The client lost her husband a few years ago. She had a copy of his autobiography, which he had been working on for a number of years, and a plan to finally properly lay it out and honor his words. I laid out the text and worked back and forth with the client to do some tidying and general edits (for clarity) and we opted to make a box to house the unbound sheets of these memoirs, symbolic of the unfinished text. The box features a tray with notches on either side to easily remove the text. An attached ribbon serves as a placeholder for when the items are returned to the box.
The frontispiece was letterpress printed. It is based on a woodblock print made by the client's husband many many years ago, with a quote from Edgar Allan Poe that he related to.
A stamping die was made to blind-imprint the covers of the boxes. The goal here was subtlety - we wanted the entire project to be.... "quiet", and really to honor the text that was inside.
An edition of 11 boxes were made, with most of them going to close family members, and with at least one circulating copy.
