The Lives Of Gallant Ladies, Cold Gold tooling.

The gold leaf was applied to the pre dyed surface of the leather (on the book) and worked over with warm tools. The design is fluid, free hand if you like. This is not as easy as it sounds, working to a design ensures that mistakes are worked out before the tool is even used. However, I sometimes feel that working to design can result in work that is rigid and cold.
When the tooling was complete the surface of both books was worked over with a very fine wire wool. This reveals the dye work underneath creating a number of layers.

The Lives Of Gallant Ladies, 5 books of gold leaf later....

The surface of the leather has been worked over with a very fine silicon carbide paper and lots of small pieces of gold leaf have been applied to the surface. Each square of gold leaf is about 1.5mm square and overlaps the squares next to it.
It has taken longer than i expected... about 2 days longer in fact.




Over the weekend I will be hoping to create more texture by pressing various things into the surface and tooling in a more trad way.

The bookbinder at work... love

A OUTRANCE is, at last, finished. Following a bout of some detailed stuff on the book one of the students took this very charming image of 'The Bookbinder at Work' Sad.



When does a bookbinder love their tools too much ? I would suppose when the bookbinder buys an antique box from the well known and much loved jewelry company of hamilton and Inches, 88 Princes Street, Edinburgh (by Appointment)



Love is a wonderful thing.........

The Lives Of Gallant Ladies, leather on the books

The Lives Of Gallant Ladies.

Now that the final sanding has been done to the boards and spine of the book I can turn my attention to the leather.
The skin was split to 0.6 mm with the turn-ins pared down to 0.4 mm.

The design has been hand dyed with spirit dye applied with a small brush. There is still more to be done but this is the base or foundation design. Being a two volume edition the 2nd volume will be different. So far, so good. I particularly enjoy seeing the brush strokes, the painterly quality lends depth and movement.

The Diary of a Philip Pullman binder

The new blog is now on line, please follow the links.

Diary of a Philip Pullman Binder.

Coming soon, a blog site dedicated to the Binding of a Philip Pullman book 'A Outrance'