The Scarlet Letter

One-of-a-kind rebinding of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

• Nathaniel Hawthorne (American).
• Rebinding by artist Richard Tuttle (American, b. 1951) in 2012.
• The Scarlet Letter: A Romance.
• West Hatfield: The Pennyroyal Press, 1984.
• Bound in lambskin over boards with inlaid leather "A" motif across the front, rear and spine, that extends to the page end and endpaper treatments that show the shadow/burn of the “A”.

Tuttle creates one-of-a-kind works of art that merge the written word with fine leather, paper, paint, wood and veneer. These original book bindings have been featured in a PBS documentary on the Chicago Art beat. Tuttle describes his work as follows: “I make literary artifacts. They are designed to pull books down off the shelf and display them in the salon, gallery or home [...] I seek to find a perspective that shouts out a piece of the essence of the literary work. I try to put myself in the author's or character's mind to say something about the time it was written in; the attitude that is explored and expressed; the magic that makes it a work of art."