James Tapley

Sarasota, Florida 
James Tapley's greatest influence is Christopher Clarkson. He was fortunate to learn from the last generation of American binders including Gerhard Gehrlach, Carolyn Horton, Arno Werner, and Laura Young. Tapley runs a small one-man shop where he undertakes everything from design binding to book and paper conservation to small editions.  

Winner: The Helen Warren DeGolyer Award for American Bookbinding

Example Binding: 
C. P. Cavafy. 
Collected Poems. 
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975.

Sewn on tapes and forwarded as a Brockman Concave Spine Binding, tab and slot board attachment. Head gilt and colored. Covered in two colors of goatskin, title inlaid on spine, boards tooled in gilt and foil, back inlaid with eggshell lacquer and front panels joined by a forged brass panel. Japanese handmade paper doublures.

Design Description: 
Head gilt before sewing on tapes, forwarded as a concave spine binding, tab and slot board attachment. Spine covered in full goatskin with inlaid goatskin title. Boards of eggshell lacquer panels joined with forged patinated brass “lines”, goatskin doublures tooled in gilt, completing the drawings. The boards feature portraits of Borges as a young and middle-aged man. Borges said the first “other” world he knew was his family garden as a child. The flyleaves of inlaid goatskin feature this garden. They will be first viewed through the gates and paths of the covers, the portraits revealed only as the boards are opened.