bookbinding book

The very first bookbinding book that I got, was the Japanese Bookbinding book by Ikegami. I was entirely impressed with all the history included in this book and I read every word and made every project. One of my favorite notebook structures from this book is this simple account book structure. This structure is called daifuku chō and it was used during the Edo period (1603-1868) for travel diaries, guest registers, and primarily as merchant account books (Ikegami p.68). Ikegami includes a photograph of an account book from the mid-1800s and that always catches my attention when I go through his book.

So a while back, I decided that I would try to replicate the "look" of that mid-1800s current-accounts book. The first thing I had to do, was figure out how to recreate the Japanese calligraphy. Since I'm not a calligrapher, and know nothing of Japanese writing at all, I had to figure out something that I could manage. So I carved some rubber stamps to recreate the Japanese characters on the cover.