Jacek's Book: Finished!

Day five

... and the last day of work, although the book must still rest in the press for a few days before going away to its new home.

 Title is hand written - in translation, "Byzantine Manuscripts in Collections from Bucharest"

 Detail of the custom handmade brass book-clasps and painted edges

On the front cover, a small detail of a bestiary. Painting is done in egg tempera on golden leaf and varnished.

 

There are 15 blank page inserts with hand writing or hand painted decorative details on small pieces of handmade paper

 

Tomorrow I'll be back with photos of the book Jacek made for me. It's a gem.
  

Saturday's Fair Finds

Flea market was good to me today! I found all these goodies :)

Oh, that leather box! (nooo, I will not turn it into books!!!)

 
I was especially happy with this shoemaker's tools - I don't know if I'll ever use them but they are just beautiful to collect, aren't they?

And keys, many little rusty keys... in an old nivea box. So cute!

 

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!

  

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...  

  

A Wonderful Coincidence

This month we celebrated one year since we moved to Vila do Conde, in the north of Portugal. When I first came here I had no idea if I will like it or if it was really the place where I wanted to live. I didn’t know anybody and being such a small quiet city, I had no expectations of meeting people or making new friends around here.
 
And then this wonderful unexpected thing happens, and one day I discover a blog of another artist who works with leather and lives right here, just a few streets away from me! Two weeks later I receive an email from him, as he had already discovered me before I got to contact him first. His name is José Machado and he also moved here with his family exactly a year ago. He is a creative shoemaker who - honestly, I’m not saying that because we’re friends now :)- makes the most beautiful and original shoes I ever seen!!!

His work is the perfect blend between antiquity and medieval styles and contemporary materials, colors and textures. These are one of a kind shoes made after extensive documentation, beautifully designed and carefully created. To me they seem some magic objects that came out of a beautiful story and once you put them on, they’ll take you to some dreams world.

José has a background in theater stage lighting and sometimes designs pieces for actors 
and theater play.

You can see the beautiful shoes for yourself on his blog http://ecosdooficio.blogspot.com/ and sneak a peek into his studio.

As for me, I must dedicate a separate post to my first visit to his workshop and how amazing was that experience! For now I can only say, gosh… I have soooo much to learn from him!

 

The Silver Book

Very rarely I make a custom order in Etsy. It’s quite difficult because I like to have my liberty of creating and most of the times it’s the vintage materials that I work with that define the aspect of my books. But I do agree to make a custom book when I really like the idea of the customer. In this case, the request was quite a challenge as I never made such a big book before: 9 cm. thickness, a book with black leather cover and silver fittings and lock.

The owner is such a wonderful person who totally trusted my choices and suggestions, so I really enjoyed collaborating with her on this joint project. I’m really glad that the book is in such good hands as hers – just take a look at the pic below, how wonderful it looks arrived at home!

Lucky me :)

What could be better for a bookbinder of vintage journals than to find authentic vintage supplies? I was so thrilled to find this beautiful waxed thread for sale last weekend. Real collector’s item! My only regret was that the man only had 4 spools left. Three of them were produced by Droulers-Vernier, Lille - a French manufacturer specialized in leather industry, active from the 19th to the first half of the 20th century.

Lucky me!

A treasure from a trip to Lisbon

Last week I went in a very short trip to Lisbon. The weather was awful but I was really excited by the trip as I wanted to buy bookbinding supplies (very hard to find otherwise) and to go to my favorite fair from Portugal: Feira da Ladra. That is the fair I went to every Saturday for almost three years, before moving to the north of Portugal.
Saturday was raining, at the fair people had everything covered in plastic foil and I was already getting disappointed that after walking up and down those streets several times I was still unable to find something nice. And then there it was: one of the most beautiful bags I ever found! The man who sold it to me even made me a deal on the price because it was raining, haha. I was so happy! So here it is. Beautiful!

The Magic Journal

Today I finally finished a journal that has been waiting in my studio for a looong time. I've been playing with ideas for it since a few months but I liked so much this leather that I wasn't quite sure how to get the best out of it. I think this might be the first journal I make that looks somehow romantic, doesn't it?

Saturday's Fair Finds

Saturday is the most exciting day of the week for me: the day of the Flea Market!! In Portuguese, Feira da Vandoma, from Porto.

I love going there each time I can, it’s really like lottery! Look at my finds from yesterday:

A very vintage tool bag which I bought to use the leather for my next books but now I'm not sure anymore, it really looks great just the way it is.

An interesting agenda from 1914, it certainly smells like an oldy! It has mostly blank pages inside but also a few writings from different time periods, including some anachronistic entries, from which I suppose it was used by someone who randomly marked important events from his/her family history. The agenda starts with the sentence: “My son got divorced from his wife according to her wish”. There are other interesting entries, and this got me thinking, apropos of today’s blogs and information sharing… how would this person feel to know that his/her journal will be sold at the fair and read by anyone (like me), and how, on the contrary, most of us today are willingly keeping open journals and can’t wait others to read them :) It’s quite a change, isn’t it?

And finally, I got something else that is worth being shown. As my boyfriend said when he saw it, this is a Cobra-Zebra leather hide!! It is actually painted and I don’t know why I bought it, I will probably not use it for my books but I guess it is not something that you see every day :)