In 2022 I was fortunate enough to be asked to work on Erin Morgenstern’s THE NIGHT CIRCUS by Hilary and Mike of BOOKS ILLUSTRATED. BOOKS ILLUSTRATED is a small, unique publishing house in the UK that presents books as art objects — hand-crafted and exquisitely printed and bound. THE NIGHT CIRCUS was letterpressed and the leather covers appliqued individually.

I came new to this book and my first thought was that the illustrations should be kept to black and white with red as a spot colour and the best way to do that was to use collage as the medium with pen and ink for detail.

Erin was keen to see the images using full colour, so I switched to coloured pencil and ink markers and made them as colourful as I possibly could. Because of the complex nature of the stories each image is a composite of people and events which compliment the dream-like quality of the writing.

I was wildly excited to see the finished product and could not have been happier with the result. The craftsmanship is astounding, and the books look magnificent in their black and white plumage.