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Tokyo Umbrella

Item date(s): 2008

Lester Capon  - (bookbinding by)
Peter R. Jones  - (bookbinding by)
Francis van Maele  - (book artist)
Antic-Ham  - (book artist)


Size: 337mm
Binding: Designer binding; Solander box
Inscription: Signed by all participants
Edition: #3/69


Place publication: Dugort, Achill Island, Ireland
Publisher: Redfoxpress
Cat. 052-C6-4/5
Exhibition 2017

Additional notes:
Jointly bound by Lester Capon (upper front and lower back boards) and Peter M. Jack (lower front and upper back boards). Bound in 2010 and signed on the inside front cover by both binders.

5 days walking the streets of Tokyo, taking photographs of posters, advertisements, street signs, manhole covers, stickers, wall graffitis, shop windows, neon signs, packaging graphics. . . With our umbrella, expecting rain which never came.

Hand-made paper folded over the fore-edge Japanese style. In a red drop-back box with the title on black leather on the spine.

Black and red screen printed and manipulated photographs on traditional Korean paper.

Unique binding in red and black with inlays and onlays by Peter Jones and Lester Capon in 2010.

The structure of the binding was very much dictated by the content which consists of images printed on lightweight handmade paper sheets folded at the foredge and open at the spine, which is to the right in the Japanese manner. The boards are of sheet aluminium for rigidity without thickness, lined either side with paper. Only the front board is hinged as the book block needs the support of a rigid back board. This hinging is achieved with a vellum strip trapped between the board and maplewood timber strips. There is an insert of ebony at the spine and leather covered horizontal dividing strips, one of which carries the title.

Lester Capon did the upper front and lower back boards; Peter Jones did the lower front and upper back boards. Materials used are plastic, leather, metal and wood. Black doublures. Lighter toning red dropback box with black felt lining and leather title strip on spine. Signed in pencil by both artists on the back doublure.

Tokyo Umbrella is the fourth collaborative binding between Lester Capon and Peter Jones, both Fellows of Designer Bookbinders. Each collaboration has involved the binders working independently on different parts of the binding with absolutely no knowledge of the intention of the other regarding materials or design. The only discussion between the binders is about general structure and size of the individual elements, without which it would be impossible to make the bindings work.

In this fourth binding the split of responsibilities was Peter undertaking the forwarding and the decorative elements of the lower front and upper back boards, Lester undertaking the upper front and lower back boards and the boxmaking.

Both binders happened to respond to the predominant blacks and reds of the images. Lester’s panels are inlaid leather shapes abstracted from Japanese letters, Peter’s are of onlaid sanded acrylic referencing umbrellas and buildings.

Exhibition notes:
Item 052 - C6-4/5/6 on Booknesses: Artists' books from the Jack Ginsberg Collection.

UJ Art Gallery, University of Johannesburg

25 March to 5 May 2017

Ref: GB/12672











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