Most books are containers. They hold text in a form convenient for reading and transport, and their physical properties — the paper, the binding, the cover — are chosen to minimise cost and maximise durability at scale. This is not a criticism. It is a description of how mass publishing works, and it works well for most purposes.
A fine art book begins from a different premise. It treats the physical object — the book as a made thing — as part of the work. The paper is chosen for its weight and texture and how it receives ink. The typeface is chosen for its relationship to the content. The binding is sewn by hand because a sewn binding opens differently than a glued one, lies flatter, lasts longer, and feels different in the reader's hands. Every decision is a craft decision, made by someone who understands that readers experience books physically as well as intellectually.
What a fine art book is
The term covers a range of objects. At one end is the fine press book — a limited edition produced with exceptional attention to typography, paper, and printing, but still primarily a reading object. At the other end is the artist's book — an object where the form is inseparable from the content, where the book itself is the artwork rather than a vehicle for it. Between these poles lies a rich tradition of objects that resist easy categorisation.
What all fine art books share is intentionality. Every element of the physical object has been considered. Nothing is default. The making of the book is understood as a creative act with its own demands and its own disciplines, not a production task to be optimised for efficiency.
"A fine art book is made on the assumption that how a book feels in your hands changes how the words feel in your mind."
The tradition
The modern fine press tradition begins with William Morris and the Kelmscott Press, which he founded in 1891 in Hammersmith, England. Morris was reacting against the industrialisation of printing and bookmaking — the cheapening of materials, the mechanical sameness of typeset text, the loss of the craft knowledge that had accumulated over four centuries of hand-press printing. The Kelmscott Press produced fifty-three books in seven years, each one designed with complete attention to the relationship between typeface, ornament, paper, and text.
Morris's influence spread rapidly. The Doves Press, the Ashendene Press, the Golden Cockerel Press — the private press movement of the early twentieth century produced hundreds of books that are now held in special collections and libraries around the world. In America, the tradition was carried forward by presses like the Grabhorn Press in San Francisco, the Spiral Press in New York, and the Windhover Press at the University of Iowa.
The tradition continues today in the work of individual bookbinders, letterpress printers, and small fine press publishers who have chosen craft over scale. The tools are different — some use photopolymer plates rather than hand-set type, some work with digital design files — but the underlying commitment to the physical quality of the object is the same.
How fine art books are made
A hand-bound fine art edition begins with the printed sheets — the pages of text, printed on archival paper chosen for its specific qualities. These sheets are folded into signatures — gatherings of four, eight, or sixteen pages — and the signatures are sewn together through their folds with linen thread. The sewn text block is then rounded and backed, giving the book its characteristic curved spine. Endpapers are attached, and the whole is cased into a cover made from boards covered in cloth, leather, or other materials.
This process is slow. A skilled bookbinder working on a limited edition of ten copies might spend several days on the work. Each copy is touched many times by the same pair of hands. The result is an object with a physical integrity — a rightness of structure — that a machine-bound book rarely achieves.
Fine art books and poetry
Poetry and the fine art book tradition have always been natural companions. Poetry, like fine press bookmaking, values precision and economy — the exact word, the exact line, nothing wasted. A poem set in a beautiful typeface on good paper, with generous margins and careful attention to spacing, is a different experience from the same poem in a mass-market anthology. The physical quality of the reading changes the quality of attention.
Many of the most significant fine art books in the tradition are poetry collections. William Morris's Kelmscott Chaucer is a monument of the tradition. The Golden Cockerel Press produced editions of major poets that remain among the most desirable books of the twentieth century. Contemporary fine press publishers continue this practice, producing editions of living poets in forms that honour the work.
McCall Bindery
McCall Bindery, based in Poulsbo, Washington — on the Kitsap Peninsula, a short distance from Bainbridge Island — is one of the finest craft binderies in the Pacific Northwest. Working in the tradition of European fine binding, McCall produces hand-bound books of exceptional quality for publishers, artists, institutions, and private collectors. Each book is made by hand, to order, by a binder who has trained extensively in the craft.
Ink & Ribbon Press works with McCall Bindery on our fine art editions — the archival, hand-bound copies we produce alongside our standard limited editions. These are the most considered objects we make.
Ink & Ribbon's fine art editions
For each title we publish, we produce a very small number of fine art copies in addition to our standard limited edition of 250. These hand-bound copies are made by McCall Bindery and are reserved for major donors — supporters whose gifts fund a complete edition and who receive, in return, one of the most carefully made books we can produce.
Our standard limited editions are themselves made with close attention to physical quality: acid-free paper, thoughtful typography, careful design. But the fine art editions represent our fullest expression of the belief that slow publishing extends all the way to the physical object. They are books made to last for generations.
If you are interested in supporting Ink & Ribbon Press at a level that includes a fine art edition, please write to us at admin@inkandribbon.org. These conversations are best had directly.
