Soft Cover Drum Leaf – 2021

Event Info

This class will take place on:

• Tues, June 8th, 6:00–8:00pm ET

Drum Leaf – a style of layflat binding created by Tim Ely – is a simple but elegant book structure that uses folded “leaves” (pages) that are “drummed” (glued) together rather than being folded into signatures. Because of this book’s ability to lay completely flat, it is an ideal book for artists, photographers, and printmakers in particular.

In this two-hour workshop, students will learn to fold and adhere the pages to create the Drum Leaf textblock. We will then go over the steps for scoring and folding the drop-spine soft cover. Finally, we will adhere our covers onto our text blocks to finish the book!

Required Materials

• Text pages (cardstock weight is ideal; as many as you’d like. I will use 15 sheets of 8.5×11” cardstock for my book.)
• Cover paper (cardstock weight. Same height as your text pages but longer. I will use 1 sheet of 8.5×17 cardstock for my book.)
• Scrap paper for gluing
• Glue and glue brush OR double-stick tape
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Cutting tool (X-acto, scalpel, Olfa knife, etc)
• Cutting mat
• Bone folder or similar

About the Instructor

Elizabeth (Beth) Sheehan is a printmaker, papermaking, and book artist living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her work investigates ideas of memory and perception to explore her own lack of episodic memory. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Center for Book Arts, and the San Francisco Public Library. Sheehan has worked as a professional printer at Durham Press in Pennsylvania and at Harlan and Weaver in New York. She was also the Lead Binder and Bindery Manager at Small Editions in Brooklyn and teaches paper, print, and book workshops around the country.

All images courtesy of the instructor.