Xena Collector Book
(back cover)
This extremely custom binding was created to bind a year's worth of the Xena Prop House newsletter. This customer has a collection of costumes and props used on the Xena TV show and wanted her favorite pieces from her collection incorporated into the cover design. Her favorite wardrobe item was a copper crescent moon headdress from the show (they had some wild costumes on Xena). My challenge was to find a way to make the headdress look like what it was supposed to be. I decided that the best way to do this was to actually create several parts of the headdress in copper. So I got to use some of my metalsmithing skills to turn sheet copper into two shapes for the headdress on the front of this cover. The copper piece to the back of the headdress was hammered into a raised oval and treated with liver of sulphur to give it an antique finish. The front piece of the headdress was hammered into a raised crescent shape, the hammer marks were polished out, and both pieces were laquered (one in high gloss and one in dull finish laquer) to prevent any color changes or tarnishing. And that was just ONE element of this cover! The front cover also had a raised chakram design with gold and silver leaf foil in the appropriate areas. The chakram had real inlaid New Zealand paua shell. I decided that the headdress would not look right floating in space, so I created a raised design that approximates the look and dress of the character who wore it on the series. This included adding light blue leather "veil" inlays to represent the veil on the headdress. The back cover was also full of relief work; the newer style chakram raised and accented with gold, silver, and copper foil leaf. It featured Xena's sword complete with tiny paua shell inlays on the hilt. Lastly, there was a small dagger, accented in foil and studded with real brass studs in the handle. It had an onlay of ridged red leather for the handle. Gold lettering the spine identified the name and dates of the publication. This binding is truly one-of-a-kind.
I really can't put a price on this book. Custom orders with this much detail and metal elements have to be priced on a per-order basis only.
