Priscilla Spitler

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico 
Priscilla Spitler studied printmaking at the California College of Arts and Crafts, receiving a BFA in 1975. She also studied hand bookbinding at the London College of Printing (1980-81). She was edition bookbinder at the Palace Press of the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe from 1982 thru 1986, and at BookLab, Inc., in Austin from 1987 to 1995. Her own Hands On Bookbinding studio was established in Austin in 1995 and has been located in Truth or Consequences since 2007.  Spitler’s unique leather bindings and artist books have been exhibited internationally. Recipient of the 2015 Helen Warren DeGolyer Award for American Bookbinding, she also received the award in 2009.

Winner: The Helen Warren DeGolyer Award for American Bookbinding

Example Binding: 
Ladislav R. Hanka. 
Remembering Jan Bohuslav Sobota. 
Kalamazoo, Michigan: Ladislav R. Hanka, 2012.
Contains original fish etchings by the artist.

Bound in two colors of gray Hewit and Harmatan goatskin leathers in a laminate case. Decorated with three fish designs made with stamped, cut foils. Paste papers by the binder. Blind tooling and a silver stamped title.

Design Description:
If one was to visit Bernard Middleton’s bindery in the 1970s, when this text was published, it would not have been unusual to find a cat or two curled up in a corner. Proposed binding to be bound in brown Hewit goatskin in a laced-on boards binding with raised bands on the spine. Traditional gold lines and decorative stamps will be tooled on the spine, along with two green leather labels, gold stamped in two panels. Front and back boards would be framed by gold lines around large green leather panels, each containing a recess for the cut foil, stamped goatskin onlays of sleeping cats.