This piece was created for submission to the “Set” category of the 2025 Open•Set design binding competition, sponsored triennially by the American Academy of Bookbinding. In the “Set” category, all submitting bookbinders received the same text block — in 2024, a copy of Editions Koch’s The Helen Fragments. Books accepted by the jury (including this one) are exhibited nationally at various venues throughout 2025.

Design statement: By making her standing loom the dominant element of the design, this binding pays homage to the skilled craftswoman Helen is largely forgotten to be outside the narrative of Homer’s Iliad. Indeed, when we meet her in Chapter 3 of the text, she is weaving stories from the years-long conflict into a ‘lambent’ cloth—a glowing, flickering work of storytelling.

At the same time, this cover image seeks to foreground the complex liminality of Helen’s position in Troy by freezing her mid-movement, stepping off the front cover: in this moment, she could be reaching past the loom to gather more thread for her work just as she could be walking away from it, called to observe combat from the walls of Troy.

About the materials and binding: The spine title was composed digitally in Quadraat light italic and then embroidered onto the leather spine piece using a backstitch. The front and back cover panels are decorated with onlays and embroidery. Across the binding, tanned goat (black and orange), tawed goat (white), and tanned buffalo (burgundy) are used.

Sewn board binding structure. The head edge is painted with concentrated watercolors; one-piece 'vanity caps' with rolled endbands are adhered at the head and tail of the binding; the outermost leaves from the endsheet gatherings are pasted down to the sewn cover boards of the structure.

Bound in 2024. Image courtesy of the American Academy of Bookbinding.