Thunders

Peter Mendelsund is one of my favorite designers for what I feel like should be obvious reasons if you’re familiar with his work. His book covers are consistently brilliant. Of them though I’m particularly fond of his covers for James Joyce’s Ulysses, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, and Dubliners. His monograph, Covers also reveals that he designed a cover for Finnegans Wake which went unpublished.

Finnegans Wake happens to be an important book within my extended family. Because the currently available covers are atrocious, and because I needed a break from other projects, I took a crack at recreating Mendelsund’s design. My original plan was to re-bind a copy of the book as a foil-stamped cloth hardback volume, but the cost/time commitment to do that for a single book (obviously!) didn’t make sense. So a simple dust jacket became a more reasonable option.

Although I had the other three books as a guide, the spine and back cover art required some educated guesses. And then I had to adjust everything (slightly) to fit the art to my specific edition of the book. Pro tip: a digital caliper tool is really handy for this kind of precision fit.

It’s a one of one — and hopefully, if Peter ever sees this, he doesn’t mind.