Harmonographs and the Art of Bookbinding

About a six months ago, I made a harmonograph and started making my harmonograph art which I’ve been calling ‘Harmonographics‘ If you don’t know what a harmonograph is, then read this Wikipedia article about harmonographs. I actually made two harmonographs – one has two pendulums (rotary and lateral) and the other has three pendulums (rotary and two laterals).

Harmonographics

Wow, I just wrote Harmonograph or some variant 7 times.

Moving on. In my process of watercolor painting and understanding how to create different patterns using my harmonograph, I created about a hundred different harmonographic designs.  You can see some of them here, but the majority of them live in a box under my bed and on my laptop.

Around this time, I also started developing a deep interest in bookbinding which is a dying art with the rise of e-books. (Just as a disclaimer: I have NO issue with e-books. I know this can be a point of contention with literature buffs) In the process of teaching myself bookbinding, I learned about pH neutral glue, the benefits of using a bone folder versus my thumb, coptic stitching techniques and how to make a hard cover.

So, after collecting my materials and tools I made my first book! A sketchbook.

Bookbinding is really fun. And so is designing the covers!

Pretty cool, huh? Scott and I use this book to jot down our ideas and draw weird things.  Here’s a page we drew a few days ago.  My drawing is on the right and Scott’s is on the left.

These two pages are inspired by Scott's realization that foot rubs are actually pretty nice.

Although this was a fun little project, I wanted to learn more about making a bigger and sturdier book to collect all the harmonographic designs that I was proud of.

This was my first large scale book layout job, so after multiple rounds of scanning and digitally laying out the harmonographics, I created my first printed book! Stitched and all.

Here’s an image of the book before I stitched and glued it together.

J_Sayuri_Art_Harmonographics_Bookbinding_Blog

I initially made this book for myself to flip through the designs that I created but recently I’ve been giving thought to embarking on a public art journey to release these designs into the world.

I’ve got to work on a game plan and will write about it in a future post. Stay tuned!

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