Saturday, January 21, 2012

Jacek's Book: The Cover

By now Jacek's book is long finished. But I'm still behind on posting about its making...

Day four

For the covers I thought to make something simple, using natural leather, not dyed, and to apply only a bit of patina on it in the end. The only decoration that would give it a precious aspect would be a detail of a Byzantine manuscript which I would paint myself on golden leaf.

Preparing the boards, the spine stiffer, mounting them together and cutting out a recessed rectangle shape in the front cover where the painting will later be placed.

Mounting the clasps using "hinges" made of thick wire and covered in leather.

 
Mounting the clasp into the cover by cutting out the shape to avoid creating a relief on the inside. This is followed by fixing it with epoxi glue (for metal).

Preparing the leather for the covers - paring it at the edges



Tooling the cover



And painting a detail of a bestiary with egg tempera on golden leaf, followed by varnishing.
    

7 comments:

jacek said...

Wonderful job Teo!!! Thank you again...

Anonymous said...

awesome job!

Louise said...

Beautiful work, as always! Such intricate attention to detail Teo. Thank you for sharing this with us! Lucky Jacek, I say!

Unknown said...

You will show us the final cover, right?

Adeline said...

oh, it turned out beautifully! I love the simplicity of the natural colored leather and pretty tooling. Can't wait to see photos of the final book! Impeccable work, Teo!

Teo said...

I'm so glad you like it. I appreciate all your wonderful comments my friends!

Mihai Vârtejaru said...

you should do a video or two. It s fascinating. I m still looking for a good source of brass and coppe plate to make clasps, but no luck still.

BTW, I love blind tooling on lighter leather. very very very nice!