This is a text that I've been around my whole life, and yet somehow I had trouble seeing
it and enjoying it as literature. I began to wonder why it was so difficult to find an
addition of the biblical library that invited me as a reader to engage with it as literature.
A major goal in book design is that the various components of the book, the materials, the
cover, the interior design, the paper, the typeface, the proportions, the binding, would
together become a suitable vehicle for the content, how do you give it a form that matches
its substance, its importance, its influence, its timelessness, its artfulness.
Bibliotheca is the biblical library spread across multiple volumes. In these books, the
text is presented free of later editions like chapter divisions, verse numbers, section
headers, cross references, and notes. In fact, even the idea of combining the biblical library
into a single volume was not common until hundreds of years after the last book of the
New Testament was finished. The only thing left on the page is the text, designed to
draw the reader in and allow them to dwell, to enjoy the literature.
Of course, everything needed to be ethically and responsibly produced. The books were printed
and bound in Germany by a company that has been making books for more than four centuries.
Pure, unbleached cotton bookcloths made in the Netherlands and custom-died for these
books. Even the ribbon bookmark is pure cotton, sourced in France.
The paper was made by a centuries-old family-owned paper mill in Austria, its mineral paper composed
of stone instead of wood pulp. This means it's naturally resistant to age. It doesn't
yellow in the sun, it doesn't crumble over time. The paper will last for generations
and generations. For the majority of their existence, the books contained in the biblical
library have been shared and disseminated in the form of handwritten text manuscripts.
These traditions are a large piece of what inspired me to create a typeface that alludes
to handwritten letter forms. So this typeface is based on my own hand lettering. The typeface
is intended to be elegant, yet, in a way, invisible. It shouldn't distract the reader
by calling attention to itself. The dimensions of the page and the text block are derived
from the proportions of the Ark of the Covenant, as it's laid out in the book of Exodus.
I wanted to emulate this rabbinical idea of following a meticulous process and bestowing
a form that would match the significance, the weight, of these writings. Meticulous
is from a Latin root that means fear, sort of a fearful approach, a reverent approach.
I want to give the reader a unique opportunity to experience these texts as the beautiful
and worthwhile, often mysterious literature that it is. I hope these books help the reader
to experience the biblical library anew.
