A Bible Story

Ok, it's 1.15am and I drank too much strong coffee at life class this evening so I'm going have a little ramble about one of my latest projects....

I have been asked to alter a family Bible!  It's one beast of a book, it weighs a ton!  Here it is in all it's glory...

It's a fair old age I would say, not sure quite how old, but it has certainly lost alot of it's gold tooling from the covers although the spine has retained rather more of it's golden loveliness...

Inside the Bible the pages are well preserved, good quality paper, nice text, very little age spotting....

...and there's illustrations and maps every so often throughout the text...

The spec for the work is very open, apart from the requirement of it being suitable for display both open and closed I pretty much have free rein to alter it as I see fit.  ;o)  What I want for the finished piece is for it to celebrate family roots, connections and beliefs, spiritually, emotionally and physically but not with any particular religious reference.  My current thinking is leaning towards a tunnel book of sorts, varying sizes of apertures viewable from both sides, individually, in groups and all together.

Earlier this week, whilst looking through the Bible, thinking about what I would do and where I would start I was delighted to discover a lock of hair...

No one knows who it belonged to but I have permission to use it in the work and I fully intend to.  ;o)

I'm very excited about the project and, to be honest, more than a little apprehensive!  I have never been commissioned to make a piece of work from such an item, such a personal item, and with such a wide open remit.  It will certainly be a challenge and there's no guarantee that the recipient won't hate it when I'm done but I don't plan on holding back, I'm hardly an artist in the "playing it safe" category now, am I, dear reader?  lol