Tuesday, November 5, 2019

St. Cuthbert's Gospel for St. Eligius

Just about a year late trying to get this published. Better late than never.  I just decided that to maybe put some stuff somewhere other than FB.  So here we are.

I made a reproduction of St. Cuthbert's Gospel for an SCA event call St. Eligius in November 2018.  Of course, there are several things about my book that are unlike the original Gospel.  The two big ones are that there is some blind tooling on the original that I did not replicate and I don't have a handle on the correct headband style used on the original so I did not try that.  Like most of my book, this one was given as a gift after the competition.

Here are the pictures.

Text block and cut wood covers.  The paper is commercial "parchment" and the boards are poplar craft board.

Putting sewing holes in the covers.


Getting ready to sew the book together.

Sewing the text block.  I used a waxed linen cord and a Coptic stitchd to bind the text block. 

Sewn book

Spine of sewn book.



Replica of St. Cuthbert's Gospel motif created with clay and cotton cord.
Book bound in butter yellow leather.  The original book was bound with red leather.

End page.  Gold marbled black paper.  The original end pages were lost so I just used some pretty paper I had around.

Final front cover.

Final back cover.

Final top of book.



Final bound spine.