Intro Similar to bespoke tailoring, ordering a handmade book
offers the opportunity to request some personal touches. A name can easily be added to the book
cover and the first page. The endpapers, where the book
cover joins the main part of the book
, can include some personal photographs. The bookbinding and printing processes put their own limitations on the quality of the final picture. Remember there will be a crease down the middle of the picture. Simple still landscapes work best with portraits and action shots proving difficult and challenging.
Description The notebooks are made by a retired Royal Navy Officer who has taken up bookbinding as a hobby. The story of these notebooks are an instance case of popping into the Queen Street shop for a curious browse, a conversation about materials and emerging with a selection of tweed off cuts to experiment as a bookbinding material. Conventional bookbinding wisdom is that wool and other animal fibre cloths are unsuitable book
covering materials. However employing a ‘quarter bound’ notebook format with high quality tweed and tartan cloth neatly avoids the obstacles to manufacturing a smart, practical working notebook. Our experiment has been successful.
