Owl Post - March 2025
Owl post today is being written in the lingering glow of a particularly fruitful summer (quite literally). It has been all about the peaches in the bindery these past few months, and what an absolute triumph the stone fruits have been this season! We think they are simply divine and have indulged ourselves in making peach tartes and plum cakes, which some of you were able to partake in, if you have attend classes and open bindery days. However, the real delight arrived last week in the form of 50kg of first-grade lemons. Naturally, we have thrown ourselves into making salted lemons, lemon curd, and incorporating lemon into absolutely everything we cook and bake.
In the bindery, we are well and truly back in the swing of things with on-going binding work. Now that the children have been packed back off to jail (school), it has only taken a mere seven weeks to find something resembling a routine; just in time for the next school holidays to appear on the horizon. There is a silver lining, of course; our School Holiday Children's Bookbinding classes are fast approaching, and Jenni and I shall be running them on the 14th, 15th, and 16th of April. If you know any children who might be interested, do send them our way!
Our Paper Bindings series begun with much enthusiasm in February, which is always quite heartening. The next course is on the 5th of April, don't miss out by booking too late. On another note, Wild Binders membership will, as always, close on the 1st of April, regardless of numbers. There are only a few spots remaining, so if you are considering joining this wonderfully mad and dedicated group of bookbinders, don't hesitate.
A little something new for our Saturday Open Bindery sessions for Wild Binders; participants may now bring along pre-sewn small book blocks and sift through our remnant boxes for card, paper, and leather to complete their books. One cannot, of course, cart away an entire sackful of supplies, but there is ample opportunity to match up your sewn books and finish them in the bindery or at home (within reason, naturally).
We have been keeping ourselves entertained with audiobooks and BBC dramatisations of South Riding by Winifred Holtby, Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bornte; each a fascinating glimpse into the lives of women, and each absorbing in its own way. This has, in turn, inspired us to re-read Brideshead Revisited. If you have not read it, rest assured, a great deal of pleasure awaits you!
Will this humidity ever end? Bring on autumn, I say! In the meantime, the Yayoi Kusama immersive exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria is proving very tempting, and the Julie Mehretu exhibition—her first in the Asia-Pacific region at the Museum of Contemporary Art is receiving much-deserved acclaim. For lovers of French cinema, the Alliance Française French Film Festival is in full swing, and the full programme is available here.
Our Wild Binders Artists’ Books group ‘The City and the Book’ has been having the most marvellous time—sketching, drawing, painting, and, of course, binding. Last session, we experimented with a ‘fishbone’ binding, we are onto our third and final session with the Fish Market theme on the 13th of April, but the next series begins on the 7th of June. Everyone is welcome, naturally.
For those who have been binding with us for some time and are looking to take their skills further, we are gathering final interest for our Fine Binding Course. This is an 18-month flexible programme consisting of ten taught sessions, designed to teach fine binding as we practise it in the bindery; from selecting books to rebind, right through to gold finishing. Some sessions will be taught in a group, others on a one-to-one basis. We will be selecting only four students every two years, so if you are interested, do email us or drop by for a chat in the coming weeks.
And finally, for a little light amusement, The Economist recently ran a piece on the Oddest Book Title of the Year prize. This year’s winner? The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire. Past winners have included such gems as Reusing Old Graves: A Report on Popular British Attitudes, Strip and Knit with Style, and Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers. Quite the reading list.
Isabelle