Bookbinding - Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Binds # 31 & 32
Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Date Completed: July 2025
Size: Octavo. 520 pages, 58,428 words
I participated in @renegadeguild Tiny Books Bang this year, where some people formatted books octavo size or smaller and then another group of people made books using those typesets, two copies - one to keep and the other to send to the original typesetter. I was lucky enough to get to bind Wind in the Willows, typeset by the lovely Wren. This book was such a big part of my childhood so it was great to spend some time with it again.
I dithered for ages on what the book should look like and eventually settled on some blue hand-marbled paper to tie in with the river theme, with brown and blue accents to pick up some of the colors in the veins. The gold vines got added at the very end when the spine cloth was just looking a little large for how small the book was. I’m especially fond of the endpapers, which I made using an image from my collection of Art Nouveau Dover Pictorial Archives books.
