The Quest for Excellence in the Book Arts:

Canadian Postcards from the Journey

Every person has a story to tell and, as a result, everyone is a potential bookmaker. One of the appealing characteristics of the book arts is that everyone, using simple skills and materials found close at hand, can create a book. Often these books are appealing, imaginative, and capture the individual spirit of the person creating them. But this easy introduction is deceptive. There comes a time when it is not enough to simply make a book, and the desire to produce a well-crafted book using quality materials sets in. A life-absorbing journey then commences. This is the quest for excellence in the book arts.

Defining Excellence
Excellence is the sustained, concentrated effort to produce work to the highest standard attainable. Since the book arts cover many areas, the benchmarks for measuring success are different for each artist.
     “When designing books and broadsides,” says Margaret Lock of Lock’s Press in Kingston, Ontario, “I try to present the text the way I want to read it, and how I will still want to read it thirty years from now. I make the design an opportunity for other people to understand it, evaluate its full meaning, perhaps discover the content and add to their associations with it, even modify their own ideas because of its meaning.” Book artist Lise Melhorn-Boe of North Bay Ontario adds, “I want my books to capture the reader's imagination, to make the reader confront the issue I am tackling and ponder the subject. I think my best work does this with humour — I try not to be didactic — and with elegance, beauty and style.”
     “Excellence in letterpress limited edition printing,” says printer William Rueter of Dundas, Ontario, “is reflected in care and craftsmanship; the selection of quality materials; use of good machine-made or mouldmade papers; careful printing of pages and images; care in typesetting; even inking of type; careful consideration of all design elements; choice and appropriateness of typefaces; appropriate binding materials and binding format.”
     For papermaker Wendy Cain of Newburgh, Ontario, “the paper has to match the specific requirements of the book. For example, I made paper for Lock's Press using sisal pulp sheet and bleached flax pulp sheet. This made a paper with the crisp resiliency of flax and the visual softness and faintest hint of raw umber colour from the sisal. I will make whatever materials modification is required and similarly will modify equipment or work techniques as the goals of the project demands.”
     Excellence in the book arts, no matter what the area of concentration, starts with quality materials, includes knowledge acquired over time on how to use the materials to their best advantage, and the process results in a final product that delights and educates future book lovers as much as it does current ones.

Achieving Excellence
When discussing excellence, Wendy Cain notes, “as a paper artist, the best work looks effortless.” An appearance of effortlessness in the final presentation, as most artists are aware, is actually the result of much planning, repeated attempts, and extensive hard work. “The quest for excellence dictates a fairly slow working pace, careful checking of printed impressions, and attention to binding details,” adds Will Rueter
     Book artist Tara Bryan of Flatrock, Newfoundland, continues the discussion: “I try to take my time and let ideas develop. I make dummies and play with them. It's a mystical process to me and I spend a lot of time looking, holding, letting whatever I'm working on be absorbed into my system. Deadlines, life, other work keep me from pondering a project for too long, but I try not to rush, and to wait for the solutions to come before I commit myself to a structure or material.”
     “I do modify some of my work to achieve what I hope will be excellence,” Ann Vicente of Vancouver, British Columbia, observes. “As with many artists — the ideas flow and often come full blown. I want to make them yesterday. I have the completed piece pictured in my mind. The tedious task of breaking down the steps, taking time for things to dry, or to be in the press are hard for me. I have to push myself to slow down and make sure things are done well — that the final project will communicate skills.”
     “I work and rework ideas, make many maquettes,” comments book artist Carolyn Qualle of Calgary, Alberta. “I try to let the soup of ideas, textures, materials, methods, visuals, and text ferment for a while, then I begin the process again until I am satisfied.” Toronto book artist Mira Coviensky is another artist who makes lots of maquettes in the search for the best approach. “I am willing to redo and redo as much as needed, in both design and fabrication, to achieve excellence,” she states.
     As a postscript, Ann Vicente adds, “This is also the place to talk about destroying the failures — just like a printmaker tears the imperfects in half — it is important that the less than excellent products do not reach the marketplace and come back to haunt you.”
     The process of achieving excellence requires careful consideration of all artistic options; it requires trials and mistakes that lead up to the best solution; it requires attention to the smallest detail; and it requires faith that improvement is possible and attainable.
     The goal, as stated by Tara Bryan, “is to put a LOT of work into making things look effortless.” In the words of Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." Excellence is a concentrated focus on high standards, it is a daily task, it is a groove carved out over time.

Accommodating Expedience
A common goal for artists is to strive for excellence. Unfortunately there are many influences that try to sabotage the process including deadlines, budgets, and the specific needs and requirements of each project. These can disrupt and sidetrack the pursuit for excellence. Artists frequently need to consider the best way to accommodate expedience.
     For Mira Coviensky it involves simplification. “For editions, I try to design the project in such a way that expedience is satisfied by using a non-complicated fabrication. The initial design work can be very lengthy though to get to the point that the fabrication is expedient.”
     “I came to the book arts in my 50's,” comments Ann Vicente. “My eyes and arthritis do not always allow for excellence! But we must be careful not to spend all of our time apologizing for our work — it detracts — and can lead others to look for errors.”
     For some artists, including papermaker Susan Mills of Inverness, Nova Scotia, there is no compromise: “my book art is not a Hollywood movie as far as financing. The decisions are mine — I try and make good choices. I don’t set deadlines, and can put work aside until I know what to do. I also abandon work.” Another book artist who echoes this thought is Lise Melhorn-Boe, of North Bay, Ontario. She says, “I can't think of an instance offhand in my own work when I have consciously thought to do something shoddily just to get it done.”
     But for most artists there is a need to find a balance between the necessity to complete projects and the desire to do them perfectly. “Expedience forces me to override perfectionism,” notes Carolyn Qualle. “Excellence always gives way to expedience otherwise they would have to pry my work from my cold dead fingers.”

Finding Value in Excellence
Is it worth the additional effort and extra expense to add excellence to a book arts project? “Absolutely,” declares Susan Mills, “inferior work doesn’t sell.”
     It would be nice if it were that simple. For many artists the answer is more complex.
     “I think there is an appreciation of excellence of craftsmanship,” notes Mira Coviensky, “but less appreciation of the excellence of artistic skills. It's harder perhaps to see the amount of work going into artistic development of a piece than the amount of craft work.”
     From another perspective, Margaret Lock observes, “Selling hand-printed books is like offering a rose to customers whose standard is a dandelion. I am used to it. My books have a very limited market. They presuppose a literate, intellectual audience. Only a few book collectors have a taste that coincides with mine. About one third of my sales are to other book arts people who have come to know my work, accept its difficulties, and have decided they like my style. I value their endorsement of my work.”
     “Unfortunately,” notes Will Rueter, “many people have trouble recognizing excellence in the handmade book or the book arts in general. Perhaps it’s their overexposure to full color printing or the foil-covered dazzle of commercial book manufacture, but many viewers don’t immediately appreciate the subtlety of letterpress impression on a tactile text paper or the delicacy of a fine binding. Ours is a craft of quality and subtlety. Book arts fairs and exhibitions such as The Art of the Book ‘03 create an opportunity to educate the public and hopefully to make a few converts. There is much to be done to convince people of the value, and inevitable cost, of a fine handmade book.”
     “I believe,” says Lise Melhorn-Boe, “that there is a lot of audience-education to be done to help people understand the work and the care that is involved in making books by hand. Even with mass-produced books, there is a lack of awareness of what is involved in the design and selection of materials to make a book that stands out from the crowd. Computers are great in that they have made typesetting and layout available to more people, but just because there is software and a good idea doesn't mean that an excellent piece of printed matter will result.”

Excellence, an Attainable Goal
Excellence is an elusive, sometimes frustrating quest to bring out the best in our work. In the process the efforts we apply to the experience can’t help but bring out the best in ourselves. It comes down to each individual artist and what we want to take away from our work. We may start off in a burst of undirected enthusiasm and thrill at seeing our work in print for the first time, but eventually we come to recognize the value of honing our skills, using the best materials, and pushing to achieve a higher degree of accomplishment.
     If, in the end, we have a greater understanding of the book arts, if we have reached a higher degree of expertise, and we have gained a personal sense of satisfaction that we have tried our best, then that is enough. We have achieved excellence.