Vladimir Nabokov, The Defense, tr. Michael Scammell (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1964). Bound by Toben Lewis, 2026.
Bookbinder's Statement
This binding of Vladimir Nabokov’s The Defense is executed in stark white leather to reflect the novel’s recurring themes of winter and snow. The cover features a chequerboard pattern created with inlaid wood veneer that spirals across both boards, representing Luzhin’s declining grasp on reality. This pattern continues onto the page edges, where it is rendered in a disturbed, fuzzy, and frenetic style to similarly mirror this arc. The design is carried through to the hand-sewn endbands.
The endpapers evoke the wallpaper from Luzhin’s childhood bedroom. The pattern “was white, and higher up was a blue band on which were drawn grey geese and ginger puppies. A goose advanced on a pup and so on thirty-eight times around the entire room.” This stood out as a particularly apt early indication of Luzhin’s meticulousness, attention to details, and inner workings.
The painted endpapers are on The Paper Foundation Early Wove and are paired with leather joints that match the binding. The page edges were painted with acrylic ink prior to sewing to preserve the uneven widths of each folio. Endbands are sewn in silk, while the binding is sewn with linen thread onto linen tapes laced into laminated boards. Bound in Harmatan Katsina goatskin, and decorated with inlaid wood veneer and onlaid aged copper across the spine.