Thanks Dan, Getty folks and Art Education will want to have these too.
Bookbinding got a lot of action today on ArtsEdNet.
This is a popular topic and one I meant to explore. I have a folder now to
add more to my site. Dan has the "Totor fuzz" that we all need. I'll be
asking you folks if he has a question that I can't answer. I'm still working
on my Australian art reply.
Here are some links that may help you on your quest:
"Yet there is some evidence that the complex codex structure may have
existed earlier than generally assumed in the framework of the writing
tablet story. The evidence is cut in stone, on the steles from Neo-Hittite
Empire, dating from the 8th or 7th century B.C. It was Berthe van Regemorter
(Scriptorium, 12, 1958, p. 177-181) who drew attention to this earliest
evidence for the codex, suggesting that ink and brush were used for writing
and a sophisticated sewing structure and board attachment employed for
binding (Fig.). Her observations received limited attention, and were even
dismissed, for example by Roberts and Skeat in a note (loc. cit., p. 11):
"For representations of wooden writing-tablets in Neo-Hittite reliefs ...
see B. van Regemorter, Scriptorum, 12, 1958, pp. 177 ff."
For more detailed (and very scholarly information on bookbinding (as we know
The final fact is that no one really knows the earliest bookbinding because
the examples have rotted. The Ones that we DO HAVE, have been preserved
because they held high religious significance and thus were protected by the
church. The history of paper in China might possibly have early examples of
book binding somewhere withing the early period of scrolls, but even many of
these records have turned to dust over time.
In having your students make their own paper, have them use interesting
materials like dryer lint, flower petals, cattail fuzz and wild plant pulp.
Commercial Laundromats can save lint for you which makes an excellent paper
base. Old garage-sale blenders make great "beaters" for the paper pulp.