Persona Research Challenge - 1st Prize

My husband, Sven, is head of the Scholar's Guild in the Barony of Gryphon's Lair. With Their Majesties' support, he ran a Kingdom-wide Persona challenge wherein the entrants were to identify an art form that was used during their persona's timeline, and share five document-able facts about that art. This was the second challenge he's run.

He asked me if I would be willing to make prizes for the first and second place winners. Specifically, books! The idea was that the winners would work directly with me to indicate what kind of book they would want. 

Lord Cynric of Defnascir won first place with a well-written article on pattern welding. He wanted a book with lined paper, and chose the green goatskin leather from my stash for the cover. As this is the same goatskin I used for Master Aaron's vigil book, I did a few things to make this one different and unique.

Cynric wanted lined pages, so I created the lined paper with custom spacing and color (dark green), and printed it out double-sided on a high quality smooth finish paper. for making the signatures.

The spine has only two corded tabs rather than four, as on Aaron's book. This is still plenty secure, as I used four lengths of twine on each, rather than two. This makes the bump on the spine more pronounced (I like this look),, and gave me plenty of twine to work with when securing it to the bookboard.

His personal device sports a rampant horse, so I attached a silver horse pendant to the bookmark, giving it a bit of "Cynric flair."

This was the first time I've tried using metal corners. I fear they may fall off one day, but only time will tell. I adhered them to the corners using some PVA glue, and compressing the metal with pliers. I suspect such ornamentation in period would have been custom crafted and probably tacked in with nails or screws - I must do more research into this. While I'm very much enjoying bookbinding, I'm still quite new to it. This is only my fourth book, and my second of this size.

I'm well pleased with how the headbands turned out on this book. Headbands are designed to keep dust from getting down into the spine of the book. I bought a length of commercial headband that you trim to size and adhere into place on the spine prior to covering the book. One day I'll try my hand at making my own headband by sewing directly onto the spine.

The endpapers are a red linen textured paper chosen from my stash by Lord Cynric. Endpapers are usually a full signature in width, but in this case they are only half that.