Ancora de Salvacion, 1865

This is Ancora de Salvacion o Devocionario by Jose Mack, (Barcelona, 1865) It has a set of beautiful clasps that I wanted to share with you. I've seen tons of book clasps in my career, and I especially love those tiny clasps that come with small antique photo albums or miniature Bibles like this one. I wish there are more craftsmen and women who specialize in REAL book clasps in the world, but I know they are hard to find now days. (Please contact me if you are such a craftsman/woman!) As you know, there are all sorts of "crafts" of old days that involve in the trade of bookbinding, i.e. letterpress printing, calligraphy, carpentry, painting, paper making, marbling, leather crafting and metal crafting. So, as a bookbinder, it's always good to have the knowledge and actual skills of all of those trades that contribute to binding books. But  unfortunately, it's such a luxury to be trained in every trade, let alone to excel at them all. One thing that you might be surprised to know is that having some skills in working with metal is very useful when it comes to bookbinding and restoration. You might think metal craft would be the last thing you should know in bookbinding, but it's not so. You should know how to work with metals if you are a conservation bookbinder anyway, and it will vastly expand your visions if you're an artist. I was tutored by an experienced jewellery maker years ago and got all the basic metal crafting skills from her, and have no regret spending time (and money!) on the education. Well, by the way, just so you know that you can make your own book clasps easily by having only a few basic metal craft tools. (No molding, soldering or engraving involved, Yey!) All you need is a bench pin, a sawing frame with a blade, a flax shaft (for making holes), few grades of sand papers and a sheet of metal. If you wanna make your own rivets, you're gonna need a ball-peen & cross-peen hammers and a metal rod. These tools and materials aren't expensive at all. Shown on the picture (right) is an unfinished clasp that I started making several years ago. (became too busy and forgot about it..haha.. ) As you see on the picture, they are put together by only rivets. (See my design lay-out sketches. The visible one's are dome rivets, the invisible ones are flush rivets. This process that doesn't require any "heat" as to soldering & molding, is called "cold connections".) Obviously, it's missing the key and needs to be polished/executed better, but you get my point. You can make your own clasps in a few hours with only the basic metal crafting skills! But first, you should get an instructional book on metal crafting to know how to use those tools, etc.