Designing Horizon(s)! Roadtrip in the United States

Handmade Notebooks

In the next posts, I will share a little about the creative process of each Urucum book.

My passion for artists books has nurtured for a long time, and I have the habit of stopping at street fairs, museum stores, stationery stores and bookstores to look through the books that have been made by artists. 

In 2019 I took a road trip in the United States with my partner Molly Yergens. Molly is an artist and also has a huge love for sketchbooks. 

We left Fargo North Dakota and drove to the Pacific coast of California. It was an incredible trip, full of small adventures, learning and beautiful landscapes that remain in my memory until today. 

Unglued, Fargo: choosing my travel notebook 

Before our trip actually started, Molly presented me to the Unglued store in Fargo, North Dakota. There I found a very special sketchbook. There were many of them made with the same method. Each one was unique - they had different covers made with recyclable materials (old game boards, hardcover books from other decades) and the signature was made with papers of all kinds (colorful, plain, ruled, unlined, music, prints, maps, and some papers with a little texture, etc). The experience of looking at each of these notebooks was full of discovery: each page turned conveyed a unique possibility of interaction. The book's stitching was exposed- Coptic! 

I chose the books cover with a river image in honor of the Mississippi and so many other rivers that we would see along our route. I fell in love with the book and purchased it. 

I recorded our entire trip there. I made notes, attached small papers, tickets, etc., significant elements of the trip. I wrote a little about each place, got in touch with my thoughts, wrote down reflections and it was absolutely wonderful! This notebook is still on the shelf in my studio. 

Research and creation process of Caderno Horizonte

The pandemic arrived in 2020 and, as we all know, the world turned upside down, a tragic moment. During this period, I was fortunate to be able to work from home. The decision was "stay at home". Molly and I decided to keep living a creative life style inside our home. We cultivated a day by day enriched by small moments of joy. Moments that make it worth living. The importance of making things with your own hands and learning from others became even clearer to me. We exchanged recipes with friends and gave each other self-care tips. At that time I decided to continue learning Italian, sewing clothes and, after a while, I reconnected with handmade bookbinding. 

I went back to researching book binding, and started with my beloved book How to Make Book - fold, Cut & Stitch - your way to a One-of-a-Kind Book, by Esther K. Smith (illustrations by Lindsay Stadig and Photographs by Zimmerman (2007) And tby reading this books I could try ways of doing Coptic binding! 

Coptic - lookup book structure, knots and paper

Coptic is an interesting type of binding that has been transformed by many contemporary artists. There are several ways to create notebooks using this type of stitch. These books have resistant hard covers that can be made with different materials, the book opens flat and the inside sheets can have different "weights". The quality of the structure of this notebook depends on the balance between the number of pages, the paper weight and the quantity of holes. The number of holes can also be adjusted for each project, taking into account the dimensions of the book. For many weeks I did tests with scrap paper and I became more and more happy with the results. After researching the structure and dimensions of the notebook I tested different possibilities to prepare the cover. And then selected the type of paper, texture and number of sheets. 

Deciding the cover: marbled paper and Japanese paper - two handmade techniques. 

Finally, I read books and websites to think about possible covers for my project. Molly Yergens accompanied my creative process and one day told me about a notebook from an art project she had done years ago and also told me about the marbled papers. I did a test with marbled paper and I really liked the result. Afterwards Molly and I talked about Japanese papers. The world of making Japanese paper is enchanting. I went to a wonderful store in São Paulo - The World Paper. There I learned about each paper, I saw bookbinding projects made by other artists. I also saw a very special room with furniture with huge drawers. Each drawer had beautiful imported papers. I fell in love. I made a special selection. There I also learned about how to take care of these papers: they should be lied on a surface. 

Creation of the Horizonte Notebook 

I cut the papers with care and rigor to make the most of the material possible (this I learned from cutting fabrics to make clothes), I kept samples of the papers and finally prepared the first covers. 

It took a few weeks for the project to be ready. It was a time-consuming, meticulous process, filled with notes, research and patience. And when the notebook was ready I realized that Horizon had a great potential! 

Horizon Notebook

I named this notebook Horizon, because when I saw the finished book I could envision a creative future. The opportunity to share this project with others and to put it out there in the world became tangible. 

Many tweaks to the format of the notebook have been made since then. Over time, I redefined the choice of the thread and number of pages in the signature to give the book's structure more firmness. And so, I found the perfect "recipe" to leave Horizon firm, light and ready to inspire your day to day. 

Bibliographical References: 

How to Make Books by author Esther K. Smith with illustrations by Lindsay Stadig and Photographs by Zimmerman, 2007. 

Molly Yergens Website

World Paper Website