Richard Beadsmoore

The Matriarch of the Forest

by Abigail Roper

Illustrations: Abigail Roper

The Lone Oak Press, Petersham, Massachusetts, USA, 2009

185 × 170 × 15mm

Bradel binding, sewn on stubs. The doublures and endpapers are images of white pine tree cones printed on Zerkal paper. Top edge coloured with acrylic paint and there are leather endbands. The spine is bound in green goatskin and the boards in a deeper green. Tooled in 23.5ct gold leaf and carbon.

The old tree is dying but still amongst the dead branches there are signs of life. The Matriarch of the Forest is a meditation on death and the need for dignity in one’s final moments. The gold and black branches symbolize the ongoing struggle between light and dark, life and death.

Awarded Highly Commendable: Bold Choices in the American Academy of Bookbinding Open/Set 2025.

Collection of the American Bookbinders Museum, San Francisco, USA.

The Helen Fragments

Homer, translated Richard Seibert

Illustrator: Winifred McNeill

Editions Koch, Berkley, Californis, 2003.

Dos Rapporte binding, sewn on dyed vellum tapes visible as interior hinge. Top edge coloured with acrylic paint and tooled with real gold foil. Edge-to-edge doublures and flyleaves of printed Zerkal paper. Spine piece in dyed and sanded goatskin, boards of dyed and sanded suede. Raised onlays of fair goat with image transfer.

The imagery of the binding is taken from an Attic red-figure cup by the Brygos painter, c.490 BCE, in the collection of the British Museum. I imagined the figure of the girl being assembled from the shards of pottery unearthed during an archaeological dig, just as the text is assembled from fragments of the text of The Iliad that relate to Helen of Troy. The doublures and endpapers show the complete image.

The Safekeep

Yael van der Wouden

Viking, 2024

210 × 140 × 35mm

Sewn with unsupported link-stitch and full-linen attachment. Edges coloured with acrylic paint and tooled with real gold foil. Handsewn silk endbands. Various shades of red leathers scarf- and butt-jointed. Inlaid lines of black leather and black ink. Tooled in palladium and 23.5ct gold leaf.

One could argue the The Safekeep has three main characters: Isobel, Eva, and the house, which Isabel’s family moved into as a child when they evacuated from Amsterdam during the Second World War. The novel begins in 1961, Isabel is now in her twenties and living alone in the house that her uncle has promised to her elder brother, Louis, for whenever he has a family. For Isabel the house is a place of safety and comfort, “There you are, said the dim light in the kitchen, left on for comfort. I’ve waited up for you, said the rattle of the key in the door.” When Louis has to go away for work he deposits his current girlfriend, Eva, on an extremely unwilling Isabel. Soon various items around the house start disappearing, such as the spoons which Isabel obsessively counts as they gradually dwindle from 12 down to 5.

Not wanting to give too much away about the end of the novel I decided to concentrate on the house and how it gradually changes from being almost like a benign prison for Isobel before finally becoming a place of joy. To that end the design is geometric using different shades of red, like a floor plan. Superimposed on that are the outlines of doors and windows. The back board has darker reds and is tooled in cool palladium to reflect Isabel’s character and her emphasis on order and routine, a life that will be disrupted by the arrival of Eva. There is also a reference to the disappearing spoons. By contrast the front board is tooled in gold leaf to express the burgeoning of love between Isabel and Eva.

Bound as part of the Booker prize 2024

Providence Improved

A manuscript by Ed. Burghah (Burghall)

Illustrated by Nicholas Parry

Tern Press, 1993, 7/200. Signed by Nicholas Parry

Providence Improved consists of extracts from the diary of Edward Bunghall, the Puritan vicar of Acton in Cheshire, between the years of 1628 and 1663. ‘May you live in interesting times’ may be applied to our modern world but it certainly held true for the life of Edward Bunghall. His diary starts with noting the death of a ‘bear-ward’ killed by his bear, he then lived through an outbreak of plague, before his world was engulfed in the English Civil War. Descriptions of events during the war form the bulk of the diary and my design, although abstract, was inspired by the conflict between the Cavaliers of Charles 1st and the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell.

Link-stitch with full-linen board attachment. Top edge is dyed red with acrylic ink and then gauffered with silver metallic foil and real gold foil, the other edges left with their natural deckle. The endpapers and doublures are of red Zerkall paper printed with illustrations from the text. Red silk endbands. Covered in red goatskin and tooled with palladium and 23.5 carat gold leaf.

 Private Collection, USA

POLLEN

Rob Kesseler amd Madeline Harley

 Papadakis, UK, 2014

 206 x 230 x 30mm

 Pollen is bound using a full linen attachment with secondary sewing. The endpapers are black Satogami Japanese paper and there are multi-coloured, hand-sewn silk endbands. The book is bound in black goatskin with matching leather doublures.

Pollen is hand-tooled with 23.5 ct gold leaf and ten shades of metallic foil.

The design is based on the bizarre shapes of pollen grains with the metallic foil dots echoing the vibrant colouring of the photographs.

The binding was a Distinguished Winner in the 2022 Designer Bookbinders Competition

Pollen has been exhibited at the Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford; Sotheby’s, London, and at the University of Edinburgh.

Private collection, UK

Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck

Illustrations: James Albon

The Folio Society, 2018

226 x 152 x 33mm

 A Bradel binding with double-core endbands. The endpapers are dyed with Procion dyes and reflect the colour of the illustrations – blood and the structure of an American barn. The various panels utilize specially-dyed cloth, reverse-transfer printing, acrylic-medium transfer, gold leaf, metallic foil, reclaimed bookcloth, and treated suede. The spine is of dyed and sanded leather.

The design is based around four original Park Drive cigarette cards depicting film stars of the 20s and 30s: Jean Harlow, Raquel Torres, Dolores del Rio, and Greta Garbo.  The cigarette card of each film star is paired with actual images of them.  “He was gonna put me in the movies, says I was a natural.” The words of Curley’s wife and the subject of Lennie’s fatal attraction. There are also echoes of blue denim and a golden future destroyed by a single bullet. By the way Lennie also titled the book!

Collection of the British Library

A stone veneer binding with gold staples’

Happy Abstract

A letter from William Blake, a commissioned work for the American Academy of Bookbinding Open-Set Competition. Designed and printed by Russell Maret, a highly recognized artist and letterpress printer from New York.

The blank areas of each page of the text have been illustrated by me to reflect the context of the letter

Winner of ‘Highly Commended’ for Tooling in the 2019 Open-Set Competition.

Private Collection, USA

Hokusai

Author:   David Burnett

Lino-cuts:  Hui Fang Lee

71/140

Signed by author

Incline Press, 1996

267 x 165 x 12mm

‘Hokusai’ is a poem by a British author so it seemed appropriate for a British binder to bind it in a Japanese style (Yamato Toji). It is also housed in a Japanese Hakochitsu box.

The single section book has endpapers of hand-made Moriki-Tozo paper. It is sewn on a stub which is then sandwiched between two boards covered in Hewit’s alum-tawed goat which are then held in place by ribbons. There are recessed inlays of dyed alum-tawed leather and tooling, both blind and in palladium leaf, using a tool especially made by the binder to reflect the shape of Mount Fuji.

The design was inspired by the lino-cuts on the cover of the book.

The binding was awarded second prize in the Clothworkers’ Prize for Open Choice section at the 2020 DB UK bookbinding competition.

The Revelation of Saint John the Divine

12 drawings by Frances Clayton

Faber and Faber Ltd, London, 1931

Bound on asymmetric boards in black goatskin with exposed core endbands. The endpapers and doblures are printed with added acrylic paint and collage. The design is based on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with four panels symbolizing pestilence, famine, war, and death. Materials used include snakeskin, fish skin, vellum, eggshell, wood, locust wings, ball bearings, and 23.5 carat gold leaf.

Private Collection, UK

The Garderer’s Song

Lewis Carroll

Illustrated by Brian Psrtridge

Clun, UK Redlake Press, 1990

Copy number 211 of an edition of 250

A single-section, staple binding. Bound in stone veneer, with hand tooling in 23.5K gold leaf and 18K gold staples. Endpapers in a laminate of black and maroon Japanese paper. Natural edges.

Bound 2019

The Gardener’s Song has absolutely nothing to do with gardening, it is a collection of nonsense verse. Similarly my design starts with a hint of formality but soon becomes more fanciful.

This binding is part of the travelling exhibition of Open/Set 2020

The Illustrated Man

Ray Bradbury

Folio Society, 2018

Full leather binding in fair goat that was hand dyed and stencilled with acrylic inks and tooled with five shades of metallic foil. Edges are stencilled and there are blue silk endbands. The endpapers were designed in Photoshop using 1950’s science fiction images and printed on air-brushed Zerkall paper.

The design is based on a traditional Bornean tattoo and with the tooling I’ve tried to capture the essence of the illustrated man: “… the pictures glowed …. Like scattered rubies and emeralds”.

 Bound 2018

The History of Tommy and Harry

An English chapbook of circa. 1830 with eight wood-engravings

Printed by J. Kendrew, Colliergate, York, UK.

11cm x 8cm

A copy belonging to McGill University, Toronto, Canada has been digitised:

https://archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-PN970_K4_H57_1830-1536

Bound 2018

A non-adhesive binding in slate veneer secured by four 18 carat gold staples. The endpapers are of light- and dark-blue Moriki Kozo handmade Japanese paper and light-brown Rushcombe Mill handmade paper.

This is a moralizing tale of two brothers. Tommy is obedient to his parents, works hard and has loyal friends, unlike Harry who is idle and sinful. When they grow up Tommy becomes a successful business man but Harry falls amongst thieves, is condemned to prison but escapes by ship. However, he is shipwrecked on the Barbary coast and is eaten by wild animals. A lesson to us all!

Although of course no-one is either completely good or completely bad.

Exhibited in "Les Pages Bien Gardee" curated by Sun Evrard at the 'Salon du Livre Rares', Grand Palais, Paris. April 1918

“Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems”

Illustrated by Jane Lydbury

Folio Society, 2016

Bound 2017

I think there are basically two ways to approach the design for a book of poetry it, one being to treat the collection in its totality, either the prevailing mood and structure of the verse or the life and character of the poet. The other route is to choose a particular poem and use that as your inspiration. Initially I was thinking about the latter approach with the poem “Wild Nights”, however as soon as you open a book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry one of the first things that strikes you is her liberal use of dashes which she uses to emphasize, indicate a missing word, or to replace a comma or full stop.

With this in mind I decided to use the dash as the basis of the endpaper design. I initially printed a background texture (photograph of a section of wall at Pompeii) and then added a collage of her poetry. On top of that I added rectangles of Japanese paper of various sizes to represent the words and hyphens. Once they were stuck down I sanded the back of the paper to reduce their prominence (rather like back-paring a leather onlay).

During my research I had already come across Emily’s signature in her very distinctive handwriting and had decided to use it as my title on the spine and I then decided to reject the “Wild Nights” element and instead use pertinent words from her verse as the main part of the design.

To get the shade of red I wanted for the base colour I used a piece of Hewit’s fair goat that I dyed with two shades of spirit dye. I then made lino-cuts of the words I was going to use. The title was impressed into the leather before covering but the rest were done on the covered book – scary! The whole of the book was then covered in 22 carat gold leaf which when dry was sanded off in order to get the right balance between the gold and the red.

Initially that was going to be the binding finished but on reflection I felt it needed an element of formality adding, which was when I went back to the endpaper design and decided to add the impressed black line work.

The binding won “The Ash Rare Books Lettering Award” in the 2017 DB annual competition.

David Mamet

Wood engravings by Sarah Chamberlain

Rebecca Press, 1989

75x56x11mm

Bound 2017

This is a miniature book bound using various shades of red and brown leather and suede. Blind-tooled lines painted with black acrylic and gold tooling.

The New House is a short poem about how a new house ages with its owners and becomes a repository of memories. The design is based around the idea of new and old doors.

Private collection, USA

Charles R. Ballard

The Limited Editions Club, New York, 1972

Bound 2017

A single-section staple binding with a stone veneer cover. Endpapers of Satogami Japanese paper. The staples are 18ct gold and there is gold and palladium tooling.

“The Book I’ve Read Before” is a poem about the joy of returning to a favourite book instead of the countless new ones vying for attention. The design plays with the idea of the circular ousting the linear.

The Clothworkers' Prize for Open Choice Book 
Designer Bookbinders Annual Competition, 2017

Private Collection UK

A. E. Housman

Wood engravings by Nicholas Parry

Tern Press, 1990. Number 138 of 225, signed by Nicholas and Mary Parry

Bound 2016

The book is untrimmed and bound in grey Harmatan goatskin. There are hand-sewn silk endbands and the top edge is treated with graphite. The endpapers and paper doublures are air-brushed with a leaf design.

The stylized trees are tooled in 23.5 carat gold and Caplain – an alloy of 80% gold, 4% silver and the remaining 16% a mixture of palladium and platinum. It won’t tarnish and is more expensive than gold!

The design of the binding was inspired by the poem “Bredon Hill” with its landscape of trees and dry-stone walls. In the summer

      My love and I would lie

      And see the coloured counties

       And hear the larks so high

But then winter comes, the writer’s love dies

         They tolled the one bell only

          Groom there was none to see

           The mourners followed after

             And so to church went she.

and we are plunged into a world of grief.

Winner of the Harmatan Leather Award for Finishing, Society of Bookbinders International Competition, 2017

Private Collection, UK

A panel of slate veneer tooled in 23.5 carat gold.

100 x 100mm

Private collection, Germany

Dante

Folio Society, 2015

Bound 2016

The book has hand-painted endpapers and doublures with gold tooling. The edges are painted and sprinkled with gold and there are hand-sewn silk endbands.

The book is bound in full blue Harmatan goat with dyed and sprayed recessed onlays. The tooling is in gold and Caplain.

“At her birth all nine of the moving heavens were in perfect relationship to one another.” Dante and Beatrice were born into a world of the Ptolemaic system when lives were believed to be strongly influenced by the stars and astrology.

Winner of the Sally Lou Smith Prize for Forwarding, Designer Bookbinders Annual Competition, 2016

Venus and Adonis

William Shakespeare

Illustrations by Rockwell Kent

The Printing House of Leo Hart, Rochester, USA, 1931

280 x 215 x 25mm

Bound in burgundy goatskin with a scarf-jointed section of white that has been sprayed, then edged with gold and Caplain.

Despite the best efforts of Venus, Adonis is obsessed with hunting. He is gored to death and his blood is transformed into anemones, their white petals splashed with red.

Robert Gibbings

Wood Engravings by the Author

J M Dent and Sons, 1940. First Edition

Bound 2015

Blue Harmatan goatskin with tooling in gold, moongold, palladium, and carbon

Private Collection, USA

Truman Capote

Folio Society,2013

Bound 2014

Endpapers of red Mingeishi paper. Rough edge gilt in Caplan (an alloy of gold, silver, palladium, and platinum). Covered in full black goatskin with red and white inlays and onlays and Caplan tooling

The design seeks to convey the gradual disintegration of Holly's world as the "mean reds" take over and "pearls roll in the gutter".

H. E. Bates

Wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker

Gollancz, 1936  First edition

Bound 2013

Elizabeth Soutar Student Craft Award, 2013

Collection of the National Library of Scotland