The final post about the Ernest Gimson binding commission covers details about the profiled endpapers (inspired by the pew designs), the decisions I made regarding the doublures for this binding, and also the container it was housed in.
As you will recall, in post number one I experimented with profiling different sheets of coloured paper to make up the endpapers for this binding. Although I had already added the embroidered outlines of different pew designs to the endpapers before sewing them to the book, I decided to leave cutting the final outer profiles until this stage as I didn’t want them to get damaged during the forwarding process.
Once the covering leather of the book had completely dried, I was able to open the boards up and remove the capping materials, revealing the endpapers again.
I slipped a small cutting mat underneath each of the coloured papers and started to cut the profiles using a sharp scalpel.
I had carefully placed them so that once cut, the profile of the sheet beneath it could in turn be seen.
I explained in a previous post that I paid special attention to the ends of the threads, with the cut ends frayed and glued down to hold them in position, as you can see in the below image. As you will see further down this post, in order to conceal these glued ends I stuck down small half-circles of gold leaf on top of each of them.
The leather joints were stuck down and the inside of the boards was infilled with a layer of watercolour paper and an upper layer of Zerkall before being sanded flat.
For the doublures of the binding I wanted to mimic the grid pattern of the cover without copying it. Ernest Gimson loved textiles and designed many patterns but in his time embroidery was still considered a female craft, so he didn’t embroider them himself. Instead it was his sisters and cousins who made the pieces, for their own pleasure:
“The Arts and Crafts fashion for embroidery started by Morris & Co. was for brightly coloured, complex naturalistic designs. Gimson created deceptively simple designs often with repeating patterns. He liked to design whitework – white embroidery on a white ground. This fitted with the modest cottage interiors he fashioned for his family and himself. Many are still treasured by Gimson’s family. Some were shown at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, with both his and the maker’s name proudly displayed on them.” (Cheltenham Museum)
I therefore chose to use semi-transparent vellum for the edge-to-edge doublures of the book, embroidered with the same gridded pattern as on the cover design. I chose to only pattern this in shades of white, and my reason behind this was to pay homage to the whitework embroidery designs which he created in the 1880s and 1890s.
I purchased some creamy goatskin vellum from William Cowley, the last remaining commercial manufacturer of traditional animal skin parchment and vellum in the United Kingdom. The family-run business has been hand-crafting these materials since 1870 in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, using techniques that have remained largely unchanged for centuries.
Like with the cover design, a grid was pricked and sewn onto the vellum. I then selected onlays in tones of white and beige to use in some of the squares. As it was such a beautiful skin, I opted to only decorate a few of the squares on the vellum to allow the vellum to be on display.
The stitches were built up in the same manner as on the covers, using both couching stitches and French knots to apply texture.
As well as infilling and sanding the inside of the boards flush, I also made sure that the edges were painted with a layer of white acrylic paint to mask the colour of the leather that was evident from the turn-ins. I wanted an even white tone across the whole surface of the inner board as the vellum was semi-transparent and any colour beneath it would have been really obvious once it was stuck down.
I would usually apply PVA glue to the reverse of the doublure, but in this instance I decided to apply it mainly to the inside of the board, and then applied an extra fine layer to the reverse of the vellum too just before positioning the doublure in place. I made sure I rubbed it down well, all over the surface and especially around the four edges.
I then went about concealing the glued thread ends of the profiled endpapers with little half cirlces of gold leaf (backed onto Japanese tissue).
I used the same gold leaf to also add half-circles of gold onto the covers of the binding and this point the binding was completely finished!
No fine binding would be complete without a presentation container though. I added another Ernest Gimson cabinet handle design to the label panel containing the gold-tooled signature so that it would match the spine of the binding.
The carcass of the box was made from Wenge, a tropical hardwood that is known for its dark brown colour, distinctive black grain patterns, and durability. The box was lined with offcuts of all the paper and leathers used for the binding, cut and placed in a grid-like pattern.
The trays of the box were lined with a flecked brown wool felt to give the book a soft cushion to sit on.
All in all this was a really enjoyable commission to work on. My usual choice of colours to use for a binding wouldn’t necessarily be browns, but it was totally appropriate for this book and I was very pleased with how the book and box turned out. You can see more images of the finished book in the Fine Bindings section of my website here.