Merry Christmas!

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and that your Santa was as generous as mine this year. 

This is what my Santa had in his bag... there's really nothing better for me than leather, bags and book covers :) Thanks so much!! 
  

  

Mine all mine

This year I got my own Christmas present - this absolutely fabulous wall clock from Paulaart. Actually Santa came two months earlier as if I didn't snatch it, it would probably hang on someone else's wall by now. I fell in love with it long time ago and when Paula discounted it in the shop I just couldn't resist anymore. It has an amazing story as it's made of a cow watering bowl she got from an old barn in Vermont. The place was demolished shorty after for building something else. So I'm the proud owner not only of a wall clock, but of a piece of history! As Paula said, imagine all the cow tongues that have dipped inside of this bowl! :)

Paula makes contemporary artworks from found and recycled objects. Her work has always fascinated me. She is one of those 'natural born talents' who struggles to live through art without making compromises. She has an interesting blog (one of the few I always read) and very much alive at http://selftaughtartist.blogspot.com/ .

Thank you my friend! I love the inspiring tic-tac of your work!!
  

Medievals

These are probably my favorite three books I've made so far. I think they represents a step forward in my bookbinding practice - they are books with memories, that tell stories even before being written.  

I found this wonderful quote while writing on the endpages of a book:

"The labour of the writer is the refreshment of the reader. The one depletes the body, the other advances the mind. Whoever you are, therefore, do not scorn but rather be mindful of the work of the one labouring to bring you profit... If you do not know how to write you will consider it no hardship, but if you want a detailed account of it let me tell you that the work is heavy: it makes the eyes misty, bows the back, crushes the ribs and belly, brings pain to the kidneys and makes the body ache all over. Therefore, O reader, turn the leaves gently and keep your fingers away from the letters, for as the hailstorm ruins the harvest of the land so does the unserviceable reader destroy the book and the writing. As the sailor finds welcome the final harbour, so does the scribe the final line. Deo gratias semper." 

Colophon, from the "Silos Beatus" (12th century).

   The endpages
  

The Teeny-Tiny Library

Lately I've been working on large books, on a larger scale. Tonight I've just finished ten books which are going to London. I'm pretty tired and look forward to my holiday which luckily starts early this year, on 4th of December. I'll close my shop for a while and focus on new (book) projects and designs.

But for a change, here is my teeny-tiny library. I've been working on it in between the large book orders. I still have a lot to fill :)

To My Bookbinding Friends

I just stumbled upon this video and I loved it, so I thought you might like to see it too. I couldn't embed it but there's a link to it at youtube. Oh, how nice is the art of bookbinding!