Heather Bain
Belmont, Massachusetts

Heather Bain began in the North Bennet Street School's Bookbinding program in 2010, immediately after graduating from Carleton College in Minnesota with a major in Classical Languages, a concentration in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and all the book arts classes she could fit in. She thinks of bookbinding as a form of textual analysis, prosody in three dimensions, which is part of what drew her to the craft. She will do almost anything for a really good metaphor.

Website: bookwyrmbound.com

The Silmarillion, 2012

The binding focuses on the celestial bodies that define the literal horizon and on the thematic horizon between the inevitability of decay and the possibility of creating beauty from it. The trees are surface-gilt in metals which will tarnish over time, reenacting the deaths of the Two Trees, but the flower and fruit will stay bright; in the book they become the Sun and Moon and carry the light of the Trees into future Ages. The decorated edges represent the Silmarils in their final resting places--sky, sea, and earth. Titled in Elvish characters with tools made by the binder.

Dimensions: 8.5 x 9.5 x 2 inches; 21.5 x 24 x 5 centimeters

Harmatan goatskin; marbled paper; gold, palladium, silver and brass leaf.