Currently still in the design phase of this project. I haven’t done any fabrication yet. Originally it was intended to be a personal project for myself and so I had no problem “borrowing” and including copyrighted images and text. But I’ve decided that I want to make a limited number of copies and sell them on etsy so I’ve been purging anything that isn’t either designed by me or public domain and starting over on those pages. Here are a few pages that I’m working on right now. Keep in mind that A.) they’re not finalized and B.) They’re just concept art since I’m going to be hand-drawing all of it into the book anyway.
This is the title page for the chapter on “Aqua Vitae” which was the alchemical term for distilled spirits.
This is the right side of a spread on the creation of Aqua Vitae. The left side of the spread is how to build a still. You might notice some strange symbols in the ingredients section. This is going to be a coded manuscript. Some of the symbols are real authentic alchemical symbols for ounces, pounds, drams, etc. Some of them I had to invent because I couldn’t find a Gallon symbol for example.
EDIT: Keep in mind that distilling alcohol might be illegal in your area. Do it at your own risk.
Here’s is a page that explains some of the symbols. Again, keep in mind that this is just concept art. My handwriting on paper is much more legible than my handwriting on the computer. The vast majority of those symbols are real alchemical symbols. The pound, gallon, and yeast ones were invented by me because I couldn’t find authentic ones. If anyone who sees this knows of real symbols for those things, post a link in the comments. I’d really like this to be as authentic as possible.
This is the concept for my “beer sigil.” It’s basically just all the ingredients of beer arranged to be mysterious and alchemical looking. It happened quite by accident, but the ingredients that are directly connected are related to eachother. What I mean is the three ingredients water, hops, and barley are all boiled together at the same time and they are connected in the images while the yeast and sugar go into the mixture together at the end of the process. So I’m really happy with how that turned out. Oh yeah and you may notice that this is the same design as on the burned parchment in the curio cabinet photos I posted a few days ago.
This is the same sort of thing but for Absinthe. I had to invent symbols for wormwood, fennel, and anise because I couldn’t find authentic ones.
So that’s it! I have about 20 pages done now, I’m not sure how many more I have to do. The book is going to have chapters on brewing beer, distilled spirits, wine, and absinthe. It’s going to have a glossary of herbs and ingredients and another chapter with some of my actual recipes. In the herbs and ingredients section I’m thinking of putting a wormwood leaf on the wormwood page, a yarrow leaf on the yarrow page, and so on. I won’t do it for every herb, just enough so that the customer will get the idea and try to fill up the herb section with their own leaves. The last half of the book is going to be blank so that people can add their own herbs and ingredients and write down their own recipes. And, again, it’s going to be 100% hand written/drawn, bound in leather, and aged to look old and mysterious.
There’s also an armillary sphere and last but not least, you can see my 13″ clay pipe. I don’t smoke it much because it gets too hot, but it looks really cool!
