Jill Deiss & Amy Jackson

Winchester, Virginia 
Jill Deiss is a bookbinder at Cat Tail Run Hand Bookbinding in Winchester, Virginia. She studied bookbinding and restoration in Northampton, Massachusetts, the Department of Library Conservation at Cornell University, and the Conservation Laboratories of the Smithsonian Institution. She received a B.S. in Chemistry and a M.L.S. from Syracuse University where she specialized in the study of archives and rare books collections. Deiss works primarily as a restorer of leather bindings.

Amy Jackson is a bookbinder for Cat Tail Run Hand Bookbinding specializing in new bindings. She received a B.F.A. from Longwood University with a concentration in printmaking and book arts and a minor in art history. Maintaining an active schedule as a printmaker and book artist, her work has been included in numerous shows, notably the Creative Arts Workshop 2012 show “Inventive Structures” juried by Hedi Kyle.

Example Binding: 
Ingo F. Walther and Norbert Wolf. 
Codices Illustres: The World’s Most Famous Illustrated Manuscripts, 400–1600
.
London: Taschen, 2001.

Chieftain goatskin covers; Harmatan morocco onlays of terracotta, peach, navy, brown, light blue, and gray; gold leaf illumination, blind tooling, relief printing on minokichi paper. Binding serves as both protection for the text and canvas for interpreting the Annunciation. Colors derived from Fra Angelico’s fifteenth-century painting of the same subject which highlights the substantial wings of the angel Gabriel. The front cover depicts such a wing which deftly encircles and contains Mary. The back cover shows a different wing, also encircling a golden nimbus but loosely. Telltale feathers floating away from the wing indicate struggle. Spine detailed with a column based on the portico in the original painting. Endpapers are a relief print.

Design Description: 
Front and back covers with gold fillets between red and burgundy/brown rays, gold fillet at edges of board faces. Title and author gold tooled on spine. Blind tooling around inner edge of front girandole, DIXITQUE DEUS FIAT LUX (with gold leaf illumination), and around inner edge of back girandole, VIDEMUS NUNC PER SPECULUM IN AENIGMATE (with silver leaf illumination), each girandole to be slightly rounded and elevated,  blind tooled, circular indentations on frames of girandoles. Gold leaf illumination in halo of candle. The tension of light and dark is depicted aesthetically via dark colors in juxtaposition to light colors and figuratively through the use of iconographic elements within the design: a double-ended candle lit on one end only, beams of light projecting from the candle flame and depictions of two girandole mirrors. Endsheet design is a relief print suggestive of fur.

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Jill Deiss & Amy Jackson example binding

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Jill Deiss & Amy Jackson design proposal

Jill Deiss & Amy Jackson