Probably the finest Necronomicon ever made.
This is another one of the six occult and alchemy books that I print and bind.
The text is printed in red and black on a fine watermarked ivory wove paper and illustrated.
As the text is somewhat chaotic I decided to hand marble a design just as chaotic incorporating a feminine presence to remind us where life originates from ........ no matter how chaotic.
The printed sheets are folded into sections and flexibly sewn on raised hemp cords in the 17thC herringbone style and trimmed on 3 edges. The spine is rounded and backed and the headbands sewn in.
The boards are cut, sanded, mitred and beveled, the holes punched through and the cords laced-in and splayed out. Next process is to grade the leather, cut, pare, and border a grain in and then cover.
The book is covered in a raw veg tanned calf so all the work now is done ON the book so there is no margin for error. The raised bands nipped and the headcaps formed and mitred. The text block is capped and the edges coloured up and turned-in.
I'm using two colours, all the dyes I use I make by fermenting plant extracts, I don't use templates but make sure the dyes don't bleed as they are washed in.
All the tools I am using is pictured right. The centre panel is blind tooled using a fillet roll and all of the seals and sigils will be gilt using pallets (straight lined tools), gauges (curved and half circle tools) and 8pt and 10pt hand letters.
The first part is handlettering the borders, this is old school gilding where each tool is executed twice, first in blind without the gold leaf and then in gold leaf as illustrated on the Bible below, a previous commission.
1638 Buck and Daniel Bible
The goal is to have all fifty seals gilt on the book.
I thought I would do something a little abstract for the centre placing the first seal Marduk in pole position.
The front cover is complete and is just as chaotic as the text....I don't know what Cthulhu would make of it! As you can see my workbench is getting a little chaotic also.
The outer border of the verso side is now complete showing 43 of the 50 seals.
Both sides are now complete comprising of 46 seals. The last 4 seals will be on the spine with the last compartment reserved for the clients own sigil which I work out using the Hebrew Aiq Beker method.
The Necronomicon complete, I wonder what H.P. Lovecraft would make of it?
To Commission a Necronomicon Email: [email protected]
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