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Illustrations from the handtooled leather slipcase by Julie Stackpole for Lakeside Edition of Moby-Dick. COURTESY OF JULIE STACKPOLE
My copy of the three-volume Lakeside Press Moby-Dick descended to me from my paternal grandfather, Hayo Hans Hinrichs, a malt and grain broker in New York. He was a friend, patron and “collaborator” of Rockwell Kent and had many of his drawings, engravings, and paintings in his homes in Quogue and Staten Island, New York, which I saw and admired as a young girl. In 1960, at age nine, I came home to Nantucket when my family joined that of my stepfather, summer resident Walter Beinecke Jr., who was a keen appreciator of Nantucket’s whaling history as well as of rare books and fine printing. It was because of his influence that I eventually became a bookbinder, so I could both work with books and live on Nantucket. When I married maritime historian and one-time curator of the Whaling Museum, Renny Stackpole, I also received the bonus of having America’s preeminent whaling expert Edouard A. Stackpole as a father-in-law. Our Moby-Dick did not have a slipcase when my father, Herbert Hinrichs, decided it logically belonged with me on Nantucket. For years I meant to make one. A few years ago, when I decided to put it on the market, something finally had to be done to protect the valuable volumes. I thought of making a slipcase covered in silver paper to imitate the aluminum one (boring). Instead, I seized the opportunity to be creative, and to differentiate this copy from the others without harming, or replacing, the original Kent bindings. The “art box” I made is a slipcase with a front flap, so the three books are entirely enclosed. Covered in gray Niger goatskin, it has panels on the two sides and the front with scenes taken directly from Kent’s illustrations. These are carried out with thin onlays of different colors and textures of leather that have been tooled “in blind” (without gold) and embossed with linoleum cuts. Although the panels copy Kent’s drawings, I interpreted them in color rather than slavishly reproducing the black and white. There is no title, but the iconic scene of the white whale rising out of the water on the front flap leaves no question as to what is in the box, I think. To tie the box to my Stackpole connections, a small oval scrimshawed whaleship that once belonged to E.A.S. covers the area of Velcro on the top where the flap attaches. The inside is lined with a handmarbled paper by Chena River Marblers. _________________________________________________________________ Julie H. B. Stackpole lives in Thomaston, Maine, with her husband, Renny Stackpole. She does hand bookbinding and rare-book restoration as well as period-costume research and reproduction. Her Web site is www.juliestackpole.com.
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