Jamie Kamph
2003 WINNER: DeGolyer Award for American Bookbinding

I was a writer, book collector, and publisher before being inspired by Deborah Evetts to study bookbinding under Hope Weil in New York City in 1973. In 1976, I established Stonehouse Bindery at my farm in Lambertville, New Jersey, where I have continued to work as a book conservator and designer binder while pursuing a serious interest in the history of bookbinding. I have lectured, taught, and exhibited bindings at such institutions as Princeton University Library, Mt. Holyoke College, the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Grolier Club, and the Pierpont Morgan Library. I am a professional associate of the AIC, a member of the Guild of Book Workers, and of the Grolier Club. I am author of the book A Collector's Guide to Bookbinding, published by Oak Knoll Books in 1982.

DESIGN PROPOSAL. My design for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 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. My 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, people to the raft, and is an escape tool in the text, suggests the interdependence of the characters beyond that of slave and master. It is inlaid beige goatskin, blind-tooled outside the framework and gilt within to suggest the relationships between fiction and reality.

SAMPLE BINDING. Joseph Conrad. Youth. Illustrated by Blair Hughes-Stanton. Kentfield, CA: The Allen Press, 1959.
 
Gray oasis goatskin with multicolored, gold-tooled onlays in a frieze design, based on an antique Malaysian pattern, into which I have incorporated figures taken from a text illustration. Titled in gold on spine with letters made up from small tools. Tangerine-colored linen box, lined in gray ultrasuede, with title label gold-tooled to match binding.