In my previous post, I had mentioned a journal I wanted to make for my friend Brian. It's in the works now, and I'll be discussing it next.
First, a bit of backstory. I may not always say much about backstory, but in this case it means talking about Rome. I was there for the weekend of November 11th last year -- and if you're familiar with the 11/11/2011 craze, you'll understand why that was especially exciting. Wish granted! I flew there from Budapest, where I was studying for the semester, and Brian flew down from his study abroad program in Reading, England.
I'm not religious, but also not anti-religious, and since he's Catholic it was a given that we'd be spending Sunday in the Vatican.
There I am on the cupola of St. Peter's Basilica. As in, we were standing on top of it. Mega-awesome, you say? You're so right.
We took the metro from our hotel that morning and got off at a stop a few blocks from St. Peter's Basilica. On our walk there down the shop-lined streets, we happened to spot a side courtyard with -- we couldn't believe our eyes -- a full suit of armor standing by the wall. Both of us being rather rennie-headed, we had to check this out. Opening onto the courtyard was a little shop of everything geeky, nerdy, and medieval our hearts could ever desire: swords, armor, costume pieces, replicas of Sting and Glamdring, of the rings of power, and of Harry Potter's wand, and a hundred other things, cloaks, books, tapestries, statues and statuettes, all we could dream of and more. I wish I'd gotten a picture of this, but it was too overwhelming and my shutter hand short-circuited. One room was full of books, orbs, crystals, and dragons. Brian found wax seal kits and, being Brian, needed to have a kit with his initials, BH.
This was also where he found the leather tome that began all this: big, black, ornately tooled, it was the journal to end all journals -- but we couldn't feasibly expect it to fit in our luggage, and he'd already found one good thing to bring home. Besides, with my well-begun bookbinding project in mind, I piped up that "I could totally do that for you." I wasn't completely sure I could, but hey, it'd be a good challenge.
Normally an offhand remark like that would never lead to follow-through, but you don't know this man. He holds himself to promises and so expects others to do the same. That, or he just really wanted this journal.
So this is it, my half-serious comment now blossoming as an attempt at making something just as cool as that leather journal we found outside the Vatican. What will make it "just as cool"? Well, it'll have to be big, for one thing. I'm picturing pages that make the end of a line of text feel like an accomplishment. I'm picturing epic scale, something big enough for Brian's ego, actually, which would probably mean a book like this, a meter tall:
(Source: Barefootliam-stock on DeviantArt.) Well, maybe not quite that big, but this won't be any piddly little diary you can find in any Barnes and Noble on the planet. Furthermore, it's gonna have to be extravagant. I'll have to figure out how to use leather, for one thing: how to tool it, maybe even gild it, maybe add a clasp or a bit of metalworking. This has to be worthy of the Warhammer 40k universe my dear Brian loves so much, something a bit like this Tome of Daemonic Knowledge.
The posts to follow will document my planning and creation of this work. Until next time, be crafty!
Go to: Part II
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