Eternal Jew's Tale, manuscript 1, binding

In this, and 2 or 3 following posts, I’ll be presenting images of some notable details of an illuminated manuscript I produced of the opening scenes of a long narrative poem I recently completed, entitled The Atternen Juez Talen (The Eternal Jew’s Tale).

I began working on this manuscript over a year ago, using a pre-bound empty book that had been given to me as a gift by my wife Nancy some number of years ago. The paper appears to be a Nepalese tissue with minimal sizing (“size” is a technical term that means ‘surface sealant’; unsized paper will allow ink to feather, therefore making it unsuitable for most calligraphy). Thus, I had to size each sheet. I used a thinned acrylic medium as my size. If you’re curious about my decision to use acrylic, contact me.

The sizing process was complicated for 3 reasons:

1. wetting the sheets meant they would become buckled and wrinkled upon drying;
2. since sizing is glue of one sort or another, it meant that if I put the pages in a press to avoid buckling, they would stick together into a solid block; and
3. since the book was already bound, pressing each sheet individually would have been prohibitively time consuming.

I’ll spare you the details of my solution, but needless to say, for this 156 sheet book it required over 2 months to complete the sizing project. But the result was quite nice. The acrylic size made the sheets somewhat pearlescent and translucent, which I liked a lot. But it meant I could only write on one side of each sheet. So suddenly, my 312 page book (156 sheets, both sides) became a 156 page book. No worries. It kept me plenty busy for another 10 months.

The production process was rather straight forward. First I did the calligraphy, using India ink. Then, using water colors, I painted small portraits on pages where the right margin of the text was wide enough to allow a miniature. Then I illuminated all the section breaks with various versions of a sunburst. There were about 20 of these illuminations. After that, I did a number of full and half-page illustrations, again using water colors. Finally, I bound the book in blue leather. Since I used a chrome-based tanned leather, it wouldn’t take gold tooling, so I painted the title on the front and spine, using acrylic paint.

In this post I’ll present images of the binding, the title page, and the end papers.
Enjoy!

Front cover

I used some transistors I bought 40 years ago to decorate the corners

Back cover, with flap untied

Here again, transistors, plus an antique ceramic bead and a sterling bead knotted into the tie string.

Back cover, with flap tied

Spine

The book is fairly soft-bound; thus the curved spine.

Back end paper

Stamped with a wood block I cut, using acrylic paint

Front end paper

Again, stamped liked back end paper

Title page and end paper

Title page

painted with water colors, lettering in India ink

Brushes and pens

A corner of my workspace

Producing The Madeleine Amulet, a video

I created this amulet, which took over 100 hours to produce, to bring blessings and protection to my granddaughter, Madeleine Julia Avigiyel Ruth. Of course, what power do we 'talking spirits' have to bless or bring protection to ourselves or others? We don't know! But in our unknowing shall we then simply abandon our imagination, and shall we limit our desire to reshape this world, choosing to work only on the physical plane, a plane so crude and finite? And so I call out to the Infinite, and try to establish some kind of personal connection, tho my effort itself is crude and finite.

Designing The Madeleine Amulet, a video

This video explores some of the ideas the helped me design an amulet for my granddaughter, The Madeleine Amulet.