In medieval times, the Book of the Heart was one of the most popular and influential metaphors for describing people. A person’s heart is like a book that contains thoughts, feelings and memories. Lovers’ hearts contain the names of their beloveds and their hearts, which are open to each other, can be read like books. Pious people prayed to Christ, asking him to write divine commandments and revelations on the pages of their hearts.
Medieval poets also considered the heart to be a symbol of desire. In fact, expressions like a “stolen heart”, a “broken heart”, or a “wounded heart”, as well as the phrase “to give one’s heart” were penned by poets in the Middle Ages.
The tradition of sending greeting cards decorated with hearts on Valentine’s Day also represents the symbolic act of giving your “book of the heart” to your beloved. Incidentally, the image of the red symmetrically shaped heart that is popular today was adopted by artists only in the beginning of the 15th century.
Today, the “book-heart” metaphor has been replaced with a “computer-brain” metaphor. We believe this is an unfortunate development.
You don’t have to be a “computer-brain”, however. Open your own book of the heart and let your thoughts fly back to a time when “men were made of iron and ships of wood”. It goes without saying that the Leather Journal Book of Heart is the best gift for your beloved.
Size: 4.5 x 6.7 inch (11,5 x 17 cm)
Paper: soft 110 g/m², ivory color, 244 pages (counted both sides)
Leather
The covers of this Leather Journal are made from vegetable-tanned calf leather. The leather is produced using time-honored tanning methods. The vegetable tanning process involves the use of natural tannin found in tree bark. Tannin is also the root for the world “tanning”. We hand dye the leather for the covers of each book separately with water-based, non-toxic dyes. Thus, each Leather Journal is one-of-a-kind, since each piece of leather reacts differently to the dye pigment. Almost all the books that you see on our website have been dyed with three to four different dyes in order to achieve a certain shade or effect. We finish the process by coating the leather with a water-based lacquer of natural beeswax and oils prepared according to our own “recipe”. The coated leather is then dried and hand polished. The extraordinary result is something you have never seen before and something large leather factories cannot duplicate.
Paper
In this book we use Hahnemühle Artist paper called Ingres. It is a mould-made ivory paper named after the famous French painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867). This paper is ideal for pencil, crayon, pastel, red ochre and watercolours, as well as for gel, ink or fountain pen. We love Hahnemühle paper for the uncompromising quality provided by this German paper mill with over 420 years of experience in the field.
Endleaves
In this book we use for endleaves handmade lokta paper from our Nepal friends. This paper is made from the fibrous bark of the Daphne Cannabina which grows at high altitudes in the Himalayas.
