Artistic binding on: David Esslemont, Inside the Book, Solmentes Press, Powys, Wales, 2002. Bound in 2015-2016.

THIS BINDING IS FOR SALE FOR $2000.

Inside the Book is a text containing disparate elements, as the old saying goes, with “everything but the kitchen sink.” In response, the binding is an assemblage, created by both the binder and the reader, from multiple elements, shapes, decorative techniques, even variant designs. The binding utilizes virtually all of the decorative techniques I have uses on design bindings over the last twenty-five years. The moveable panels may be attached to the binding using magnets inset beneath the purple circles on the boards. The reader choses the configuration of the panels; they can be readily moved, turned, added inside or outside the boards, or even left aside. This binding offers thousands and thousands of designs. Every reader has the opportunity to create the binding he or she desires.

Tow Flax paper endpapers with white goatskin hinges.

Sewn all along on three linen cords.

All edges decorated with black ink and metallic foils.

Red and gray silk front bead headbands.

Rare Earth magnets were inset in the boards to hold the panels in place.

The binding was covered with scarf-joined orange goatskin and bone white goatskin.

Decorated with circles of purple goatskin, kidskin, and alum-tawed calfskin. Tooled in gold and palladium leaf.

There are seven magnetic panels:

Black Tyvek pierced to reveal boards colored with watercolor ink.

Papyrus decorated with black engrossing ink and circles stamped with metallic foil.

Suminagashi stamped with genuine gold foil.

White box calf with inlaid circles of blue and magenta kidskin.

Black goatskin decorated with palladium leaf and genuine gold foil.

Magenta kidskin stamped with genuine gold foil.

Green goatskin with feathered onlays.

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