Commission Portfolio
Troctopus Press is supported by creative collaborations but also through ambitious projects spanning from book repairs, redesigns, formatting, and drawings. If you’d like to commission me for a project please feel free to reach out via email: emilandkray@gmail.com
Empresas y tribulaciones de Maqroll el Gaviero
Empresas y tribulaciones de Maqroll el Gaviero by: Alvaro Mutis was brought to me as a damaged soft-cover book. This ambitious project required the removal of all of the original binding whilst preserving the cover. The text block was then resewn onto hemp cords and bound with a leather spine. The covers are wrapped with marbled paper and with a foil stamped spine. The endpapers are also a special addition! The first endpaper is a map of Central America, where a majority of Maqroll’s misadventures take place! The last endpaper is an original drawing by me at the request of my client to capture the spirit of this book. I chose to draw the boat that was displayed on the original cover of the book while also pulling from the landscape of waterways within Panama.
A Race You Cannot Lose
“A Race You Cannot Lose” is a comedy script based on “My Parents Loved Me and We Had a Pool” by: John Zawawi. This script is jam packed full of life lessons amongst chaos. This script was made as a single copy and designed to be portable and easy to make edits within for the writer. The interior is 80gsm French Paper in a classic Shamrock Shake Green. The endpapers are blue/green mango leaf paper with foliage inclusions, and the covers are a soft and luxurious grey Stone henge paper.
“Don’t Worry, Non-Gendered Girl”
Astrid Liu’s MFA Thesis “Don’t Worry, Non-Gendered Girl” is a 217 pg collection of essays that explore the intersection of gender, race, and community building. Their writing uses bilingual humor and personal anecdotes to show how to ask hard questions and how to build lasting relationships. Astrid’s book was made in a small, custom edition of 4 that utilizes very specific material choices that aid in conveying the aesthetic value of their work. When we sat down together to discuss the book, they already had a strong list of materials that they were interested in using. For the covers, we chose to wrap them in Lucky Red silk. Red in Chinese culture symbolizes luck, joy, and happiness and the tradition of handing out Red Envelopes to family members during Chinese New Year. The endpapers for the book that we chose are Chinese Calligraphy Paper from Asian Brushpainter. This online shop has the most extensive selection of original Chinese and Japanese painting and calligraphy supplies that we could find, and many of their unique brushes and papers are sourced directly from local Chinese suppliers. We settled on a red and gold Xuan calligraphy paper that was incredibly soft, absorbent, and dyed with stunning brightness. The paper we used for the text block was from French Paper Co., where they have a huge selection of high quality papers that are nearly carbon neutral due to having their own source of hydroelectric power at their paper mill site. For the spine of the book, we chose a rather unique material: Golden Morel Mushroom Leather! In Astrid’s writing, they create a metaphor for community resilience using the description of mycelium networks. Mushrooms are huge organisms on earth and their communication systems are vast and incredibly fascinating. The mushroom leather we found is called Mylea from Mushroom Leather Supply and is backed with linen fabric making it durable and stretch-resistant. It has a strange, smooth and craterous surface, and also has an aroma that is similar to that of honey. The last material we chose together was the silk thread that I used to sew the book together with. We chose a red silk from Colophon that was nearly identical in value and hue to our cover choice to showcase the texture, line quality, and elegance of the stab binding method.
my mother and i tour the country
This piece was commissioned by MFA student at the University of Arizona is John Zawawi’s, “my mother and I tour the country”. This short essay is 16 pages long and was made in a very small edition of 2. The materials for this book evoke softness and grit, contemplation and immediacy, place and time. For this small book, the design parameters were much more open. John gave me a color palette and I came back to him with material suggestions and we worked from there. We ended up making a hard-cover book with a flexible spine and a visible sewing pattern. The covers are wrapped in Tucson’s own CAVE paper. This luxurious paper is handmade using Belgian flax and hand-dyed using natural indigo. It was perfect for a cover that told a story and gave the illusion of the vastness of a 44hr road trip. The rich blue endpapers are an indigo Lotka paper from Hollanders dyed in the color “blueberry” and are fibrous yet smooth. Finally the sewing pattern that we chose is an adaptation of a saddle-stitch with decorative twists added using a silk embroidery thread (RIP Joann’s). The result is memorable and quiet with material truly framing the words of this essay with an unimposing confidence. The texture of the materials makes it feel like home.
