Flashback Friday: Italian newspaper book

On July 9, 2006, Italy won the World Cup and I was there for it. And by there, I mean that I watched the game on a large outdoor screen in a jam-packed piazza in Cortona, Italy. When Italy won, hundreds of people paraded through the streets, car horns honked all night long, and red wine literally rained on the crowd. The next day, I bought several newspapers to commemorate the event.

One of these newspapers was used to make a set of two books, one for me to keep and one as a gift for Tony. We're newspaper people. Always have been, always will be. We were both editors of our high school paper, as our relationship was just beginning. And now, ten years later, we once again work for the same newspaper. Tony is the city editor of The News Virginian, and I work as the production manager.



These books aren't archival and they're not perfect, but they're intended to be unique souvenirs from a summer spent binding books and watching "football." This gift sparked an interest in collecting international newspapers for Tony, and he's since had friends bring him papers from places like France, Brazil, Canada, and Jamaica.



The book itself is fairly simple. All of the newspaper pages were torn down to size by hand, which allowed for the rough edges of the pages. The covers were essentially a collage of different photos, headlines, and graphics that I found especially intriguing. The books were bound in the Coptic style.



Since I work at a newspaper and constantly have stacks of outdated newspapers at my disposal, I've been considering making more books similar to these. I'm planning to sell my books a few craft fairs in town throughout the upcoming year, and I thought some books made from the local newspaper could be pretty popular. I even saved all of the newspapers from our record-breaking snowstorms this winter for future bookmaking purposes.