. The bindings were sometimes done in-boards, and in other cases they were laced-cases. All of the decoration was done before the vellum was adhered to the boards. Sometimes gold tooling was added to frame or accent the piercings. Pierced vellum bindings are luxurious, meant to be seen and not necessarily read, much like the coffee table books of today.
Qvinti Horatii Flacci Poemata, 2020
Vellum, gold leaf, acrylic pigments, silk thread and ribbon
5 1/4 x 3 3/8 x 1”
Piercing produces visually striking results. The design of Qvinti Horatii Flacci Poemata (printed in Amsterdam in 1662) uses a few thin gold lines to connect pierced circles spread across the binding in a dynamic, asymmetrical composition. This artistic binding unites traditional structures with a modern aesthetic to create a hybrid object of indeterminate meaning.
NEBA is excited to have James as a member. His reflections on the NEBA community are appreciated. Thank you, James!
“NEBA is a wonderful venue for artists to create opportunities for readers and viewers to explore all aspects of human life through the arts of the book. The strength of NEBA is its role in bringing together a wide range of artists who work in the book format. It is often said these days that the book is dead, but this is nonsense. As our lives become more digital, people yearn to experience something concrete and physical. Hence the continuing and remarkable endurance of the book as a carrier for word and image.”