Binding Dummies - Sewn board style

The search for the perfect binding for this book continued with experiments with Gary Frost's sewn board binding. I call it a sewn board style binding because with the text block to be a drum leaf the cover folio was not to be sewn, but glued.

From Karen Hanmer's handout at the 2013 Guild of Book Workers Standards of Excellence seminar:

The sewn boards binding is Gary Frost’s elegant, modern adaptation of an ancient method of board attachment. Stiffened outer signatures sewn along with the text block function as the book’s boards.

The drum leaf binding, developed by Tim Ely, has features in common with preexisting Eastern and Western binding structures. This adhesive binding is a perfect structure for printmakers, photographers, or anyone who desires to present visual narratives with no sewing thread to interrupt the flow of imagery. Because a drum leaf book is not laid out in signatures but made of single-sided folios, the complexities of imposition are not encountered when laying out text. Like the sewn boards, the drum leaf can also utilize stiffened outer folios as the book’s boards.

Both structures can be dressed up or down with a variety of spine treatments, board-covering materials, and edge decoration techniques. Both books open flat.  

I tried a goat vellum spine, lined with a bristol spine stiffener.

I really didn't like the sight of the bristol inside the spine.

Functionally, it worked every bit as well as the dos rapporte but a lot less work involved, or so I thought.

The sewn board style compared to the dos rapporte. I favored the reduction of bulk at the spine with the sewn board version.