Pamela Train Leutz
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Pamela Train Leutz began binding in 1979 at the Craft Guild of Dallas under Dorothy Westapher, and continued her studies with Hugo Peller, Jan Sobota, and Sally Key. William Minter has also been very influential as both a teacher and mentor. Leutz taught bookbinding in Dallas for over twenty years before relocating to Colorado Springs where she continues to execute commission work and create design bindings for exhibitions. Her bindings have been exhibited in the Czech Republic and in the United States, where she received a Best Binding award for her entry in the 2006 Chicago exhibition “One Book, Many Interpretations.” The author of The Thread That Binds: Interviews with Private Practice Bookbinders, published in 2010 by Oak Knoll Press, she also currently serves as co-chair of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers.
Example Binding:
The Thread That Binds: Interviews with Private Practice Bookbinders.
Compiled and with introductions by Pamela Train Leutz.
New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2010.
Bound using the Jan Sobota-style three-board technique, brown leather covers, rust colored leather doublures, center board edged in black goatskin, tooled leather endbands; book edges are graphite. The cover design features twelve cut-out squares in the front and twelve in the back. Inside each square is the name of one of the bookbinders featured in the book, as well as one of the author and one of the publisher. A vintage-style filigree decoration is layered over colored leather. The removable squares, which can be lifted out to reveal the binder’s names, attach to the cover boards by the use of magnets. The title is found on a gold stamped label attached to the spine and on another label inlayed in the center square on the front cover.
Design Description:
Bound in the Jan Sobota-style three-board technique, full black goatskin with an inlay design in the front cover consisting of twenty-four leather covered magnetic squares. Twenty-four squares of chocolate brown leather on one side; on the reverse: six of metallic gold leather (representing joy), six of red leather (representing the blood of Christ), six of white leather (representing purity), and six of royal purple (representing penance). The six color squares will form the inner cross, surrounded by chocolate brown colored leather squares. When all twenty-four squares are removed, a copy of the engraved image of Christ from the book is revealed. Doublure covered with chocolate brown goatskin. Endbands of chocolate brown leather. Edges colored in deep purple and gold leaf.
