June | 2019 | Buer Studio

Hello everyone,

It’s been a hot minute! Literally. It’s very warm where I am currently located.

I’ve back at work on my very large tome. It had taken me months to hand tea stain the individual pages and air dry them on my meager clothing drying rack, but it was well worth it. I had since bound the signatures into a text block and have cut the cover boards.

And thus it has sat untouched for some time. A few things influenced the delay in my progress. One of which was deciding on the cover medium. I’ve decided on leather however it’s a daunting task as I’ve never utilized leather for a cover before. Much less for anything other than simple craft projects. In an ideal world, I’d love to acquire a few brass leather tools to do some blind tooling with gold on the cover. However they are quite expensive. So much so that many collections are passed down from generation to generation. Honestly I often find myself day dreaming of being an apprentice at some small workshop overseas, surrounded by these stunning tools, supplies …and knowledge! But I digress. For now, a simple black leather (or perhaps this tawny light beige) will suffice. I’ve been eyeing some single tools online but I’ll try and think of other creative ways to accomplish this tooling task.

In the meantime, I went to cut the paper for the end pages last night. And surprise surprise… my book it too big. #bigbookproblems So now I have to acquire two matching sheets of marbled paper (instead of my usual plan of being able to utilize one sheet for both front and back end pages). I’ve been eyeing Jemma Lewis Marbling & Design via Instagram for some time now and absolutely love their designs. My plan is to reach out and inquire about a custom order so we’ll see.

What are you going to do with that large book when you’re done with it? I’ve been asked this by many folks and ask the same of myself every time I admire it. At first I was going to utilize it for my LARP character and include 3 research sections: Elixirs, Myth & Lore and Astrology. However, last night after getting lost yet again down the rabbit hole of Illuminated Manuscripts, I had a grand idea: A Vampire Book of Hours. Yes, I said it. This will take an extensive amount of planning and many Many months of work however I think it would be beyond epic once complete. (I have inadvertently gone backwards though as the pages should be completed/decorated prior to being bound however… I’ll wing it.)

This morning, I discovered this stunning book of hours commonly referred to as the “Morgan Black Hours“. The black background is completely atypical of any illuminated manuscript I’ve ever seen and absolutely breathtaking: