...times ten thousand three hundred and some-odd
A week ago this past Friday, I got an email from my friend, Janine Vangool at Uppercase, asking if I would be able to assist with assembling ten thousand hand-made books for a client’s Christmas mail-out.
I said yes.
It has been a long week.
But we got it done! We had a team of about ten lovely ladies (and one fellow!) with four to six working at a time. The actual order was for 10,250, but we overshot the mark and made ten thousand three hundred and a bit. Plus there were a few that were botched, but our error rate was incredibly low—maybe two dozen in total (we are pros). The book pictured above is one of the errors I kept for myself, which is why the angle and depth-of-field are so arty: so you can’t see the stray gobs of adhesive on the cover.
The books are Janine’s Uppercase brand called “Eclectonotes”, made from recycled and re-used papers. The ones that we made for the client include random trimmed pages from the client’s old catalogues, interspersed among lined recycled notepaper.
You can purchase your own hand-made Eclectonote from the Uppercase store. These ones include vintage papers from old recipe books, fashion magazines, textbooks, and maps. Be sure to browse around and see the other lovely products that Janine makes.
Uppercase is also a publishing house. While we were waiting for a shipment of Eclectonote pages, we put together some of the latest Uppercase publication, The Suitcase Series: Camilla Engman. The book is a gorgeous portrait of Engman, her illustrations, and her beautiful surroundings in Göteborg, Sweden. Our assembly work on this piece was less labour-intensive than for the Eclectonotes and involved inserting a set of postcards, a limited edition print (for pre-orders only), and a booklet chronicling the adventures of Camilla’s dog, Morran into each book. There will be a launch party for the book December 3rd at Art Central as part of First Thursday.
Although EclectoMANIA (as it shall be remembered in legend) was physically taxing, it was fun hanging out with the team. We got a little hysterical in the home stretch. I’m sure that even if I could remember some of the things we were laughing at, they would make no sense out of context. Okay, I suppose they didn’t really make sense in context either. But the comaradarie and the physical accomplishment made the whole experience remarkably rewarding.
Phew! I’ll try to get some posts about other things up… before I leave on my next adventure!
UPDATE! Janine has posted photos of the enormous undertaking on her blog. Yes, I am wearing a single bicycling glove.
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Cool!