Of Mice and Men

Bound by Mianda Kemp

Of Mice and Men
Illustrated by Illustrated by James Albon
The Folio Society

The binding won the 'J Hewit & Sons Award' for the 'Interesting Treatment of Leather' in the Designer Bookbinders Competition, 2020.

"The design ideas are drawn from imagery of the hot California sun beating down on farm buildings. I wanted the whole book to reflect the environment of Salinas valley of California, the crops, hot sun and blue skies."

"The design started with the end papers and doublers, monoprints of the golden prairies and blue skies. The binding is a Bradel structure. The front and back boards are made up of strips of Hewit's Fair Goat. The leather was dyed using spirit dyes and tooled in Hewit's real gold foil. The wider decorative strips are abutted to fine, very narrow strips of natural leather. The spine is natural fair goat tooled in gold foil using a hand-made tool to look like tall prairie grasses. The edges have been decorated with ink and then tooled with gold foil. Hand sewn silk endbands."

Miranda is based in London and can be found on Istagram at at @kemp.miranda