Jamie Kamph

Lambertville, New Jersey 
Jamie Kamph was a writer, book collector, and publisher before being inspired by Deborah Evetts to study bookbinding with Hope Weil in New York City in 1973. In 1976, she established Stonehouse Bindery at her farm in Lambertville, New Jersey. Kamph has continued to work as a book conservator and designer binder while pursuing a serious interest in the history of bookbinding. She is a professional associate of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, a member of the Guild of Book Workers and the Grolier Club. 

Winner: The Helen Warren DeGolyer Award for American Bookbinding

Example Binding:
Joseph Conrad. 
Youth. 
Illustrated by Blair Hughes-Stanton.
Kentfield, California: The Allen Press, 1959.

Grey oasis goatskin with multicolored, gold-tooled onlays in a frieze design, based on an antique Malaysian pattern with figures taken from a text illustration. The volume is titled in gold on the spine with letters made up from small tools. Tangerine colored linen box, lined in gray ultrasuede, with title label gold tooled to match bookbinding.

Design Description:
The design reflects the way in which Mark Twain layered his narrative to explore the relationships among ideas of adventures, the literature of adventure, and adventure itself. The book will be bound in chocolate brown oasis goatskin. The triple framework in the shape of an open book is built from the title text, in Centaur type to match the book, a blind-tooled roll to represent flowing water worked on red leather, and gilt cross-hatching reminiscent of the woodcut technique of the illustrations. The rope, which ties people to people, the raft to shore, and people to the raft, is an escape tool in the text suggesting the interdependence of the characters beyond that of slave and master. The rope is inlaid beige goatskin, blind tooled outside the framework and gilt within to suggest the relationships between fiction and reality.