After about a dozen bookbinding classes, the 9cm stack of loose paper has been transformed into a tightly knit, disciplined, battalion of messengers. The metamorphosis involved 2-up stitching, attaching the end bands and hollow, securing the tapes to the boards, paring the leather and gluing it to the boards, and finally printing the gold lettered title on the spine. The photos below illustrate some of these intermediate stages.

Aside from the small matter of gluing down the end papers, there only remains the dust jacket to create, print and fit – a blank canvas which I’m looking forward to designing. Several people in my bookbinding class can’t understand why anyone would want to put a cover on a nice leather bound book, but, for me, there are two good reasons for doing so: first, my bookshelves are full of brightly coloured and good condition dust jacket spines – I don’t think plain spines look good among the rest of the books; and, secondly, the ability to personalise a book with a dust jacket design and to include additional descriptive text on the inside sleeves is a great opportunity to explain my relationship to the artefact and what it means to me – particularly for books I have created myself.