Remember how I said this book was going to have to be leatherbound? Well, it is, and now I have the leather. For this, I went to Ann Arbor last Saturday to pay homage to Hollander's Store of All Things Bookish and Beautiful. Seriously, they have everything. Try not to drool on the very expensive papers. (There, now you have my birthday wish list.)
They did have some of the best bookbinding leather, which is morocco goatskin, but it was prohibitively expensive and I don't think I'm exactly worthy of it yet. Instead, I brought home a small hide of calf leather in black, along with a sheet of French marbled paper for the endpapers.
To practice working the leather, I overlaid a scrap onto a carved block of wood, producing the J. R. R. Tolkien monogram in the photo. At this point, I started feeling a little overwhelmed by the magnitude of my first leather project. I very nearly chickened out and revised my plan to a quarter-bound book, using leather only on the spine and that marbled paper as the cover material. However, while that would still be good-looking and no doubt wiser, I don't think it would satisfy what I hoped to achieve with this journal. Remember, it has to be
- of an epic scale and
- ornate,
and furthermore, as per Brian's hints and nudges, it should ideally incorporate
- some Celtic knotwork,
- his 40k coat of arms, and
- a volume number (he'll have more birthdays).
If tooling, stamping, and/or gold leafing can be worked into that arrangement, all the better.
So, I reconsidered and came up with a feasible design. The main feature will be a raised insignia; I expect that such dimensionality will add an extra sense of weight to the tome, and besides, it's easier than tooling. The design is intentionally massive and not terribly detailed—or, as I like to think of it, uncluttered—which will be easier on my novice hands. However, I still find it aesthetically pleasing.
The olive branches and volume number will be tooled. Whether this will involve more or less work than cutting out the cardboard for the raised areas, I couldn't say, because that was an absolute pain.
Have a look at the spine, which will feature raised bands, and at the ribbon marker poking out from under the headband:
Right, so, the next step is to cover it all with leather. Wish me luck!
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