I've just seen a video that made me quite excited; it's a film about the making of a book called 'The Complex of All of These' by a printmaker called Abigail Uhteg. I thought I'd share it here as it links in nicely with my recent Pech-app Cake-cha, called 'Hands'. I spoke about why using your hands to do stuff is good. And look - here's proof.

This video is made up of about 3000 photographs, taken over the course of 2 months - the time it took Abigal to illustrate, print and bind 35 copies of her book (all by hand).

It's so nice to see the entire book being made by hand, right from the paper made for the cover, through to the carefully chosen thread colour (to match the illustration) to sew the book, to those hand stitched headbands that sit at the top and bottom of the book's spine.

It's really satisfying being able to see the process of someone working who has such a highly developed and often unseen skill. Seeing that alongside those beautiful old machines working is even better.

In the digital world the process involved in the making of something is often obscured by the final product, whatever it may be. Perhaps that's because I'm not particularly technically minded, and so I find it hard to imagine what has gone into making something, but I think it's probably also the lack of physicality; you cant pick it up and look at the hinges and joins. For that reason, I think it's lovely to see objects, like this book, where that process is really hinted at in it's physical presence.

On a similar note, I spotted that a set of the Northern Lights series of books by Philip Pullman has been published recently, in a print run of 265 copies. Some of those are hand printed and bound letterpress versions, others have hand stenciled end papers, and some come with original woodcut illustrations. It just goes to show there's still a place for both the digital and physical, even if we have to go to more extreme methods to make those physical objects super-desirable.

Money from the sales of the Philip Pullman books will go to children's HIV/Aids charities, and you can find out more information about them at Oak Tree Fine Press website.