Playing with Leather

Last winter during my trip to Bucharest and my weekly visit to the local street fair I was lucky to find a letterpress printing plate. I have no typographic skills or knowledge except for a few printing trials made during my graphic classes in university, but I instantly figured out a use for it with my books. And it was fun!

I did not want to simply print onto the leather. I was looking for something a bit more abstract than that, so what I did was to press the clean plate until it formed an imprint into the leather. The leather I used was natural soft caw hide, without previous dyeing or any other treatment. After obtaining the imprint, I went on and applied leather colors onto the surface with a hand roll. I mixed several colors in layers and voila, the final result.

 

I’m still planning the best way to use these for book covers. Steampunk journal? Hard cover book? Not sure yet, but will post soon!

  

Elvis and the Howling Dogs

Good news! One of the 'unusual books' I mentioned in my last post was on Etsy's front page today thanks to the feature in a stunning treasury made by Fnine.

 
She's such a talented designer and to my surprise, she lives in Romania!
 
Check out her unique embroidered jewelry in her Etsy shop.
 

 

Unusual books

Lately I've been haunted by the idea of elongated books. I'm trying out new proportions, stretching, distorting, searching for the unusual. The idea came to me after seeing a book with uncommon dimensions in the collection of a friend. It was a prayer book, slender and long as it was meant to be hold in the hand. It felt really pleasant and special to have it in my hand so I instantly wanted to create one like it.

A book made out of a vintage glasses case.

Another, made of some very cracky old leather.

And here's one I just finished. My favorite so far, and pretty unusual I'd say.

This last is made of old leather from a Portuguese chair. I had only a small piece which I got from a friend  and used it as it was. It has beautiful irregular edges and the circles are marks left by the nails used in upholstery.

I'm going to play again with this idea for sure. Perhaps try something on horizontal, don't know yet. I like them as objects but can't help to wonder, are they practical too? I haven't tried one like this yet, so I might just go ahead and keep one for myself...