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.

Sermons on Job

Outside cover tooled very simply in blind.

Jen painting the inner wood panels

Cutting flowers

Leather borders on and adding leather onlays. The flowers are first tooled in gold, very thin leather applied over the gold, and then tooled again in blind and then gold.

Leather onlays tooled

Front Panel finished and inset into front board. Turn-ins tooled in gold.

The finished rear panel

Rear panel inset into rear board, turn-ins tooled in gold.

Rear panel again

Closeup of rear panel.

We've just finished a copy of John Calvin's Sermons on Job, a facsimile of the 1574 folio edition published by Banner of Truth Trust. The Tennessee Association of Craft Artists has teamed me with Nashville book artist Jennifer Mcquistion for a Master/Apprentice program and this is one of our projects. We've bound the book in alum-tawed leather over raised bands and tooled the outside very simply in blind. Jen does wood burning and painting and she created the wood panels that were laid into a recessed panel on the inside of each cover. A black leather border was added to the paintings and then I've added floral leather onlays in white and red and many hours of gold tooling to fill in. It's currently in the Tennessee Arts Commission gallery in Nashville for a September-November show.