This ornate and very large 3/4 bound book was created for a customer who really wanted A LOT of space to write.  This book has 336 pages of unlined white paper and the page size is 9 and 7/8" wide by 13 and 3/4" tall.  My customer wanted a lovely book that he could carry around and I warned him that this would be a very large, heavy book and not easy to carry in a messenger bag.  But this was the size he wanted.  The cover is a traditional 3/4 binding in black vellum book cloth with red bookcalf spine and corners.  Bookcalf is among the most expensive of book leathers (around $45 per square foot) and is made so that the bookbinder can darken the color using wax.  This technique was successful on this book but also gave it a bit of an "antique" feel since the color was not completely even on every part of red bookcalf.  The book is accented with gold lines on the front and back covers along with a scrolling decoration in the center of the line near the spine (this was necessary because I cannot add a line that long to the cover; I had to break it up into two lines with a decoration in between).  The spine is decorated with raised bands, gold lines, lots of scrolling decorations, and a blind stamped vine on top of each raised band (pretty challenging!).  Two red ribbon page markers complete the look.  My customer loved the finished book, but admitted it was really too large and heavy to carry around with him. 

A book like this would cost around $475.

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