WAGTAIL PRESS

Materials used

Book case base construction - grey board layered spine stiffener - card stock cover material - vegetable tanned goat leather (black) tooling - foil (silver coloured)

Inner book paper - Munken pure (100gsm) endpapers - baroque board, embossed, shimmering (black, 230gsm) hinges - vegetable tanned goat leather (black) endbands - silk (grey, green)

For the cover and spine, I recreated Albert Angus Turbayne's design for the Macmillan Peacock Series (1896).

Macmillan reused this cover for multiple titles over the course of several years. From what I can tell, it was initially created for the works of Thomas Love Peacock. If you look at the left corner by the edge of the peacock's tail feather, you can see Turbayne's unique signature.

Choosing this cover locked me into an 1890s Art Nouveau theme for the typeset, and I spent a considerable amount of time tracking down potential chapter headers that harmonized visually.

Peacocks are a distinctive motif in this fic, and I tried to choose images that matched the individual tones of each act. I represented Harry's presence with warm browns, yellows, and oranges, and Edwin Selwyn's with imposing blues and blacks.

A full list of the artists used in my typeset can be found at the bottom of this post.

Predictably, everything that could go wrong with this bind did go wrong. I botched the rounding and backing on my first textblock, and had to reprint it. It also took me a long time to find endpapers that could play nicely with the yellows, blues, and browns. Luckily, Jemma Lewis had exactly what I needed!

I had never sanded or painted the edges of a book before, so I spent several weeks practicing on scrap textblocks while I waited for my brass tool to arrive. None of this would have been possible without the incredible tutorials made by @copticcowgirl and @duran-binding. Their guidance (along with @pleasantboatpress!) helped me figure out a method that worked for me. Duran Binding even sent me some pages about gauffering from a book she had!

Unfortunately, I lost my goddamn mind when I started trying to figure out the gauffering.

There aren't any comprehensive gauffering tutorials online, and the information about it is scant. I had to piece together my method from stray book pages, stalked instagram comments, and weeks upon weeks of trial and error. Heating the tool correctly was far more difficult than I anticipated, and I didn't have a proper finishing stove, so I just stuck it in the flame of my gas stove (thanks to @pleasantboatpress for the heating advice!). Even more difficult was figuring out the correct amount of pressure to put down without burning my foil or edges. Pictured above is the cardstock grid I made to ensure my lines were even.

I also couldn't fit my textblock in my guillotine, so it took me roughly 5 hours of sanding per edge to get the mirror finish I needed. I didn't want to give myself carpal tunnel, so I limited myself to 1-2 hours of sanding per day. Each edge took me a full week to complete. In total, my edge decoration journey took me about three months.

So please, LOOK AT THEM! LOOK! MY BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS!

DOES MY AGONY PLEASE YOU?

I was also too chickenshit to try gauffering on my good textblock without testing, so I also finished two edges on my reject. I also tested my endbands on it. I will probably finish it when I'm feeling less raw.

Unfortunately, gauffering was only the beginning of my suffering. The file for the cover was a challenge to create and adapt. I knew that it was a bit of a pipe dream, and I knew that it would be hard on my machine. I usually do a series of cardstock tests while refining my files before I commit to bookcloth. It proved to be too much for my Cameo 4, and it started gouging my foil and paper after completing a few runs of the cover.

After two weeks of troubleshooting and emailing support, I accepted that my Cameo 4 was dead. Queue a month of depression, and some of the greatest frustration I've ever experienced with a project. I eventually sucked it up and bought a Cameo 5, and had to do extensive testing to figure out the best settings for their native heat pen system.

These are the vast majority of my cover tests (most of them are double sided). Foiling the cover took 12.5 nail biting hours, but my Cameo 5 finally pulled through! Hooray! I love you Cameo 5! Please don't die on me! There was one odd area that refused to foil, so I cracked open my old WRMK pen and filled it in by hand. Pro tip: separate every design element in as many layers as possible so you can double up on foil and redo problem areas easily.

After this, everything began to move along quite quickly.

@copticcowgirl convinced me to put a hollow on my book, and sent me some absolutely incredible notes and videos to help me along! She was also incredibly gracious when I barged into her DMs wailing about millimeter and half millimeter increments, and gently guided me towards the finish line. So much of this bind would not have been possible without her!

Mummifying the hollow was my favorite part, and I really do believe that it helps my book open beautifully. After that, it was a small matter of casing in, and I was free from my seemingly eternal torment!

I would also like to extend my thanks to @tsurashi-bindery, who has been by my side every step of the way. She is the world's best tie breaker, and she patted me on the back every time I told her that I was really, truly, totally going to quit binding for real this time. Her aesthetic sense is fantastic, and she spent hours helping me pick, edit, and arrange my photos. Thank you for being my cheerleader. <3

I also genuinely appreciate everyone that reached out to me on Insta and Discord while I was posting WIPs- your encouragement truly kept me going!

I will likely be posting a gauffering video at some point when I have the time. I don't currently have any plans to share the typeset unless the fic is completed, but you're welcome to DM me.

If you've read this far you're a superstar! This fic is incredibly close to my heart, and I'm relieved that I was able to properly express how I feel about it through this bind. Here's hoping my next project is a bit shorter!

Art credits:

Cover: Macmillan Peacock Series, Albert Angus Turbayne (1896)

Title: Untitled book plate, Alfred Petrasch (1857-1910)

Act I title: Macmillan’s Illustrated Standard Novels, Albert Turbayne (1896)

Act I chapter: Cigales et lis, paons et cytise, bordures, M. P. Verneuil (1897)

Act II title: Charles Scribner’s Sons the Modern Poster, Will H. Bradley (1895)

Act II chapter: Kunst en Samenleving, G.W. Dijsselhof (1893)

Act III title: Bradley, His Book, Will H. Bradley (1896)

Act III chapter: Poissons et algues, coq, écoinçon; paons et vigne; lièvres, chiens et ronces, bordure, M. P. Verneuil (1897)

Dinkus: Fonderie Typographique Française: Caractères et vignettes bois (1922)