A Bookbinding & Royal Binding in the style of Wm Nott
The spine of the Royal Binding is finely tooled in 23 carat gold leaf using a double blind method that leaves no margin for error.
Simply click on the link below and you can enter a gallery containing a step-by-step account of how a 'royal binding' takes shape. Please feel free to email Paul: [email protected] if you have any comments or would like to make an appointment for a book consultation.
The spine of the Royal Binding is finely tooled in 23 carat gold leaf using a double blind method that leaves no margin for error.
The book is bound in the finest hand tanned leather using orignal ingredients from ancient recipes - including cherries, green walnuts and mahogany chippings, ready for the intensive gilding that will take place.
Some patterns are made of many tools together or the same few tools used in many different ways, but each tool..
...first is blind-tooled into the leather, then egg white is painted carefully over the pattern and then the gold leaf applied with the original tool.
The pattern is worked to mirror each side of a cover and become an exact replica of the other side of the book.
Although an area of the tooling may appear to be as accurately embedded as a full 'block' it is in fact the result of hundreds of tiny applications of each tool, done twice.
Once the tooling begins to take shape, the tension grows....
...Should a mistake be made at this time, everything will have to be started over from the beginning.
The tendency to relax now that the completed book is almost there and possibly make an error is intense. Onlookers wait with baited breath for the finished masterpiece. After years of such fine work, Paul can sense the design, working blind.
Each side of the book is identically patterned with approximately 4000 individual tools.