Owen's Chivalric Quest Book: Part I

Owen's Chivalric Quest Book has been completed and presented, so I'll be getting into it's creation and process.

You can find a documentation write up, here.

Once all the calligraphy was finished, we started drawing the illumination part of the project.  We did a page with miniatures at the start of each section, and every page of calligraphy received at least a boarder.  In total there are 170 pages that were drawn on and painted.

Adding Drawings.

 We mixed our own paints, besides for the gold.  It would have saved some time and fussiness if we had gone with store bought paint for all of our colors.  We went through two to three batches of paint for the major colors.

Nic mixing pigments to paint.

We painted the base colors on each page.  If I had the space I would paint one side of every sheet in a gathering at a time.  By the end of the project, we had figured out how to assembly line the illumination.

base painted areas

Drawing the black lines around the painted areas made it look really dark.  We ended up having to remind ourselves many times that the white work would make it look better.

outlined in black

 Adding the white work brought everything together.  This the the stage we started getting excited about how things were turning out.

Finished sheet.

Bookbinding - Attempt One: Turn Ins

After what seemed like a long time, I pulled the book out from between the board and readied to paste down the leather that turns around edge of the book to the inside.  Figuring out the cuts to a little bit as all the examples I found was for modern book board, not oak boards.  Eventually, I had things trimmed and ready for the pasting. I did wrap the paper pages in wax paper so they wouldn't get glued together.

Almost ready for pasting.  Just need to add a protective cover to the paper pages.

Paste down completed, a quick picture before the book gets clamped again.

All clamped up, time to let dry again.

Bookbinding - Attempt One: End bands & Leather Cover

The end bands went really quickly. I expected to start them at home and finish up during a local meeting. Well I finished them before I needed to even start rounding up the family to leave for the meeting.

I didn't get many pictures of covering the outside with leather as I could have used a third hand in doing this part.  I'm sure like with everything a little practice goes a long way.

A finished end band.  The extra will be cut off later.

Leather pasted to the outside of the book.

Slightly different view of the drying pressed book.

Bookbinding - Attempt One: Trimming and Spine

None of the local big box home improvement stores carry a draw knife, so when it came to trimming the paper to the boards, I ended up using a craft knife and then filing it to flush with the boards.

Afterwards I used some wheat paste and bookbinding super cloth to reenforce the spine of the book.  I pasted the cloth over the outside of the boards as per one of the examples in J.A. Szirmai's book, The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding.

The end bands will be done after the spine has dried.

Pages trimmed to the book.

Pasting down the cloth to reenforce the spine.

Bookbinding - Attempt One: Attaching the boards

When it came time to attach the supports to the boards, I used small upholstery nails found at a local sewing shop.

Nailing the supports to the boards.

All done with one side.

Boards attached, time to trim.