Back in the day — the late 1900s — it was nigh impossible to find a decent sketchbook. You had one basic choice: the standard black book with a bumpy cover and awful paper. So I went back to the bindery and made myself a second volume with a basic book cloth cover. I was still learning the craft of bookbinding but didn’t have the confidence or the knowhow to use decent paper for this second book. I did manage to make fancy endpapers, scanning international symbols of crime and mayhem and...