My most recent completed binding is of Dante Alighieri’s La Vita Nuova, published by The Ashendene Press in 1895. This is the second Ashendene Press publication I have worked on, the first being a 1935 bibliography of the Press wich I bound in 2016 and you can read about that in a previous blog post here.
The Ashendene Press was a small private press founded by St John Hornby (1867–1946). It operated from 1895 to 1915 in Chelsea, London and was revived after the war in 1920. The press closed in 1935. Its peers included the Kelmscott Press and the Doves Press. Hornby became friends with William Morris and Emery Walker, who helped inspire his work. These three presses were part of a “revival of fine printing” that focused on treating bookmaking as fine art. The Ashendene Press was famous for producing high-quality works by Dante. Ashendene books had excellent bindings and focused more on pleasure than reform than the other private presses of the time, though one review claims that the Ashendene Press was the most successful private press in recapturing the essence of fifteenth-century printing. Ashendene books were carefully printed with large margins, and despite their lack of extravagant decoration, they were considered spectacular works of art.
Most Ashendene editions used one of two fonts which were specially cast for the Press: Subiaco, and to a lesser extent Ptolemy. Hornby was a friend of Emery Walker’s, and Walker and Sydney Cockerell designed these two types for the Press. Subiaco is considered the finer type, and is based on a half-Roman type developed by two German monks at Subiaco in Italy in the 1460s.
The press’ main customers were book collectors who paid for a subscription for Ashendene books. The press often produced books in very small print runs and not many of the books were for sale – those that were sold were done so through a subscription service. The books were often illustrated and the Press employed Edward Johnston, Graily Hewitt and Eric Gill to design coloured initials for use in the books.
This book was commissioned by Philip Salmon & Company Rare Books (Boston, Massachusetts), for display at The Manhattan Rare Book and Fine Press Fair on May 2, 2026. When undertaking commissions I give the client the choice whether to be involved in the design process, however some wish to keep it as a surprise. On this occasion, I communicated regularly with Philip Salmon and his team in order to create a binding that would be sensitive to the history of the text block.
La Vita Nuova was the first in a splendid line of Italian books to be printed by St John Hornby and only the second book of the Press. Written in the vernacular Tuscan, and in the prosimetrum style, the Vita Nuova marks Dante’s attempt to reveal the sacred element underlying love poetry in this series of verse, written across several styles, that express the poet’s love for Beatrice Portinari.
The original book was octavo-size (but configured as a quarto) bound in a paper wrapper, with the back cover missing and the sewing was very loose. It was easy to remove the old spine glue and sewing threads before pulling the sections apart. It was decided that the pages of the book would remain untrimmed and apart from a bit of dry surface cleaning with a smoke sponge, were entirely untouched.
One of the first considerations when it comes to designing a fine binding is the colour palette. Whilst the forwarding can continue before the design of the cover in finalised, it is necessary to decide what colours you might want to use across the binding in order to commence making the endpapers. In the case of this binding I also intended to bind the pages onto stubs, in order for no adhesive to touch the original pages so I wanted to select paper for these too.
With little colour to go from in the book itself, my initial thoughts were inspired by the red ink within the publication, both in the motifs and some of the titles. I felt that combining red and gold, with some vellum to create the cover design would be very fitting for the binding.
I felt that these colours would work very well thinking of them as follows:
- The white of the vellum to represent the purity and innocence of Beatrice.
- The red of the leather emulating love and passion, the central emotion of the narrative and the figure of “Love”. Plus Beatrice in her red/crimson dress.
- The gold would be used to symbolise the divine, incorruptible, and spiritually perfect reality that Dante seeks and eventually perceives through his love for Beatrice: the heaven and the light. (using gold thread and gold leaf).
I had a wonderful bright red goatskin in my plan chest that matched perfectly the colour of the printed red text in the book – this would definitely be the one!
As the book was published in 1895, it seemed fitting to take inspiration from the Art Nouveau period which was an international style that flourished primarily between 1890 and 1910, with its peak popularity spanning roughly 1892 to 1905. Common in Italy too, the Italian variant of Art Nouveau was Stile floreale (“floral style”) which flourished between 1890 and 1914, characterised by sinuous, organic lines, stylised plant motifs (flowers, tendrils), and opulent ornamentation in architecture and decorative arts.
I really liked the idea of using a repeat pattern, and my initial inspirations came from radiating fan-like designs like the one in the below left image. After discussion with Philip Salmon and his colleagues we decided to choose a more more graceful pattern with flowing lines, organic shapes, and nature-inspired motifs like flowers, vines, and leaves to creating a sense of movement (see below right image).
The layout of an open book cover creates some challenges when it comes to creating a design. It was apparent that, whilst selecting a repeat pattern for the cover I would need to create a break where it ran across the joints of the book and the spine area, and I would also need to adapt it where the design met the edges of the book boards. With a bit of playing around with the scale of the design in relation to the size of the book cover I was able to “reroute” some of the pattern on the outer edges so that it flowed back into itself. As I planned for the doublures to differ from the design on the cover (more will follow about this part of the binding), I didn’t want them to be interrupted by any parts of the cover design flowing around from the outside to the inside of the boards either.
I also wanted to look at ways I might be able to incorporate “The perfect number 9” into the binding. Key aspects of the number nine’s significance in La Vita Nuova include:
- Beatrice as a “Miracle” (3×3): Dante explains that because the root of nine is the Trinity (three times three), Beatrice is a miracle sent to earth to bring salvation.
- Encounters with Beatrice: The number nine recurs during crucial moments in their relationship. Dante first sees Beatrice when he is nine years old, and she is at the beginning of her ninth year.
- The Second Meeting: The second encounter with Beatrice occurs exactly nine years after the first, at the ninth hour.
- Death of Beatrice: The number 9 is intertwined with Beatrice’s death, which occurred in the ninth month of the year (June, in the Syrian calendar) and on the ninth day of the month.
- Symbolic Structure: The number 9 also serves to organise the narrative, with many of the poems and events focusing on this number to reinforce the divine nature of his love for Beatrice.
I manipulated the repeat pattern so that nine droplets flowed down from the head to the tail of the spine. The plan was to tool each with a letter of the title which would be shortened from “La Vita Nuova” to “Vita Nuova” to play on the significance of this number.
As I do with each of my bindings, I work on a small sample board before committing to the design on the covering leather. This gives me the opportunity to test out colours, techniques and embroidery options beforehand, and also then means I have a physical record of each of my bindings to keep forever as reference material and teaching aids. In the case of this sample board, I first cut out some thinly pared leather onlays and sent some images off to Philip Salmon for approval before progressing further.
The onlay colours were chosen to harmonise with the red leather and also the red paper I had selected to use for the stubs and part of the endpapers, whilst also bringing in off-white colours to match the pages of the text block.
I scaled down the design so that I could fit more onto the sample board and then used a tracing paper template to position and glue down the thin onlay leather (see below left image). The leather was flipped over and back-pared so that it was flush across the surface and then the same tracing paper template was used to prick reference holes for the embroidery.
I used a series of different stitches to build up the design in both metallic and coloured polyester threads. The grey leather onlays were toned down by applying maroon coloured thread over the top and the flower heads were embellished with thread to add texture and detail to break up the large patches of maroon leather.
Once I had completed the embroidery, I stuck the leather to a laminated and bevelled sample board using paste. Below you can see how I scaled down the design to fit more onto the board in comparison to the size of the pattern on the book cover. The back of the board was then infilled and lined with Zerkall paper and sanded to give a very flush surface for the leather doublure to stick down to.
Onto the red droplets I intended to gold-tool the shortened title of the book, which was done at a later stage in the process.
A while ago I was gifted some sheets of paper from a hobbyist bookbinder who was downsizing, including a sheet of paper with an unusual surface pattern. Despite being a flat colour, the fibres appeared to be ‘swept’ or ‘pressed’ into a rather lovely pattern (if anyone reading this knows what paper this actually is I would be very interested to hear!). I thought that this paper would be a great choice for use in this binding as it had visual interest without being too busy and distracting from the rest of the design.
I pared some of the same red leather used on the cover for the leather joints to 0.4mm and then edge pared down one of the sides. This was then stuck down to the reverse of one side of the textured paper, before being laminated to a bi-folded sheet of red paper to make up the endpaper. A waste sheet and compensation sheet were also added into the endpaper.
The pages were going to be bound onto paper stubs so I calculated how many stubs were required to make up to the same thickness as the text block which was going to be nineteen stubs for the sixteen sections. I folded the stubs using an aluminium folding gauge and then sewed the sections to them using thin but strong linen thread. I use a pamphlet stitch to sew them and always make sure I vary where the knots are tied so they are not all in the same position through the text block.
It was agreed with Philip Salmon and his colleagues that I would get tools made up to match the motifs used in the printing of the text block: an acorn and a leaf. I would then be able to use these tools on the new binding of this book. I scanned one of the pages that had both of these motifs represented and sent the images to P&S Engraving along with details of the sizes I wanted to tools to be.
They in turn sent me a visualisation of the tools for me to sign off on and a week or so later I received the two tools in the post ready to use!
With the tools in front of me I decided to add detail to the stubs with carbon before sewing them together at the spine.
The sections and “spare” stubs were sewn together onto four tapes.
Leather-jointed endpapers were made and sewn onto either side of the text block, and also glued to a guard strip (see below left image). The spine was then knocked up square and glued up with PVA between the tapes (see below right image).
The book was then rounded and backed (see below left image), lined with Aerolinen and leather-covered endbands attached. To make the double tiered leather endbands, I pared leather very thinly and glued each colour around a different sized cord. I added some thread detail by sewing some silks around them in the centre to add a bit of extra colour (see below centre image). The spine was then lined and sanded flush (see below right image).
Although I am able to approximate the size quite well beforehand, at this stage I am able to work out exactly how big the cover will be by creating a template by wrapping a piece of paper snugly around the text block and then drawing around the book. I then used this template to cut the covering leather to size and pared it in the necessary areas, for example where it would turn down inside the hollow and at the corners.
I was then able to create small templates for all the onlay shapes from tracing paper, drawing around them on the back of thinly pared onlay leather before cutting them out with sharp scissors (see below left image). Due to the nature of the repeat pattern, I needed to create multiple mirror-image onlays and I used the little compartments within ice cube trays to keep everything organised in groups (see below right image).
I stuck a tracing paper template of the design on top of the prepared covering leather in the correct position with some masking tape at one side to create a hinge. I was then able use PVA glue to stick all the onlays in the correct position on the leather as I could sight them through the tracing paper. I picked up the onlays with some thin pointed tweezers, applied glue and this helped me position them in the correct place on the leather.
Once all the onlays were stuck down, I reversed the leather and laid it on a paring stone I then used my French paring knife to scrape away the leather on the reverse side. This would give the skin a flush feel when it was turned back over again.
Once I had back pared the leather, it was time to do the embroidery. I pre-pricked the leather using a needle pricker through the tracing paper template, so I had a guide for where I needed to stitch. In the below right image, with the leather held up to the light, you can just about see some of the holes that were pre-pricked.
I was then able to use these holes as a guide for the first step of the process: adding the linear gold, what I will call ‘vine lines’. First I used a running stitch, and then I went around each of the running stitches with a whipping stitch to consolidate the lines. The whipstitch was done in a contrasting maroon-coloured thread to make the gold threads stand out more.
The stitches were built up gradually, with some of the straight stitching pricked against the edge of a metal ruler. I coil the leather up on one side and hold it with bulldog clips to make it easier to work on.
I added some extra onlays on top of the maroon flowers, that were also embellished with thread.
I also added a length of thin white linen thread within each of the gold vine lines to give more impact. These threads were tethered down in place with small gold stitches.
Part two in this series of blog posts will focus on the covering and tooling of the book, and also the box. You can also see images of the finished La Vita Nuova binding here.