The Dream Hunters
25.6cm x 17.5cm x 1.6cm
Sold at auction
The white fox looks at you out of the cover of the book. She has secrets that can save a man, or ruin one, and courage enough to face even Morpheus, King of Dreams.
The Dream Hunters, written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano, combines Japanese art and myth with Western storytelling. This binding does the same, using Western back-pared leather onlaying techniques and Japanese Yotsume Toji bookbinding. The covers are made of calf and goatskins, and the spine is covered in thinned red goat hide. It is sewn in red silk thread.
The wrap case is a traditional Japanese structure, covered in library buckram and lined in acid-free paper. The inner lid displays a piece of suminagashi, or Japanese paper marbling. The cover clasp is red-stained pine, attached with knotted red silk.
This book is to be donated to the Mike Ford Auction & Extravaganza, to be held at Boskone 44, in Boston, MA, USA, on February 16, 2007.
The colophon, inside the box, describes the book in sonnet form:
THE DREAM HUNTERSYotsume Toji binding in silk thread.
The front is back-pared onlay, on white calf,
With black-dyed goatskin, while the latter half
And spine are also goat, in black and red.
The four-flapped box of buckram, midnight black,
Is closed with silken-tethered, red stained pine.
Suminagashi has been used to line
The inner lid. The rest is simple black.
Because this is a fusion binding style
It represents a compromise between
Two cultures’ ways. In practice, this will mean
You must take care to have it last a while.
It opens somewhat stiffly, not with ease.
So treat it gently when you read it, please.
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