The Only Part of a Journal I Write
A leather cover, a stitched spine, a snap strap, and a few hundred pages left for somebody else
A journal is the one object I make that is unfinished on purpose. The cover, the stitching, the strap and the stud are all mine. The pages belong to whoever buys it, and they stay empty until that person writes in them. I make half a book and the owner makes the rest.
These photographs are from the early 2021 set in the shop’s media library, a pair of journals shot on white, one dark and one tan. I’ll be exact about what I know and what I’m only seeing, because a journal is a quiet object and it’s easy to overclaim for it. What the photographs show: a soft-cornered book, a leather cover embossed with the Marcellino New York name, a stitched spine, and a strap of the same leather that wraps the front and closes on a snap.
Everything else in this post is opinion, and I’ll label it when it matters.
The cover
The name on the front is pressed into the leather, not printed on it. It’s an emboss, and in the photographs it shows as a slightly darker, slightly sunken line, as if the name had been pressed into wet clay and left to dry. You see it more clearly in raking light than in direct light.
The video below is forty-one seconds of my logo being embossed into bridle leather. It isn’t the journal, and I won’t pretend it is, but it’s the same mark made the same way, and it shows what the words on the front of the journal had to go through.
Video: “Embossing Logo in Leather,” Marcellino NY Briefcase Maker on YouTube.
An emboss is the opposite of ink. Ink sits on the surface and can be wiped. An emboss is a permanent change in the shape of the material, so the leather carries my name in the same way a coin carries a head. When I put a mark on a thing, I want it to cost the thing something.
The spine
Look at the spine in the photograph above. A line of pale thread runs down the edge of the cover, each stitch showing as a small dash against the tan. I’m confident the cover is sewn, because the stitching is visible. I’m not going to describe the binding of the pages inside, because the photographs don’t show it and I’d be guessing.
A stitched edge does two jobs. It holds the layers together, and it draws the eye down the length of the object like a seam in a drawing. In my opinion, the thread is the most honest ornament on a leather book. It’s also functional, so nobody can accuse it of showing off.
The strap
The strap does something a button or a magnet can’t. It makes you take a second to open the book.
The photograph above shows the strap taken away from the cover, a long thin band with a snap stud at one end. It looks like a single piece of leather, a belt around a book. You push the snap, unwrap, open. A magnetic flap pops open and invites you in. A strap makes you decide.
I think a closed book ought to keep a little of its privacy. The strap isn’t security, and it won’t stop anyone who wants to read your pages. It’s a gesture, a ceremony of opening that tells you the thing in your hands was made by someone who thought about the moment before the first word.
Two colors, one idea
The photographs show two finishes. One is a dark brown that reads close to burgundy at the edges, with a silver-toned snap. The other is a warm tan with a brass-toned stud, I can’t tell the tannage from a photograph, and I won’t guess.
What I can say is that the pairing matters. A dark journal says “private.” A tan one says “workshop,” and it asks to be scuffed. I’d carry the dark one to a meeting and the tan one to a field. That’s a preference, not a rule.
If you want to know what the tan one is likely to do over the years, the site has a piece on that idea, Patina Is a Record, Not a Flaw. Leather keeps the evidence of use, and a journal gathers it quickly because it’s handled every day.
The blank part
The part of a journal I don’t make is the part that matters. The pages come empty, and what goes into them is entirely out of my hands. A briefcase has a purpose built into it by its pockets and its lock. A journal has only a promise, and the promise is that somebody will come along with something to say.
I like that I can’t control it. For years I’ve described my work as sculpture, and sculpture is finished before it leaves the studio. A journal is the exception. It’s a sculpture with a hollow in the middle, and the hollow is where the owner goes.
Opinion: of everything I’ve made, the journal is the one most likely to end up meaning more than I intended. A bag gets used for the job it was designed for. A journal gets used for whatever life turns up, and I’ve never seen how that part turns out.
Where they are now
The photographs are early work, and I have no live listing for the journals today. If you’re curious about one in a particular leather or color, write to me through the Bespoke page. I can’t promise a price or a date from a blog post, and I won’t try to.
If you’ve written in a journal made by a leatherworker, I’d like to hear how the strap and the spine held up. That’s the part of the story I only see in photographs.
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