Trying my hand

It's been too long since I haven't painted. At least on something other than my books :) One of my early fascinations was illuminated manuscripts. Many years ago I made copies from Byzantine manuscripts and had them exhibited in club from Lucerne, Switzerland. With help from my friends in two weeks I sold almost all my works. It was such a great experience for me at that time, as I was a fresh graduate from university. Now, the preparations for the medieval fair opened my appetite for medieval manuscripts again. So I made these small reproductions from the Bestiary of Aberdeen, an English manuscript from around 1200 available online here.

I really enjoyed to paint these details. The copies measure around 4 x 4 inches and are painted in egg tempera on golden leaf.

And below, a few archive images that I am lucky to still have. They are from the expo in Lucerne in 2003. All I had at that time was a floppy-disk Mavica that did its best :)

   Magdalena Club, Lucerne, 2003.
  

Just Joined the Ranks of Facebook

It was about time, right? I'm still trying to sort things out with my page but here's a preview

Who's willing to help me change that nasty "0 people like this" ? Come visit here :) 
  

Making Books is Fun! (to watch)

Just discovered this great video and had to re-post for my bookbinding friends :)

"Back before inkjets, printing was a time-consuming laborious process, that took teams of people working together to produce just one book. Now days, any crabby person can sit at home and crank out stuff on a blog or even make internet video. This movie will make you happy as you watch others toil for 'The Man' under primitive conditions."

Such a wonderfully tedious process. Impressive, isn't it?

     

My First Fair

And not any fair... it was a medieval one, with costumes, music, dance and lots of fun. I participated with my friend Zé who makes the amazing Machado shoes. My books got along very well with his shoes, happily sharing the same booth for 4 full days. It was a nice experience, a bit exhaustive for a novice like me, we had sun, we had rain, and some pretty funny adventures. We also had some sales, and that was the best of it :) 

 

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!