The Bicycle Diaries

Bound by Hannah Brown

The Bicycle Diaries: One New Yorker's Journey Through 9-11
By Richard Goodman
With wood engravings by Gaylord Schanilec
Midnight Paper Sales, Wisconsin, 2011
15/20 in sheets
Book: 233mm x 136mm x 20mm
Box: 264mm x 163mm x 43mm

The binding was bound in 2014 for the DB Private Press Touring Exhibition, 'InsideOUT'. It is a full leather binding in Hewits Dark Red Pentland Goat with miscellaneous coloured leather onlays. Sections of the cover leather are washed with acrylic paint before embroidering. The leather is then embroidered over the onlays with using a variety of embroidery stitches.

The cover design illustrates the scene of a bike parked on a New York Street whilst the author gets closer to the aftermath of 9-11. I chose to use the Dark Red Pentland Goat for this binding because the colour matched perfectly with some of the wood cut prints within the book. The leather also has such a wonderful pattern to it I felt it would work extremelly well in combination with my design for the endpapers.

The wheel spokes are made using fine gold wires that are passed through the boards and secured in place. The endpapers and doublures are printed with bicycle tyre tracks, and the front endpaper additionally has a bicycle track pierced out with gold leaf visible through the holes.

The book is housed within a mahogany box, mitred and held together with tulip wood keys at each of the box corners. The front and back panels of the box are constructed from frosted acrylic with the same printed design as on the endpapers behind, which are decorated with stitching and gold foiled tooling.

You can see more of Hannah's work on her web site, www.han-made.net
and by following her on her blog at www.bloglovin.com/en/blog/12073165