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Their Families, Betty Bard MacDonald
Full leather binding with laced-on boards. Bound in painted fair calf. Pastedowns and flyleaves in paper. Painted top edge. Silk woven end-bands. Titled on fair calf band. Bound in 2025.
Artist Statement
I loved working on this binding. It is such a wonderfully fun story of a young couple both with wildly eccentric families.
After becoming engaged, Peter brings Judith home to meet his family. They find his mother with her head down at the typewriter, a sign beside her reading: “PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB. I HAVE AN INSPIRATION.” They continue on and discover his father in the studio, “intently doing something with paints on a palette,” as the author describes. After Peter introduces Judith, his father says, “How do you do, my dear. I understand you and Peter are to be married. Nice. Very nice. Sorry, but I must get at this.” Peter then confides in Judith that he thinks he’s a “rotten artist.”
On the last page of the book, both Peter and Judith confess to each other that they are nothing like their eccentric families. “As long as we’ve started on this business of confessions, I might as well tell you that I have a lot of insurance and my job’s not a bit fascinating or cultural, but I like it—and I make a lot of money.”
My binding is what I envisioned the father to be painting - something he is thinking of titling "Picket Fences".