I continue to love my Xena customers.  So what if the TV show ended in 2001?!  People still love it and continue to collect props and costumes used in the making of the show.  This binding is one of a set I do every year for several Xena prop and costume collectors.  The book has printed pages (one of the few I do that has printed pages) and it's a binding of a year's worth of the Xena Prop House online newsletter that is printed out in full color and bound for several collectors.
This collector owns a pair of fabric costume gauntlets from some of the episodes that had an Asian/Chinese theme.  The real cloth gauntlets that the raised designs on this cover were based on had intricate embroidery in red, black, and gold featuring images of a bird of paradise and a dragon.  The real gauntlets also had ribbed green cuffs.  An image of the original gauntlets I was working from can be seen below.
The look of the gauntlets was re-created on this cover using separate pieces of board that were carved and/or built-up before being covered with leather to create the raised animal designs.  The individual pieces were then assembled, puzzle-fashion, in recessed areas of the cover.  The cover is predominantly black pigskin leather but the gauntlets are covered with green suede and red goatskin leathers that have been pared down by hand until they are paper-thin in order to take the detailed, small shapes of the raised designs underneath them.  These raised areas were then accented with black and gold pigments to mimic the look of the embroidered cloth originals.  The publication's logo was added using a custom metal die and gold stamping foil.  Moveable metal type was used to add the title and dates on the spine in gold foil.
This is the 4th year I've done these custom Prop House newsletter bindings and I hope I'll be doing them for many more years.

A binding like this can only be quoted on a per-order basis.

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