Bookbinding Throwback: My First Binding with Leather Inlays
Another bookbinding throwback. I made this binding some ten years ago or so. It was my second attempt on cover design with leather inlays. The first try was much-much simpler — I should probably show it some other time.
So many things I would have made differently now. However, the understanding that the image is slightly skewed to one side was evident to me since the very beginning.
The book is the Russian edition of Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s The Ninth Gate. It was published in two paperbacks, and I joined them together. As you can see in one of the photos, I didn’t cut the edge, as I didn’t know how to do that well at that moment of my career.
Full leather binding with false bands on the spine. The choice of leather — sheepskin — was not the best. But that was all I could find at the moment. However, as you can see, I didn’t forget to add a ribbon!
The illustration is taken from De Umbrarum Regni Novem Portis (“Of the Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows”) — a fictional book that plays the central part in the storyline of Pérez-Reverte’s novel.
And as I just found out Aristide Torchia, the fictional author of the book, apprenticed in Leiden (Leyden), as Pérez-Reverte. The city where I live today. I didn’t remember this fine detail at all!
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