A musical moment

A handmade Coptic-stitched composition book created as a special birthday gift, featuring Japanese paper, lino print details and custom music manuscript pages.

13 October 2026

Growing up I studied piano and am the proud owner of a GCSE in music. Part of that involved writing my own short pieces. I learnt pretty quickly that it isn’t easy! So I am in awe of anyone who can create music, and was delighted when a client asked me to create a very special birthday present for her composer cousin.

This Coptic-stitched composition book was the result.

We began by talking a bit about her cousin and his personality, before moving quickly into the sorts of colours that he likes. My client was keen to make sure I included a linocut print on the cover and we quickly agreed that we should keep it simple with a copper treble clef on this beautiful blue Japanese Mingeishi paper made by the Awagami paper company in Japan. Mingei comes from the Japanese name Mingei Undo, which means folk craft movement, and the paper is a mix of Japanese and Thai kozo and pulp.

But while the cover is a refined affair, my client was keen to create a pop of personality inside. Having established the external colour scheme, I knew exactly which paper we should use – this blue and copper bubble lokta. I’m a sucker for a blue and copper combination so creating the covers was an absolute pleasure.

But I also needed my own composition paper, which I printed (with the help of my Dad, his powerpoint skills and A3 printer!) from scratch on gorgeous 120gsm Munken Pure Smooth paper. And because this is a book that is intended to sit on a piano stand, we agreed that Coptic stitch was the way forward.

Coptic stitch bookbinding technique

Coptic stitch is a beautiful technique that allows a book to lie completely flat while also showing off your sewing skills (I happen to have a GCSE in that too). It’s quite a different technique from making traditional hardback notebooks since the internal paper gets sewn directly to the covers. This can make the first and last stages of building the book quite fiddly but the extra effort is worth it.

My client also wanted to be able to share all the different materials that went into making the book with her cousin, so I created a special card with all the information. The final step was to source a gift box, which I decorated with a little vinyl decal that replicates one of my original linocut prints.

I’m delighted to say the birthday boy loved his gift and has since written a short air for me and my client by way of a thank you.

This commission looks quite simple but it really pushed me to learn some new skills and – as is always the way – new ways to mess things up and learn from them!