Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading, tr. Dmitri Nabokov in collaboration with the author (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1959). Bound by Gillian Stewart, 2025.
A 3-D model of the design binding is available here.
Bookbinder's Statement
Leather onlays of hand dyed leather, blocked leather using custom plates, and pigment foiling overlays on top. Head decorated and hand painted, hand dyed leather endbands.
The novel follows Cincinnatus, a prisoner awaiting execution for the vague crime of "gnostical turpitude". The story builds a strange world, a prison with unclear rules, characters who hold multiple roles and where the laws of reality seem to bend. We come to question what is real, and where Cincinnatus questions reality and his identity. There's a dualism to his nature that invited me to question the rules that we follow, roles we play, how we consent to be governed, and our solidity of self.
Thinking of the metaphysical themes of contrasts between solidity and impermanence, of opting out, power and consent, I was thinking of how to show this in the binding. I chose to use the inlayed shapes - like an isometric drawing of a cell - contrasted with the textured and loose blocked leather.
Greys stand in for impermanence, flatness and confinement, while the contrasting bright red/orange and white made me think of Cincinnatus' true nature piercing the confusing and unreal world he inhabited. The orange/red also echoed a dye I found and removed from the spine of the original binding, possibly from the original edge decoration. I liked the colours, but something about retaining the original nature of the book appealed to the themes, too.
Technical details
Full leather flush joint attachment
Paper doublures, foil blocked in inlayed with leather. Leather jointed with hand dyed leatherHead decorated with airbrush and ink
Endbands of hand dyed leather
Bound in goatskin, monoprinted and dyed with aniline dyes
Inlays of hand dyed and debossed leather
Tooled with pigment foils
Housed in a magnetic closure box with pigment tooling, felt lining and leather label inlays