A Special Gift from a Son to his Mother
Whenever I receive enquires about the rebinding of broken bibles, I often encourage my customers to look for any patterned fabric that they like, or a piece of clothing that they do not wear anymore but wish to have it around as a keepsake. For her birthday, my customer decided to give his mother’s bible a repair and a makeover.
The material for the covers was cut from the back of a shirt that belongs to my customer, and the tail edge of the shirt was used to create pockets on the paste-downs of the endpapers. The initials “A.L.” is a beige Harmatan goat leather onlay, and it was adjusted to fit between the dots on the cloth.
Shirts are often made of very wonderful cotton that also makes very nice covers for books. Especially in our tropical climate, cotton or linen is far better than materials like leather. Just like us humans, we will never choose to wear leather in this climate, what more our books!