“Design a binding for a cookbook.” And not just any other cookbook: this one is dedicated for mushrooms.

“Zwammen Smullen” is a publication by Atelier De Ganzenweide. The publisher organized an exhibition with the many creatively bound books, and there will be a catalog in the near future.

This is my entry: a long stitch binding in handmade oilpaper covers, with gold leaf metal decorations on the covers and a gauze on the spine.  Bound with silk threads, further embellished with gold color embroidery thread. Closure: twined cord, gold thread tassle.

measures approximately 18.5 x 18.5 cm

From the archives. This book was in many ways a landmark for me. Until then I had steered away from large format books, and suddenly I was faced with a commission based on A3 format and a very tight schedule.

The book is an art project about the building site workmen, with their signatures on the pages, documenting the time when the new business center of Amsterdam, Zuidas, was being built.
A commissioned binding in limp parchment covers, sewn on alum-tawed leather. Loose pages were joined together with guards of japanese paper and sewn as sections. Handsewn endbands.

This book was made in an enlightened, or a zen-like working week. Everything went exactly as I had intended, and I still now love the outcome. Simplistic, natural and chique.

42,5×30,5 cm

2004

Beautiful Fact was a pleasant commission to work on. For this book I did the layout, the illustrations and the binding.
It is a binding for a collection of loveletters and -poems, a gift from a lover to his mistress. It has soft, flexible leather covers, lined with green suede. The cherry blossoms and the birds are slightly raised to the touch (cushioned onlays). The branches are blind tooled and painted dark gold. The book is housed in a green silk pouch.
Size: 220×150mm

the title page, and the book housed in its pouch:

Bundles of emotion, vision and thought, creations that fly out into the World as soon as they have matured  to find their place, their home, their peace-action Peace on a wall, on a table, in the hands of Yet Another.
- NJ2002