new sketchbooks, old covers

When we were moving from our log cabin to the farm, I tore my remaining full sheets of art paper down to size for binding into sketchbooks to make them easier to move. That small stash of paper included one of my favorites, Nideggen paper, which is now no longer available. What I had was just enough to fill two small sketchbooks.

Obtaining these antique book covers was a fun adventure in itself! I saw several old books thrown in a recycle bin in Brenham — our granddaughter Jayna volunteered to do a bit of dumpster diving and rescued some for me. These two were printed in the late 1800s and seemed perfect for the paper. I finally got around to sewing the folios and gluing the resulting book block and end papers in place this week. I use two of Bill’s great-grandmother’s sad irons as weights when binding sketchbooks. The blue glue stick with silicon bristles came with one of Bill’s woodworking orders — works great for spreading thin glue!

The dark green one is embossed with the title “Learn to do Practical Word-Book by Doing” — perhaps an old student copy book? The other one, “The Practical Speller, Second Book”, was specifically a Texas school text book; the retail price is printed on the cover as 15 cents, with the exchange price 8 cents.