#common domain

[fallingsunbindery]

Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire 240 pages Completed September 4, 2023

Hello to the TINIEST book I've ever made (or seen in real life). Credit goes to @simply-sithel for the typeset and the wonderful rainbow printing. My eternal sorrow that I received the printed (and cut!!!) pages in mid-April and didn't do a single thing with them until sometime in July.

The finished dimensions of this book are about 1 3/8" wide, 1 5/8" tall, and 3/4" thick. I'm not rightly sure what you'd even call this size but I love it so much, it fits in the palm of my hand and I can almost hide it completely by making a fist. Making the case and endpapers also let me use some paper I've had sitting around since 2020 when I first started bookbinding (though I got distracted and used the same paper for both, oops).

[fallingsunbindery]

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen 122,169 words | 360 pages Completed March 12, 2022

A second binding of P&P! This was for a work auction, and the highest bidder picked out the text, cover papers, spine cloth, and endpapers. I was relieved he picked a book I'd already typeset :D Unfortunately he did not want the Jane Austen font I'd used for the first binding but I suppose it's all right :)

When I was doing the endbands I realized that the color scheme of the whole book is the trans flag - an added bonus!

This binding also marks my decision to switch to a different method of titling. So far I've been using Cricut's "Permanent Vinyl" which, it turns out, is not permanent on bookcloth! It sticks great for a day or two at most before peeling/falling off at the slightest provocation. This book was the last straw - because it was a gift, I couldn't ignore it when I saw the letters starting to shift around, so I peeled them off and glued them back on with PVA one at a time. Never again... I'll probably use HTV going forward, but I also bought some mod-podge to try just applying that over the titles I've already done and hoping it doesn't completely ruin them :/

[fallingsunbindery]

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 51,588 words | 256 pages Completed April 29, 2022

My first quarto binding! I am so happy with this one - I used a beautiful Duo bookcloth, and the marbled endpapers were some of the first papers I ever bought for bookbinding. I also had a lot of fun with the art deco ornaments and chapter headings, which I got from the Noun Project. And of course the whole thing had to be green :D

[fallingsunbindery]

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

122,169 words | 360 pages

Completed March 12, 2022

I went with pastels for this one, similarly to my binding of Little Women. I think it turned out looking very tidy and proper (wrinkled endpapers aside). This was also my first attempt at two-colored endbands, and I love how the purple and silver go with the colors of the case itself.

[fallingsunbindery]

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells 35,683 words | 240 pages Completed August 28, 2022

My first octavo book! Each page is 1/8 of a sheet of letter paper. I used Duo bookcloth again, and the endpapers had actually been on my wishlist for a long time. I knew they would be perfect for a sci-fi story, and I finally had an excuse to splurge and by a sheet! As a bonus, the sheets are so large and this binding is so small that I still have a ton of that paper left :)

[fallingsunbindery]

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

104,049 words | 321 pages

Completed December 26, 2021

Okay, I had a VISION for this one. I really enjoyed typesetting because the Market Deco font is just so visually pleasing. The eye icon seemed to be a nice touch. And I had the cover in mind from the start - I knew the silver would really pop on the blue.

Unfortunately then I made the boards about 1/8" too short! I'm really not sure how it happened. But in the end I'm still very satisfied with the look of it. Stenciling is definitely pretty labor-intensive (at least with the paint marker I used) but it gives the letters a very cool texture.

[fallingsunbindery]

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

75,357 words | 223 pages

Completed November 15, 2021

SKULL ENDPAPERS MY BELOVED! I saw these on Hollanders and blacked out and when I came to I'd ordered them.

This was the second book I trimmed down and, again, I think that narrow shape is really lovely. I'm also a fan of the way the way the title fills up the space of the spine.

A couple weird things. One, I'm not sure why I left the indents in when I did the drop caps at the start of the chapters; I probably just didn't think about it but now it looks strange to me. And second, somehow a section of italicized block-quote poetry vanished when I converted it to a PDF, and I didn't notice until I was flipping through it after the whole thing was done. I ended up asking a coworker with cool lettering abilities to fill in the missing section by hand:

[fallingsunbindery]

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

213,936 words | 580 pages

Completed January 28, 2022

WHALE BOOK WHALE BOOK!!! This was my first binding of 2022 and it was a triumph. Everything about it came together so well - covers, endpapers, and that wonderful blue bookcloth. Even the spine titling, which came months later, turned out nicely. My one agonizing mistake - I glued the endpapers on upside-down. So the whales are not so much swimming as floating dead in the water 😭 Or, as some friends have suggested, jumping for joy and doing backflips!

The size of this book is also really satisfying to hold. I love a volume with some Heft.