Prometheus Bound Books - Blog

Words from the Heart

Sue Williams — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 11:39:43 GMT

A retailer’s delight or the right moment to make that meaningful statement to someone you love? It’s certainly true that retailers will take 14th February as an opportunity to introduce and promote almost anything that could possibly be regarded as a “love token” and shops abound with re-packaged articles, elaborate cards and numerous items carrying a heart design.

Most of us find it difficult to articulate passion, love and desire; the inability to communicate strong emotion is a universal problem and it is in order to find the answer to this – to find the right words – that we look for gifts that express, through image or association, the feelings that we want, so badly, to convey. The marketing slogan for a gift of flowers suggests that they can stand in the place of words but why not use words themselves to speak for you?

Literature and poetry abound with hauntingly beautiful messages of love for those you love, miss, desire – there are eloquent words available for any and every type of relationship. In poetry Romeo and Juliet offers “My bounty is as boundless as the sea/My love as deep” and Elizabeth Barrett Browning ““How do I love thee? Let me count the ways/I love thee to the depth and breadth and height/My soul can reach”. From literature “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope” (Persuasion); “To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.” (Les Miserables); “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same” (Wuthering Heights) and so many more from all genres of writing. So is the answer perhaps to give a gift of words in which each line is filled with love? Perhaps a hand bound book with the lines that mean most to you inscribed within or even embossed on the cover? Poetry, love letters, great literature – all contain words that are meant – written from the heart, not redolent of commerce. As John Donne said “More than kisses, letters mingle souls”. More than four hundred years later this is still as true.

Books do furnish a room?

Sue Williams — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 17:22:49 GMT

Of course they do. On a coffee table, a bookcase, a wall of bookshelves, a library. For me, a room bereft of books is a sterile and empty space. Do they betray our innermost selves? Maybe. Who hasn’t had a quick peer at a friend’s shelf? Self-help manuals, travel guides, cookery books, enticing ‘coffee-table’ books on art or architecture, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, the latest Man Booker/Costa winner? And are they randomly displayed or arranged by author, by title, by colour? Fascinating.

And interior designers certainly seem to believe that books are a necessary element to complete furnishing any room. Working with major designers we have been providing our Couture Covers (colour-coordinated and title embossed dust jackets on books) to complement their sophisticated design schemes, helping to lend an air of liveability to the theatre that is the show flat or house.
However, what has been most intriguing here at Prometheus Bound has been the wonderfully creative way that many of our clients have treated a book. Because we can emboss any book with messages they become a personal missive to someone special.

We have bound books with birthday messages so they become an ultra luxurious birthday card, likewise wedding anniversary gifts. God-children are given books to treasure for always, often one from the donor’s own childhood that means something special to them, ‘Hope you love this as much as I did’. Recently we were asked to put a wedding proposal in the form of a self-penned poem on the front of the very romantic ‘Love Poems’. Aaah! We loved doing that and really hoped she said yes. And the one with a date on the front and ‘See you in church xx’ on the back. And the lovely book we made, printing and binding the emails of a couple with a long distance relationship. Who says romance is dead?

A present for the bride to be from her girlfriends? – an initialled notebook for her wedding notes.

A visitors book for the new home – when it’s a castle you do need something special!

The sign-in book for an ultra fashionable London club – enormous! A3 size, 600 pages and embossed with the club’s crest in gold – so traditional, so cool.

What a pleasure it is for us to receive these, so personal, requests and to produce something that is going to make someone very happy.

Furnishing a room with books comes in a myriad of forms.

Oh to be Really Useful

Marie Stevens — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 11:16:40 GMT

The shocking news today about Marie Colvin’s death will have affected everyone who values accurate news reporting and admires the selfless bravery of those who bring it to us. If it is not too trite to say it, hers was a useful life in the broadest sense and we all gained knowledge and perspective from her unbiased, truthful and fearless articles.

Today I received an email from a respected political commentator, a giant in her field and friend and colleague of the famous. A recent brush with the medical profession caused her to comment that she wished she could do something “really useful” with her life, commending, as one so often hears, the kindness and empathy of the medical profession. And that from someone whose wisdom, intelligence and insightful writing have certainly been more than useful in shaping political strategy.

So being useful is perhaps what we all strive to be? And such a difficult concept of course. Here at Prometheus Bound we have been working on binding Boudoir photographs (a fairly recent development and offering “intimate” photographs of wives and girlfriends). Not a bit “useful” you might think – until you read the testimonials of the customers who have used these services and presented the “beautiful” results to delighted recipients. Surely “useful” in its own way – supporting, saving or perhaps reviving relationships, all suffering in such difficult times in which those closest to us will feel the effect of individual hardship the most.

It is Lent now – the traditional time for giving something up and perhaps more in the news that usual given the current focus on the position of the Church of England in our daily life. But giving things up is perhaps not that useful (other than the pleasure in the personal sacrifice); more useful perhaps is the recommendation from the vicar in the Archers that those keeping Lent should do a daily “random act of kindness”. Food for thought.

So is bookbinding “useful”? We believe it is. The preservation of a lovely traditional craft has a place, particularly in ugly times; beauty does have its uses – in lifting the heart, refreshing the soul and preserving our heritage.

What the Dickens!*

Sue Williams — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 12:40:36 GMT

As we close in on the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’ birth on February 7th we do really have to thank the BBC for helping to bring it to the public’s awareness. Of course there are countless groups dedicated to keeping his memory alive and he has always been read widely, but it is so encouraging to see several of his books in the bestseller lists, which is not usually the case. The rather wonderful adaption of ‘Great Expectations’ was enthralling, with the added bonus of a very beautiful Pip, Burberry model no less, who would surely have attracted a younger viewer who may not have encountered Dickens before. I have my reservations about ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’ adaption, but, hey, it still pulled in lots of viewers . Being on the TV sells books, we only have to look at the enormous popularity and massive subsequent sales from any cookery series to see that. And what is more, people buy the physical book , hurrah, – is there word for this now? Paper book? 3D book?

Also, as I am sure is being repeated all over the country, indeed the world, my book club decided we should start 2012 by reading another Dickens. We went for ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ which some of us had read before, albeit many moons ago. I hadn’t and gosh I’m so pleased I am reading it now. It is unputdownable and is keeping me up until far too late reading. I couldn’t say the same for our last book – Julian Barnes’ Booker winner ‘A Sense of an Ending’, which I ended up reading twice. My opinion of it changed rather after that second reading which threw up many more unsatisfactory questions – for goodness sake why didn’t Veronica just tell him what he ‘didn’t get’! In spite of that, we all thought it was an exceptional book and it certainly was up there in the ‘how long did we discuss that?’ stakes, which says a lot.
Barnes’ book has a great first line – ‘I remember, in no particular order:’ (and encapsulates the essence of the book) but I’ afraid that it is beaten hands down by the start of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ –
‘It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,’

Hairs rising on the back of your neck?
If you haven’t read any Dickens now is the time to start.

In fact this lovely phrase has nothing whatsoever to do with Charles Dickens. It originates from Shakespeare in ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ where the word Dickens refers to the devil – and, to quote from the 20th Century – we all know that ‘the devil is in the detail’ .

What better description is there of the work of Charles Dickens , except that ‘God is in the detail’.

Interiors and Christmas on our minds

Marie Stevens — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 17:28:07 GMT

A really gratifying response to our new PB Couture Covers has made me look critically at the horrendous state of my own bookcases – I am not suggesting that I am the latest word in interior style but it would be very nice to have my sets colour coded (reveal as it would my obsession to read authors in their entirety in turn). For example – Richmal Crompton 31, E.M.Delafield 38, Noel Streatfeild 11, Elizabeth Taylor 13. There is a tremendous similarity in these authors of course – middle class domestic early 20th century – so to prove (to my children who find my focus somewhat odd) that I am not welded to second hand books I am taking time out from received English, Church attendance and nursery puddings to read Caitlin Moran’s brilliant new book, How to Be a Woman. I am only half way through it but can already highly recommend it for the stellar writing and wonderful, self deprecating humour.

Terrifyingly, we now have Christmas on our minds. Magazines (like the fashion industry and my sister who has already started Christmas shopping) think way, way ahead and we are already in production for our Christmas specials which we think will make wonderful gifts. This year we have gone all out with the front cover embossing so you can expect to see a beautiful Great Gatsby with an art deco design and a Sherlock Holmes with an embossed deer stalker hat (what else?) on these pages soon. We are also again making nice, chunky, A5 diaries for 2012 in all of our bindings and have some other products which make nice (and easy!) gifts.

We have also taken a stall at the Clifton Nursery Christmas Market (Clifton Villas, London, W9) for the three weekends running up to Christmas which we are looking forward to (not least because the stalls adjoin their amazing cafe…). If anyone wants to see what Sue and I look like in the flesh, come along and take a look at what is on offer. We will have a selection of our books and other products available (and probably a bottle of something bracing under the stall). We’ll put some details about the market up on our site soon – it promises to be a really fun event.