A design binding for White Tulips 99 haiku by Ronald Baatz using raised onlays to give a bas relief effect. You can read the blog describing its construction.
In a Design Binding, the book’s cover becomes the canvas to creatively interpret the book’s content. The theme is often carried into the book itself, choosing endpapers and decoration to the edge of the text block that reinforce the intent of the cover image. Some clients hand the entire project over to us saying, “Do something interesting.” Others are more involved in the design making for a collaborative process. We welcome both approaches in creative binding.
A design binding for Captains Courageous in full leather, depicting the sail pattern of a New England fishing schooner.
Design binding for Yeats’s Irish Fairy and Folk Tales using goat skin onlays to depict the mythic Banshee.
Design binding for The Sun Also Rises, in full leather with leather onlays.
An Art Deco inspired design binding for The Great Gatsby.
Full leather drop spine box for an early volume on the Masons, using imagery from the book’s illustrations.
Design Binding for The Romance of King Arthur, illustrated by Arthur Rackham
A design binding for Max Weber’s Primitives, a book of his woodcuts and poems. The design is based upon African body painting.
Walden by Henry David Thoreau, illustrated by photographs of Edward Steichen. The design binding illustrates the pond and features a white pine tree and a detail of the timber frame for his cabin that Thoreau constructed using the pine growing nearby. I re-read this again, many years ago, while I, too, was building my first house from white pine growing on the land where we were to live.
This design binding was created for the Edmund Dulac illustrated edition of Stories from Hans Anderson using manipulated onlays of goat with gold leaf on sculpted boards for a presentation copy with an autograph sketch by the illustrator.
