Working on Libris Award's entry

Hello everyone I have returned from a holiday and this piece was finished before I left.
A group of likewise artists have been collaborating on an entry for the Libris Awards this year.
The few rules we followed were to have all the covers the same colour but toned to blend together. Each member was given the choice of their bottle of paint which had been previously tinted either way, (darker or lighter) and a box was created to hold each individual book according to it's size with the understanding that they must not rest above the box as the box is a tiered design.They must be easy to remove from their sections for the viewer's pleasure to read. Also there was not to be adornments of any sort on the cover of the book, just plain simple colour.
Meetings were held along the way to check on our progression and this gave members a chance to make any corrections , such as myself when I had to make at least eight slipcovers before I was happy with the result.
However onto some photos I took along the way.

The first step for me was to make a dummy book to try my idea first.

 I especially wanted a spine "laced" with satin ribbon as my subject was corsets.

So far so good and I was bearing in mind the tightness of the ribbon on opening the book as I wanted it to lay open flat.

Now the exciting part starts to happen and as I knew I had various papers from other experiments and projects and with the mind whirling with ideas I bought some nice scrap book papers to compliment my own. I also wanted to do art works and not necessarily prints but felt that should be included.

In the meantime I was researching the history of corsets and had made the choice to not let that overtake the book itself so kept that to a minimum.

The following are some pages and I did keep them in their historical order as per year.

This was one I made early on so possibly not in order here. The ideas didn't always come to me in any ordered way, I let it grow and happen as it wanted .

 

 

Even though I am a printmaker/ water-colourist I didn't want to just use paper the texture of fabric was important as not all corsets were made from satin or silk. The working class woman wore cotton corsets. The original corsets were made form whale bone and other 'hard" materials so would have been very uncomfortable to wear and produced bruising. This page represents the higher class lady 's corset made from satin and adorned with nice ribbons,laces and buttons.

A" filler" page and this had been one idea for the title page but decided to use it elsewhere.

"Filler pages" were used to "bulk" up the book to height requirement and create interest.

Another example  and I attempted to place each one in a position to bind a story.

Ahh! one of my favourites and really enjoyed this page.

A preview of how the pages would be presented in the book.

This is one towards  the end comparing the differences over the years and how they were being worn outside of the clothes as a fashion statement.

This is another special page and the corset is a cut-out and the reverse of this page has historical information for interests sake. 

A drawing to show how the corset can achieve elegance to fashion. Each style of corset

could produce a certain effect to the ladies outfit. 

The end papers which I dithered with for a long time as needed to get it right. I tried images from the book itself but instinctively felt it wasn't right so rummaged around and found some marbled papers I had done a few years ago. It pays to let ideas lie , sleep on them and hey presto it happens.

 

The finished book and I did shorten the ribbon as proved to be a bit bulky for the slipcover.

   Open position and happy that it wasn't pulling the pages and making it hard to turn them.

Finished spine.

 

Slip-cover number eight which had to be remade as the curved edge was considered adornment so number nine hasn't been photographed. 

Because of the ribbon spine I had to make the slip-cover with soft "walls" and firm top and bottom.

 

 

Our entry has been presented to the selection committee but I haven't heard if it has been accepted yet.