Family Bible, part III: finished

Today I put the finishing touches on my commissioned re-binding of a paperback CCD Bible. I am extremely pleased with the results and I hope my client will be as well!

The plan was to use red Italian (Cialux) book cloth to cover the cover boards. While I love the look of this fabric, I was at first not entirely sure how I'd put a title on it—I don't have the tools or skills to gild it or screen print it, and the laser printer I used on the paper-covered Plato books would probably not work so well on cloth. However, I remembered back to Brian's Tome and decided the best thing to do would be an embossed look.

I was able to achieve this by cutting the letters out of a sheet of cardstock and pasting it over the front coverboard. The effect is subtle, but combined with the very bold lettering (traced directly from the original cover), it shows up well and has quite an impact. Unfortunately my camera is no good at capturing it—you need to hold it in your hands to really enjoy the effect.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I felt that this book would be incomplete without headbands. By an odd little bit of irony, I'm too lazy to get hold of machine-made headbands, so I defaulted to the more work-intensive task of handmade headbands.

These are stitched directly onto the text block, with the tie-downs passing between pages and through the kraft paper backing rather than through signatures. I used top-sewing upholstery thread over a core of whipping twine, and followed this excellent tutorial.

The book has a very nice profile when lying open. I think this may be the cleanest execution of covering and endpaper paste-down that I've managed so far.

Finally, my client had asked for me to incorporate the inside of the original front cover, if possible, because it had the family name written in it. So here is a shot of the old cover snuggled onto the inside of the new front cover—though I blurred the name for privacy.

Plato's Makeover - completed

Good afternoon! I'm back, and I've brought books: two new hardcovers for a professor's library. Click for larger images:

My last post was a WIP shot of rebind work on my dad's Plato paperbacks, and now here are the finished products. They are perfectly matched. Their Greek titles, Gorgias and Politeia, were printed via laser printer onto the cover material and positioned over a rectangular piece of cardstock. Once the cover was glued, I used my bonefolder to find the edges of the cardstock, producing a raised effect.

The cover paper is a thick, creamy cardstock with metallic gold swirls, and the spines and corners are dark forest green (though they look a little black in these photographs). I went with navy blue for the endpapers, a paper with tiny bits of gold tinsel to pick up the metallics on the cover.

One of the books came with a special task. Dad has a little notebook that he used to keep binder-clipped to the back cover of the Gorgias, not a very permanent solution when the re-binding happened. So, I fashioned a pocket for the inside of the back cover which perfectly fits the notebook.

More projects to come soon. I'm working on a re-bind of A Little Princess which I will post as a photodocumentary of how the process works, and I've also got another big project from my muse of epicity, Brian.

The Tome, part VI: Completion

(Enter BINDER, who clears throat.)

BINDER: Allow me to present to you...the Tome, a hand-bound book in its final state.

(Enter BOOK.)

BINDER: It seems to be a little shy, but we'll soon fix that.  For the moment, you can see more here than you might think: the dapper red ribbon, the hand-stitched headband, a bit of Brian's handwriting, the pattern on the endpapers.  A book has a lot to say in its edges and corners.

Still, if you'll bear with me, perhaps I can convince it to show its cover.

(aside, whispering) Only a corner?  All right, that's fine, but you must get it together soon, promise? (addresses audience) We're still getting over our nerves, but here's a detail of the leather.  The headcap was shaped with a piece of yarn and the leather was pressed down around a knotwork relief on the front.  Now let's see if...

Aha!  So, it's not entirely spineless after all!  I think it may be ready.  Ladies and gentlemen...the leatherbound cover of Brian's Tome!

Here you see featured in relief the writer's coat of arms: a sword, two olive branches, and a shield.  Parts of the branches were stamped onto the leather; the rest was pressed down around those cardboard forms I so painstakingly carved.  Beneath you'll find the volume number.  That's correct, Volume I; for I don't expect this man to soon stop writing.  Perhaps next year I'll make Volume II and see how far my craft has come.

Lifting the cover, we get a look at the handsomely marbled endpapers. (As usual, you may click for a larger view of the image.)

Though not hand-marbled, these papers are a step above printed papers and no two are quite the same.  This picture lets you see how the endpapers, ribbon, and headbands have been coordinated in a red-black-yellow scheme.

Now, turning the page...

...we find that the book has been given a title—a nod to the Doctor's own Journal of Impossible Things.

The writer has already begun his work in this volume, but I'm afraid that's not yet ready for display.  We can hope that someday, perhaps, something written in this volume will be lucky enough to catch some publisher's eye; when that happens, I will most certainly show you the manuscript.

(BINDER gives a bow.  Exeunt BINDER and BOOK.)

Thanks for watching.

Go to: Part V | Retrospect

The Tome, part IV: Preparing the cover

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!

Go to: Part III | Part V