Bookbinding with Outrages Press

Produce a cloth covered hardback book with Outrages Press using Japanese bookbinding techniques. Go through the process of selecting, arranging, and cutting pages followed by decorative binding techniques.

Compile fragments from woodblock prints in the sketchbooks of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, depicting the supernatural, flora, fauna, and everyday life.

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What makes a thing - a book, an object, a work?

Is it the author who imagines it? The material that endures it?

The time and artisanship invested? The skill - or the absence of it?

Is it the feeling and intent? The effort? The act itself?

This book will never be published.

Or maybe it will.

Or maybe it already has, in some other form, through some other hands.

What is certain is this: it is, at least in part, the product of yours.

Fittingly, the content of this not-quite-book is drawn from a larger work that itself was never intended for publication. You are working, loosely, in the long shadow of Katsushika Hokusai - an artist as enigmatic as he was prolific.

Known for his shifting names, restless practice, and relentless curiosity, Hokusai’s work blurred boundaries between the everyday and the extraordinary. His Manga, a collection of sketches rather than a conventional narrative, captured fleeting gestures, fleeting people, fleeting ideas. Not masterpieces in isolation, but fragments of attention.

Through those fragments, Japanese aesthetic sensibilities quietly entered the wider world, influencing art far beyond their origin. Even now, his work circulates - reproduced, reinterpreted, commercialised - so widely that authorship begins to dissolve into ubiquity - who owns an image seen everywhere?

And yet, despite this diffusion, Hokusai’s work remains grounded. His figures - whether ordinary labourers or fantastical beings - carry weight, presence, and familiarity. The extraordinary is rendered with the texture of the everyday.

His quiet suggestion: art is not elsewhere. It is here. In movement. In repetition. In ordinary people. In the common imagination and in the physicality of the craftspersons work bench.

So: make this book.

Make it perfectly.

Make it imperfectly.

But make it yours.

Leave out pages that don't take your fancy. Rearrange them. The pages are deliberately unnumbered - there is no single correct order, only implied ones. Follow them, or discard them. Preserve its structure, or undo it entirely.

There is a quiet beauty in imperfection. In the small misalignments, the uneven tension of thread, the slight warp of paper after it has been handled. These are not flaws to be corrected but traces of process. They are evidence that something has been made rather than manufactured.

In the spirit of wabi-sabi (侘寂), value can be found in the incomplete, the irregular, the transient. What is imperfect is alive, and what is alive cannot be fully controlled. Let the marks of making remain visible; they are not distractions from the work, but part of its meaning.

In a world increasingly dominated by the virtual and the frictionless, take a moment to consider the physical: the stubborn, satisfying reality of making something that occupies space.

This is a book, or a rehearsal of one, or something adjacent.

Enjoy it.

Or don’t.

And, if you wish, use the space here to number, name, or otherwise codify your issue, your copy, your edition.

Or don’t.

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Outrages Press is a not-for-profit press and book bindery dedicated to preserving traditional artisan crafts through a transnational fusion of Japanese bookbinding philosophies—rooted in wabi-sabi (侘び寂び), mindfulness, and respect for materials—and the proud, independent craftsmanship of Sheffield’s Little Mesters. We practice slow, intentional making, sourcing tools, paper, and services locally wherever possible to strengthen our community and reduce environmental impact.

Inspired by Sheffield’s legacy of radical activism and its vibrant, multiethnic culture, we publish works that amplify marginalised voices, challenge injustice, and foster solidarity. Every book is crafted as an act of resistance and care.

All revenue generated after covering labour and material costs is donated to migrant support initiatives, trans solidarity networks, and ongoing workplace justice campaigns, ensuring our work contributes directly to the liberation and dignity of the communities we serve.