After all these years, believe it or not, I have made MYSELF a hero Grail Diary prop. I have taken a very long time to do this one, thouhg not as long as Holt takes with his own replicas. :CR:
I've tried to get all the little details I love about the hero prop, including the heavily distressed embossed border on the cover, strangely creased and folded inserts and all the quirky stitching and repeating pages of the original. Here are some photos showing some of the standard and not-so standard spreads, with some notes on each:
The Cover:
Italian calfskin with debossed border... cover was heavily bent and crumpled before binding to wrinkle it and the leather. I darkened the leather with raven oil and then used sandpaper for the distressing.
I did my best to copy the ink splatter pattern of the original... even under the 1899 bill.
I used to do the grey parts with a felt-tipped marker, but this time I used only watercolors for more control.
Double-pasted inserts on this unaged spread, just like the hero prop.
Here you can see the alternate LARY ticket used for the close-up shot of this spread in the zeppelin scenes.
The hero Map With No Names (seen in the Venice scenes) is pasted into the diary, not sewn and was scanned from the original, printed lightly onto the paper, then redrawn by hand with pencil for realism.
I'm happy to finally have one of these in my collection! It only took me a little over 20 years to get it right. 8-[]
Kind regards,
Magnoli
I've tried to get all the little details I love about the hero prop, including the heavily distressed embossed border on the cover, strangely creased and folded inserts and all the quirky stitching and repeating pages of the original. Here are some photos showing some of the standard and not-so standard spreads, with some notes on each:
The Cover:
Italian calfskin with debossed border... cover was heavily bent and crumpled before binding to wrinkle it and the leather. I darkened the leather with raven oil and then used sandpaper for the distressing.
I did my best to copy the ink splatter pattern of the original... even under the 1899 bill.
I used to do the grey parts with a felt-tipped marker, but this time I used only watercolors for more control.
Double-pasted inserts on this unaged spread, just like the hero prop.
Here you can see the alternate LARY ticket used for the close-up shot of this spread in the zeppelin scenes.
The hero Map With No Names (seen in the Venice scenes) is pasted into the diary, not sewn and was scanned from the original, printed lightly onto the paper, then redrawn by hand with pencil for realism.
I'm happy to finally have one of these in my collection! It only took me a little over 20 years to get it right. 8-[]
Kind regards,
Magnoli
