book « In the Studio

Birthday Book in the Making

Here are some pictures of the process of working on a special commission of a travel journal – The blue plaid book cloth is actually a pair of favorite shorts the recipient had to regretfully consign to the rag pile – not any more! Now they’re immortalized as a book’s cover. The toggles are antique brass [...]

Handpainted Coyote Journal

Originally uploaded by MissRuth

This neat little book is currently for sale on my [...]

Lotus Blossom Journal

Originally uploaded by MissRuth

I’m proud of this latest hardcover book – it showcases some of my favorite papers and book cloth.

The book was completely made by me from start to finish – I hand cut, folded and sewed the pages together, and created the cover out of beautiful hand-stenciled japanese Katezome paper. Originating in [...]

Webster’s Pictorial Dictionary

I’m currently lusting after Webster’s Pictorial Dictionary by Chronicle Books. We have a copy here at the Paper Tyger that I lovingly look through – it’s a hefty little book, about two inches thick, and about 7″x9″.

An excerpt from the back cover reads:
“Featuring more than 1,500 engravings that originally graced the pages of 19th-century Webster’s dictionaries, [...]

Leather Pocket Journals

This spring someone gave me a book of leather samples – I’m not sure where they are from, maybe an upholsterer – but they came in two shades of brown and a beautiful bright red. I had four peices total, of really nice quality fairly thick leather, and I was trying to think of what I [...]

Little Boston Book

When I was working in a library a few summers ago I came across a beautiful old map of Boston from 1858 – I made several copies of it, and one of them I used on the cover of this book.

After transferring the image on to silk using a solvent transfer method, I painted [...]