More than enough hands were raised to make me happy to take photos. Today had been terribly hot, just like yesterday but hotter, but thanks to my private teaching I almost finished some new books. More about them some other day. This is just a short introduction post about the mysteries of making a full leather binding. I won't be writing a tutorial, but I'll take photos whenever I remember.

My work in progress is a full leather binding in grayish blue shades on leather. The book is called "Musta kivi valkoisen päällä" (=a black rock on top of the white one), it's a selection of César Vallejo's poetry and prose. I've taken apart a copy of trade edition book and fixed the spines of signatures with japanese paper. If you wish to find out what all this means this is a good site to check out.

Leather is expensive. Good leather is even more expensive. So it really is a good idea to plan ahead as far as possible. I don't usually make sketches this accurate, but since this book is going to be more colorful (eh, many grays and blues) I made a colorful sketch, which will probably still change along the way.

Here's the sketch of how things could look once finished, different leathers to be used for on-lays, the book (with guards still untrimmed) and some papers I thought would be my end papers. Of course it was less than five minutes after taking this photo that I decided differently. I'm not completely sure how to put the title to the spine. I'm sure it'll be tiny letters cut from black leather, but how to position the text and what kind of font I should use are still beyond my thinking process. After taking this photo I've pared my leather hinges and cut my end papers down to almost right size. Now they need to be put together and the book block is ready for sewing.

I hope you all are enjoying the weekend, despite the weather, be it too sunny or too rainy!