by Paul Tronson - Stage 32

Just a few of the tools to give you a scope of the work involved :)

I'm just completing the gilding for this years Grimoire commission and was thinking if I was a script writer this could make an amazing spooky film as it is called "The Grimoire of God". I thought it just maybe the follow up film to Mr. Polanski's Ninth Gate (which I also create in a genuine 17thC style).....only far more serious! All of the tooling is created with only pallets and gauges. A pallet is a straight lined tool of different sizes, and a gauge is a curved tool of different sizes....ie a circle is formed of 4 impressions of 1 half circle gauge. It's called The Grimoire of God because the recto (front) cover contains the Sigillum dei Aemeth...created by the 16thC Magician and physican to Queen Elizabeth I Dr.John Dee, from the description given by the Archangel Uriel to Edward Kelly....also known as "The Booke of Enoch"....The Aemeth sigillum reveals or conceals the greatest name of God that can undo creation....and supposedly being factual .....the film Warlock has the same theme but this is real and all the seals are actual and not made up. Also present are the 4 Cardinal Angels and the main pentacles and Olympic Spirits from The Greater Key of Salomon...or The Clavicle. The verso side of the book though is a complete mirror image of the front except it contains the Sigillum dei Lucifer, the 4 Cardinal Demons and the main demonic Kings, Duke's Earl's and Marquis' of Hell....or most of the 72 fallen angels. There are also present 56 of the 72 Hebrew names of God, the angelic and demonic Lamens, plus the true names of the 7 Archangels who stand before the Lord at the End of Days and the common names they are known by. A Latin versicle embraces the whole of the book around the outside edges, the inside and the very edges of the boards are hand lettered in Latin also....,., Just an idea I'd thought I'd share :)

Sequence of tooling the Aemeth Sigillum

1st edition of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene 1611with inlays by Paul Tronson ....showing the various stages of tooling.

The 2014 Avenging Angel Grimoire with inlays by Paul Tronson. The ultimate grimoire for the spookiest film ;) You can see it in its full glory here http://periodfinebindings.typepad.com/the_avenging_angel_grimoi/ 8000 impressions of 4000 tools were used to gild this one.