Vintage Reenactor Journals: Civil War, Lewis & Clark

We're working on a series of historically accurate journals, capturing historical periods we hope will be of great interest to reenactors. The above journal is a faithful reproduction of Lewis & Clark's Codex A and B, roughly 6" by 3" oblong sketchbooks they used for recording maps, wildlife, and descriptions of their journeys. We're working on a dedicated website (www.vintagebookbinding.com)  but feel free to contact us if you find them here!

This small pocket diary's title page reads, "Ladies' Diary. Being a repository for daily musings and reflections on the domestic life." Its leather spine and embossed cloth sides covers the period from roughly 1850 to 1890.


We're especially proud of these Civil War pocket diaries. With interest tables, postage rates, travel times, advice to soldiers (such as "Grow your beard at least 3" to avoid disease") and an expanding pocket for pay stubs and receipts, these are exact replicas of the diaries many soldiers carried. The period-correct flap closure, vegetable tanned leather, hand-marbled paper, choice of fonts and the feel of the paper (an ivory vellum finish as close as we could get to the original), these are the genuine article 150 years later. We hope they become an essential part of the reenactor's kit and spend time on the same ground won and lost during that horrible conflict.

Reproduction Endpapers For Sale

Though hand marbled papers are readily available for restoration work, printed endpapers appropriate for late 19th to early 20th century work have been impossible to find. A small angling collection here for restoration finally brought the matter to a head. An 1884 Denver printing of "With Rod and Line in Colorado Waters" had decorative endsheets too brittle and cracked to be reused, and so we've launched a line of appropriate papers.

They feature small repetitive patterns in a single color, currently available in brown, green and a golden wheat. They're easily aged by immersion or airbrush, have a vellum finish that is a very good match for machine-made papers, and are printed on a Mohawk Ivory 70# text.

We hope to make them more readily available through some of the large suppliers, but meanwhile you can get them from us at $6.90 a sheet, 19" by 25" short grain. Inquire for quantity pricing and shipping costs (zipcode dependent).

bob@gildedleafbindery.com
865-621-7923