Marbled Ledger #1

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Pocket-sized, marbled ledger books.

A series of eight Properly Made Books revisit the days of personal account and note keeping in a practical pocket-sized format

Size - 4½ x 3¼ inches, 106 x 83 mm

THE DETAILS These are made entirely by hand using exactly the same techniques and materials as all of our Properly Made Books, and they're made to last.

Featuring gold tooled leather spines, marbled paper covers, highly decorated foredges, rounded corners and antique ruled paper inside, these elegant bindings are like no other.

The books in this series feature genuine gold leaf tooling to the leather spines, each motif unique.

The patterns are applied with a combination of hand engraved brass tools, heat, pressure, and a steady hand! The board sides of the leather are tooled in a solid line marking the place where paper meets leather.

Beautifully covered with a unique hand marbled paper, made in traditional patterns by Payhembury Marbled Paper, located in northern Scotland.

The papers have been finished in the traditional way - burnished to a glossy finish and sealed with an old school shellac varnish which not only looks and feels wonderful, it also helps to protect the paper from damage and grubby finger marks!

Properly Made Books open flat and even beyond flat, ensuring they'll withstand years of rigorous real-life, every day use.

Would you like to know how Properly Made Books are so flexible? Check out our blog here.

Each book features rounded corners which not only look good, the rounding serves a practical purpose too, helping to protect the edges when the book is being taken in and out of a pocket or bag - there are no sharp corners to bend or catch helping to preserve the integrity of the most vulnerable part of the book for years to come.

Traditionally, ledgers would feature decorative marbled edges and so we've reinterpreted this tradition with shimmering decorative foredges sprinkled in various coloured inks and metallic golden powders.

Inside are 116 pages of upcycled and repurposed ruled paper taken from a huge old antique, mid-century ledger, cut down, folded and sewn into pocket-sized book blocks.

Because we've used larger parent pages for these small books, each page tends to be lined differently, lending random-ruled character to what would otherwise be uniform and a little bit boring!

The Inspiration - In use for hundreds of years, long before Microsoft Excel and Quickbooks, hefty leather and cloth ledger books were kept by individuals and businesses across the world to record all types of transactions, mainly financial.

Ledgers were a requirement if you wanted to run a business with any sort of accuracy and efficiency and making them was big business. Records show there were many binderies in England whose sold trade was manufacturing these ledgers and even papermills produced only ledger paper, a thick, strong stock, capable of being amended without damaging the surface.

These ledgers were big old hefty things filled with hundreds and hundreds of ruled and lined pages for notes and account keeping. This particular ledger, held in our collection, belonged to an estate on one of the Orkney Islands, Rousey. It was found by a friend in a junk shop in Edinburgh, who in turn gave it to VPCo.

Shop keepers, tradesmen, farmers, wine merchants et al would have routinely used these to keep track of their finances, stock levels and most importantly, to know who owed them money!

Like our own pocket sized marbled ledgers, the large versions often had rounded corners and decorative foredges - this example has lovely marbled foredges. You can see the wear and tear on the leather corners too, showing the book being removed and replaced on a shelf over many years of use.

The VPCo Book Bag

This book is supplied with an exclusive 100% cotton VPCo book bag which has been printed by hand in our workshop on both sides.

ABOUT PROPERLY MADE BOOKS.

Properly Made Books are made over a period of weeks and months.

Imagine how a book was made in the 18th century - this is how our books are crafted. They are bound entirely by hand in Scotland to the absolute highest standard using traditional techniques and only the finest quality materials.

Most of the prints used are made in-house using lino, letterpress, paste, Dutch Gilt and stencilling techniques.

All Properly Made Books are LayFlat allowing them to open fully without causing any structual damage and making them completely usable in the field or studio.

Properly Made Books can be found in countless collections around the world including the Met Library in New York City, Harvard and Yale Special Collections, Miami U and many more.

Every Properly Made Book is unique - VPCo never makes the same book twice

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT PROPERLY MADE BOOKS, CLICK HERE

MADE ENTIRELY BY HAND IN SCOTLAND