I do hope Jan won't mind me saying that I've taken her as inspiration, or at least that's my excuse for $28 of old hard backed books bought this morning from the Coffs Harbour Rotary Club's annual book fair! Jan 'recycles' old books into new hybrids, combining interesting pages from different books with etchings, drawings and quality blank paper. The re-built 'new' volume can then be used as a diary, journal, sketchbook, notebook or any combination of the above. The joy is in the mixture of words, images and paper from something else joined together with your own words/notes/images and I have to say that the idea is wonderful. Probably what I should be doing is spending my money in Jan's lovely Etsy shop but I'm clearly too mean... Actually the intention is to practice my bookbinding skills (or lack thereof) on some cheap books that I won't mind ruining, but I'm doing it in the guise of providing myself with similar eclectic mixtures of paper, words and images that I will naturally fill with exciting notes and sketches very shortly.
The Rotary Club book fair nearly didn't happen. March in Coffs Harbour is a wet month: rainfall statistics reveal average monthly rainfall of 250mm and 30 days of rain. You may be aware that on March 31st Coffs Harbour and the local region received an entire month's rain in a few days, which in combination with the equinoctial high tides caused widespread flooding. The Rotary Club's book store was several feet under water and the local newspaper reported that thousands of books had to be disposed of, so I feel lucky that the fair was on at all!
I picked up some great books:
A 1956 AA Foreign Touring Guide
An undated book of 'Great Stories of the Wild West' with a fabulous cloth cover printed with a recurring pattern of stetsons, pistols and rearing horses
'The World We Live In' by 'the editorial staff of Life' published in 1956 with lovely fold-out illustrations
A 1963 edition of 'Cours de Langue et de Civilisation Francaises'
A 1913 edition of 'A Village Story' by Mrs G E Morton which holds little interest for me except in the beautiful art nouveau style cover
C Hartley Grattan's 1941 book 'Introducing Australia' ("Here America's foremost authority on Australia explains why the continent, tells you why 'the Australians will one day be a great people'")
and others... what a bargain!
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2 comments:
Can you believe I didn't remember it was on until lunch time! Went immediately and came away with 2 greenbags full. What fun hey!? I will have to go back later again, as I usually do. They keep bring new stuff out each day. You will have great fun doing your books! The only disappointment in the whole process is that the sewing is done so quickly and it is the most fun part. I was told you were away. Looks like you are back! Talk soon.
I love a good old book. So many opportunities to play with cool images. Jan's shop if very cool.
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