The Magician's Nephew

Bound by Kate Holland

The Magician's Nephew by CS Lewis
London: Bodley Head. 1955
Collection of Bruce Munro

The Magician's Nephew is number 3 of a 3 volume set. Volume 1 is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Volume 2 is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Full fair calf with multiple layers of paste resist dyeing, sunbeams of gold lustre, applied gold leaf and gold tooling of the Morse code translation of the chemical equation for photosynthesis. Doublures of polished graphite powder. Endpapers are a manipulated photograph of sunlight through leaves with gold leaf highlights. Hand coloured edges and hand sewn endbands. Chemise of transparent clouded vellum over hand dyed watecolour paper.

"Narnia. In The Magician's Nephew, C S Lewis describes a 'wood between the worlds', a soporific wood where sunlight is only visible in the form of dappled shades of green percolating through a dense canopy of leaves and dark reflective pools of water which act as portals to other worlds. In Munro's (@brucemunrostudio who commissioned this piece) words "A place where the dance of light and chlorophyll coalesce as a photosynthetic pulse." For me an allegory for life, the adventures and challenges that we face every day and, like the children in the book, that we should embrace it wholeheartedly and jump right in feet first. So when it came to thinking of a design for this book I managed to coalesce a number of elements that had been percolating in my head for a while. I knew of the Japanese word, Komorebi, which describes that particular sunlight which filters through trees. A regular dog walk for me is in the incredible Longleat beech woods and I have been wanting to capture the awe that I feel amongst these giants on a book for a while. For his piece Between Worlds, Munro translated the chemical equation for Photosynthesis into Morse Code so I knew that had to be included somehow. And for the reflective pools on the doublures, I unashamedly stole this idea from @traceyrowledge who did some stunning huge reflective graphite panels a while "

Kate is happy to undertake commissions for design bindings.

For further examples of her work please go to www.katehollandbooks.co.uk and on her Instagram @katehollandbooks.