Carole King is a professional artist with a special interest in making books, passionate about beautiful handcrafted objects and the individuality of hand crafted objects. Since 2004 she has lived in rural West Wales  dividing her time between printmaking, bookbinding and teaching these skills to small groups.

A recent comission was to make 300 books for the Clothworkers using a specially designed and woven silk for the covers.

My books:

Each book starts as just paper, card and a large pot of glue, covered with  hand drawn repeating patterns inspired by the landscape or geometric shapes;  each one is all my own work. My designs are developed into multi layer stencils and hand printed using silkscreen techniques in a wide variety of colour ways. I enjoy experimenting with different combinations of coloured and translucent inks in layers, creating just short editions of each paper design.

My individually constructed books, anything from a small pocket notebook or sketchbook to a large photo album, use a variety of techniques. Coptic binding and decorative open spine techniques, casebindings as well as concertina and stab stitch are all employed for different purposes.

The purpose of the book, its weight, colour and type of paper used for the  pages dictate the size and type of cover required. Paper is prepared and folded to size suitable for different purposes: for watercolour painting, drawing or sketching while visitors books and journals are printed with lines and divisions.The pages may be stitched together using tapes and decorative stitching before rigid cover boards are attached.

Each book is finished with endpapers and ribbon place-markers as required. I make a selection of sizes of books from tiny books which sit in the palm of the hand to much larger sizes suitable for sketchbooks and photograph albums.

Books can be supplied with their own matching slipcase or presentation box.

Workshops

You will find me with 'Make it in Wales'  in their 2018 programme of workshops covering various bookbinding projects from coptic binding to keepsake books with pockets.