The Gentleman's Confidential

Tough leather, brass clasp, silk pocket. Discreet and purposeful stitching. Supplied with tie pin. Suits a gentleman's library. I wonder what you keep on the shelves?

The Book of Curiosities?

One of the upcoming Alice in Wonderland series I'm planning as one of my summer fancies, but this gorgeous book I'm foolishly selling at the Handmade and Vintage, Central Milton Keynes, February 28 and March 1.

 I have spent hours playing with the Curiosity lens. It tells me that sometimes we only need to look with a different eye to find the normal, curious. Fantastic fun.

With cards, so you can keep a record of your Curiosity findings.

And a bottle of curiosity, just in case you ever find yourself worrying low.

(What they said about the cat was wrong. Curiosity only ever advanced human knowledge.)

Ravish me with your words

What a gob-smacker. No wonder Henry fell for Anne Boleyn. Here's a book to indulge the mood.

Tough black leather, delicate lace, fragile papers. If you buy this book, boxed in tissue paper, then drench the textured heart in perfume. xx

Travel with Me

The solution to all the stuff you bring home from travelling: coins, bits of ripped papers, receipts, broken shells, pebbles, scrapings of sand, paper napkins, journey tickets, maps and the odd item you never needed but from which you cannot be parted. Book and box to store them. Seal it up, store it in the trinkroom, relive the journey again, in a different time.

The Book of Trees

I'm finding out about Ramon Llull, particularly his tree diagram for the organisation of knowledge (1295). I think there's a commonplace connection to be made here in ways of organising the pages to reveal and conceal the ideas that you enter; but one thing is certain. The books I make in response to this topic have to grow: leather bark that forms new shapes of wraps and twists; sticks that twine from the covers; wood as carriers of text; leaves that sound as they gently touch your fingers.

And chains. I'm afraid these books must be chained. It's a traditional way to control access to knowledge.

Walk through the winter woodland

We walked through a flurry of snow last week, across fields with deer and through woods where the sunlight streamed to melt the ice. I came home, dried my feet, and made this book.

The Butterfly Collector

With pages that unwrap, like wings.

Romeo and Juliet are coming to town

This small pocket style note book I think of as my Romeo and Juliet range. These books are, quite simply, little books of love. Collect in them your fond sayings, billet doux, the tickets, notes, tokens and the rose petals that make the ordinary everyday exceptional. 

As a very kind person donated leather to me, just for these Romeo and Juliet books, I'm keeping the price on the upcoming stall as low as twenty pounds. Perfect! The books become the most wonderful and unique present. Fill your book with love notes, photos, sayings, prayers, wishes or desires and hand it to your beloved on a birthday, anniversary, or just to say, I love you.

Coal and Diamond

Ravishing note book based on poems by Audre Lorde.

The cracked leather stitched on the cover of this book is part of my lovely new consignment from a specialist suppliers, and I only have a limited amount, so if you need to feel this beauty between your fingertips, then come to CMK Handmade and Vintage Saturday 28 February and Sunday 1 March. Make it early, because someone will hold this book and say, This one is Mine. (Make sure that person is You. xx)

The sea, the sea

What a comfort there is in memory: watching the sea on the Suffolk and Norfolk coastlines when the skies are pale and the sea swells in huge churns; flint grey, dense, muddied blues, thick cream foam beating on pebble shores. How beautiful and right to hold is thick textured crumpled leather, wrapped up with velvet, crochet, linen threads. Add nets, wire, hand-rubbed felt, ceramic fastening, English marbling, waxes and glass paper. A book to hold a memory of the sea.