The kids will make their own paper, bind their books, make illuminated letters, and (hopefully) decorate their covers.
Medieval covers are often truly epic and ornate. There's often leatherworking, jewels, sculptures, silverwork, goldwork, ivory, etc on their covers. They're works of art!
Berthold Sacramentary, 1215
Lindau Gospels, c. 875.
Silver-gilt cover with ivory, Sacramentary
I'm probably going to have the kids do coptic stitch binding. Cord binding was more common in this era (as far as I know), but that requires a jig of some sort, and having 16 of those is a bit too much! For the coverboards, I have (sadly flimsy) chipboard.
I could do cotton sheet fabric for the cover. That worked decently well when I did it last year with my historical Disney Princess class. But, marbling wasn't happening during this time, and white sheets are really....sad looking.
Last year's marbled books
Last year's marbled book's closed
Anyone have ideas for how they could make the covers more medieval?
Here's some ideas I've thought of. But none of them make me too happy.
Use stick on jewels. These might fall off, though. Need stronger adhesive.
Watercoloring the covers. If the covers get the least bit wet, they'll bleed and kids will be sad.
Using egg tempera paint to decorate the covers. Apparently this cracks? I haven't attempted it yet.
Dying the cloth with natural dyes? But, cotton doesn't take natural dyes well.[/img]
[list]Letting the kids color them with sharpies. The colors won't bleed, but it won't be historical.
Somehow using some sort of paper or cloth clay to sculpt onto the covers, sort of like paper mache. But, once again, the glue reactivates with water. Unless I do some sort of non-water-soluable glue, l like gelatin. But that's hard to keep warm.
Using wool for the cover material, since it takes dye better? That's expensive, though!
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