Samuel Feinstein
Orland Park, Illinois

Samuel Feinstein is a bookbinder and aspiring finisher, focusing on fine bindings. He will be graduating from the North Bennet Street School bookbinding program in June 2012, and is also studying at the American Academy of Bookbinding.

Website: Samuel Feinstein Images

Dance of Death, Engravings by Hans Holbein, 2012

The “horizon” I chose to explore was death, the final journey of our mortality. Hans Holbein's engravings depict Death personified, dancing around humans from every vocation from emperor to child, often with an hourglass. Death will eventually take all of us away, frequently with no regard to timing, family, love, ambitions, etc. Full black goatskin binding sewn on flattened cords with black doublures and sewn in leather hinges and flyleaves; edges gilt, gauffered, and painted; double core headbands; sham bands on spine; boards built up incorporating an onyx stone set into a silver bezel (by jeweler Sara Pancoast); multi-colored goatskin onlays, gold tooling, and surface gilding with 21K "moon gold"--which has enough of a silver content to lightly tarnish, being subject to its own horizon.

Dimensions: 6.25 x 3.5 x .75 inches, 16 x 9 x 2 centimeters

Leather, silk, paper, silver, onyx, gold.