This is a handmade Coptic bound notebook with a map of Lindisfarne Holy Island burned into the cover.

There are representations of St. Cutbert’s boat in the harbour, a Viking ship from the West, and English and Spanish ships from the Spanish Armada to show the long history of the island. When the tide is low a causeway is exposed so that people can walk out to the island.

The Celtic frame is inspired by one of the designs in the Lindisfarne Gospels ilustrated by St.Cuthbert’s monks on the island circa years 715AD-720AD. The monks who illuminated this book seemed eager to make the border take up a lot of space on the page which I’m guessing was to minimise the amount of detail work in the centre that they would need to do. I needed the opposite and wanted to maximise the space on the cover, so I designed a re-imagined version of the knotwork with the knotwork inside the corners rather than outside to optimise the space on the cover for the map.

More Coptic Bound Books…

This is a handmade Coptic bound notebook with pyrographed covers inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints.

Front Cover: Samurai Girl

The front cover shows a female samurai (onna-bugeisha) inspired by a Japanese woodblock print that has been assigned the title “Falconer Ukiyo-e – Utagawa Kunisada”. However when I looked up “Falconer by Kunisada a different image came up so I’m not sure if those details are accurate or not.

This is what the cover looked like with just the burn lines before the colour was added.

Inside the front cover.

Back Cover: The Great Wave

The back cover is inspired by probably the best known and most famous Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock print, the awe-inspiring “Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Hokusai.