Being a longtime Techno fan(since like early 2019? Hypixel Skyblock my beloathed), of course I had to make a copy of The Art of War. Also, it was a good excuse to finally read it, but just a regular copy wasn't enough. Of course not. The Art of War, by Sun Tzu: The Technoblade Edition! (Shoutout to MIT for having the translation for free online. And Lionel Giles I guess for actually translating it all those years ago).
This copy marks every single instance he quotes The Art of War in The Potato War series, plus a couple other few choice quotes at the start of some chapters(with a couple other easter eggs!) I then designed the cover to look like an enchanted book, because my little headcannon is that it's his copy he carries around in game. It is specifically an enchanted book because normal books don't have the belt (boring).
The ender chest was a gift from a dear friend of mine many years ago. I got so excited about finishing this bind that I instantly ran off to do a photo shoot with it :)
Progress pics and rambling, a per usual:
Really trying not to enter this hobby wallet first so this bind was a total fuck around and find out process:
My printer decided it didn't wanna print double side it and grabbed two pieces of paper, so originally I was gonna just reprint that page, but then I found a header error AND all the em-dashes mysteriously missing, except only in the body text?? Anyways when I reprinted it was fine and I had the correct off white/cream paper by then. End papers aren't super visible, but they're handmade recycled purple paper :)
Used graph paper as the stencil...don't do that. It was way too thin and the paint seeped under. I also didn't have silver paint. Make a proper stencil, guys. It's worth it.
Yolo-ed the cloth and glue for every single cover up 'til now, but this was the one that failed (third pic) and I ended up redoing the cloth from scratch, this time with acrylic medium/cornstarch paste filled cloth.
Tbh I'm not sure if I ordered brass or gold clasps?? Not that it matters?? But trying to find clasps big enough without getting 100 of them was rough. That is all.
But we did it! And now I have to go make another for a friend who saw it and instantly asked for one. The laser printer wasn't exactly cooperative but fuck it we ball.
This was my first time participating in the yearly Renegade Bookbinding Exchange! I bound rest in grace for the lovely @stuffgoeswrong. Violet Evergarden has been a huge favorite of mine for many years, and I had so much fun with this bind. Other firsts for this bind include hand sewn endbands and a true three piece Bradel. Another Renegader also made me my very own finishing press(top right), and I'm in love.
A huge thank you to @bettsfic for writing it and allowing me to send her an author copy. You can read rest in grace on AO3 here!
I remember reading this series like daily back when tuc week 2022 was ongoing. Before then, I don't think I'd ever considered the ship. Fast forward 3 years later and armed with way too much power, it easily made my to-bind list, and I also really wanted to get into the practice of making author copies. Binderery let me check both of those boxes off.
Thank you so much to @blanketed-in-stars for letting me bind her work, which you can read for yourself on a03 here! It's fantastic and I recommend it to all the hamnet/mareth fans out there. Literally rewired my entire world view of them.
Progress pics and way too long history dive/ramble below the cut:
I really wanted something that looked like it could belong in the Underland, which posed a huge challenge. Their society was mostly reliant on technology from the 1600s, kept records with vellum and parchment scrolls, or in the case of Sandwich, carved them into the walls. But what about books?
Gutenburg's press started printing commercially in around the 1450s, but the first American and English presses started in 1638 and 1476, respectively. It wasn't exactly a new technology, but it certainly may not have been something one could just lug down to the Underland(or take on a ship). So were the lack of books due to never being in Gregor's viewpoint, Regalia being a society that didn't value books, or simply a lack of supplies? How much of the population, especially the Underlanders, could read, anyway? Was that something restricted to the rats, who often went topside to read (eat) library books, and the upper class in Regalia, or was most of the population literate? Could the spinners make a silk paper-like cloth? Could they cast their own type and run sheets through a press? What about handwritten books? (Did the Regalians even have a currency?) Maybe they were simply too focused on military affairs and had no time for books. There were simply too many questions to answer, so I ended up going "well, I want this bound and it doesn't have to be precise down to the letter. let's do this."
I went Coptic binding because it was first used as early as the 2nd century CE, though likely not a popular binding method in England. However, coptic binding/the codex ties back to the Roman diptych, which felt fitting for Regalia, as a very Greek/Roman inspired society. As for the fabric, I picked it simply because it reminded me of the jungle where we first meet Hamnet. The vines were too good.
I set the binding to pamphlet which felt way too thick, so I ended up reprinting it twice: the one you see above, and then the author's copy, which I was able to do in cream because my paper arrived the day after. Only the author copy has thicker boards because I found them after I cut the first ones and didn't want to waste those. It happens lol.
Once again, I'm thrilled with how it turned out :) and one final thank you to blanketed_in_stars for letting me do this and the Renegade Guild for all their help during Binderery!
