Details about the binding by Anna Yevtukh:

As soon as I saw the book itself, cute and colourful, I had that distinctive image in my head of 3D flowers and leaves... maybe because pretty flowers were jumping off the black velvety background, they were not flat but 3-dimensional. It was mid March and gorgeous primroses were blooming everywhere, catching my eyes with impressive rich colours. The name primrose means ''prime'' or 'first' referencing the fact that its flowers are the first to appear in spring. It was perfect to pick for my work on the book - bright, colourful, uplifting and also mentioned in the sonnet! Also primrose was well-liked by English nobility, so it sees a lot of use in historical media which was also a distant link to Shakespeare.

 

I started by picking the correct shade of green leather for the leaves and rich colours of leather for traditional primroses.

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The accordion structure was sewn on two sets of two coloured cords - light green and purple, with inserts of coloured card between the pages. Then the weaving element was added to soften the roughness of the cords and to add a flowing feeling connecting two covers as I intended to expose the middle part of the binding; it added silky gentleness and softness of textile.

Headbands are rolled pared purple leather attached by weaving yellow silk thread around it through the pages.

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The next stage was to sketch nearly live size primroses and their leaves and re-sketch it to create separate petals for each primrose flower, central yellow part and leaves. All these elements were tiny and were individually covered in leather and attached to the front and back covers after the book was fully covered in green leather.

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The binding has rolled leather button fastening with a loop which was common to historic Coptic bindings and represents old roots of traditional bookbinding techniques mixed with the modern interpretations of these traditions.

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Endpapers were hand-decorated with acrylic inks.

Tooling of the title was added to the top and bottom parts of the spine.

The next stage was to create a drop-back box. I had a more interesting sculptural idea but skipped it because it would be hard to ship. The box is covered in green and purple goat skin with yellow leather onlay and tooling with yellow foil. Green felt inside the box was added for padding and was hand-stitched outlining the veins of the leaf.