Switched from PVA glue to wheat paste for my Japanese stab bindings

Used to think PVA was the only way to go until I tried an old recipe from a bookbinder in Kyoto last fall. Has anyone else made the switch to natural pastes for certain projects and noticed a difference in flexibility or smell?

2 comments

2 Comments

loganburns22d ago

That old Kyoto recipe sounds interesting. My cat knocked over a jar of PVA last week and I ended up using a flour-water mix from a 1920s bookbinding pamphlet, not the same thing but the pages feel way nicer now.

iris_rivera4422d ago

Oh man, that flour-water mix sounds like a total accident but a good one. Was it just plain flour and water or did you add anything else to it, like a bit of starch or something? I've seen old recipes call for rice flour too, but never tried it myself. Does it hold up well over time, or does it get sticky in humid weather? I'd love to know more about how it actually performs on the pages.