The Lives Of Gallant Ladies, Finished.

Both volumes finished.




End papers and doublers.

The Lives Of Gallant Ladies, Cold Gold tooling.

The gold leaf was applied to the pre dyed surface of the leather (on the book) and worked over with warm tools. The design is fluid, free hand if you like. This is not as easy as it sounds, working to a design ensures that mistakes are worked out before the tool is even used. However, I sometimes feel that working to design can result in work that is rigid and cold.
When the tooling was complete the surface of both books was worked over with a very fine wire wool. This reveals the dye work underneath creating a number of layers.

The Lives Of Gallant Ladies, 5 books of gold leaf later....

The surface of the leather has been worked over with a very fine silicon carbide paper and lots of small pieces of gold leaf have been applied to the surface. Each square of gold leaf is about 1.5mm square and overlaps the squares next to it.
It has taken longer than i expected... about 2 days longer in fact.




Over the weekend I will be hoping to create more texture by pressing various things into the surface and tooling in a more trad way.