Gothic Journal III aka the Big Red Book
8×11″, 80 p.
Cover: red leather over oak with metal decorations
Endpapers: gold and white baroque pattern textured paper
Block: Fabriano Artistico 4-Deckle Watercolor Paper 22×30″, octavo
Stitching: tan linen thread over rawhide
The Big Red Book challenged me. I made so many mistakes, I thought about giving up on it many times. but each time, instead of giving up, I set it aside and thought about it. Figured out how to move forward, and corrected and kept going until I hit another block. Fell back and considered, did more research, corrected again. Finally I have a completed, functional object.
And it is big – 8×11, almost 2 inches thick, 80 pages of luxuriously heavy watercolor paper. It started out period techniques and materials – the boards are hand-cut, the interior glues are hide and wheat starch – but I started having problems with structure, so the endpapers are set in with PVA and there’s some PVA reinforcement in the spine for flexibility, and the hardware is obviously manufactured with some hand-worked (and Dremel-worked) modifications. This is the most complex book project I’ve completed – the first with any period glues, the first with corners and hinge, the first with a rounded spine. All things I’ve done once, now! I have a much clearer understanding of how to handle each of those individual components on their own and in combination.