Translated by Emily Beyda with illustrations by Jade Fusco
a harlequin creature collaboration, Printed in Brooklyn, NY, 2017
16/100 m/f

Private Collection, US

Bound as a 3-Part Bradel binding. The spine is covered in hand-dyed calfskin in craquelle technique and embroidered in cotton floss. Boards are covered in raspberry goatskin with onlays in yellow ochre goatskin, mauve buffalo, light pink buffalo, navy blue buffalo, metallic blue and hand-dyed teal calfskin. Embroidered embellishments in cotton floss in back stitch and French knots. Teal buffalo skin wrapped endbands. Endpapers are mix of handmade papers: purple Hook Pottery paper, teal kozo paper from Morgan Conservatory, Ghanian kozo with threads from Mary Hark and lilac kozo from Morgan Conservatory.

Book is housed in a clamshell box covered in blackberry goatskin. Case is embellished with eye design made from raspberry and metallic blue goatskin, hand-dyed calfskin and rose buffalo skin onlays. Embellished with embroidery and metallic foil tooling. The trays are covered in handmade Lokta paper and lined with aubergine suede. Title embroidered on spine in golden yellow.

12.5cm x 21.9cm x 1.4cm – Completed in 2019

• Exhibited in “Bound Together” Bookbinding Alumni Exhibit at North Bennet Street School, Boston, MA, 2019
• Exhibited in 2019 North Bennet Street School Student & Alumni Exhibit

The poem in this book has been translated from Persian to French to English in an experiment to see what concepts and phrases are literally lost through translation. For the design of this binding, I chose to focus this experiment on the illustrations. I asked my husband, Jason Fletcher, to create a series of illustrations inspired by those in the text. I then created a series of illustrations based on Jason’s drawings. A mix of these drawings became the final design for the binding which is illustrated through onlays, embroidery and foiling tooling.