The book about Romilly’s jewellery which she has been working on with Verdi Yahooda as photographer and Dan Edwards and Nicola Barnacle as designers and typographers has appeared in preparation for its launch on Thursday. It’s quite an amazing piece of book production, every aspect of it the subject of fastidious, if not fanatical dedication, in planning for the last three years.

The book consists of two separate series of photographs by Verdi Yahooda: the first is of metal detecting finds, photographed on the worn floor boards of our house; the second of pieces of Romilly’s jewellery which have been made out of the finds. In between is an essay by Bryan Appleyard, designed by Nicola in Garamond.

The quality of reproduction on two different types of paper, one uncoated, the other spot glazed, is astonishing, done by ArtQuarters Press, specialist printers in Hainault. Then, the binding was designed by Charles Gledhill, made out of melinex sandwiched between sheets of Japanese paper, so that it looks like vellum, hand bound and stitched by Book Works.

Romilly is, for obvious reasons, keen to recoup some of the considerable investment which has gone into the production of the book. If any of my readers are interested, there are various ways of buying it, including a boxed subscriber’s edition, available on the website devoted to it (https://www.mileendpress.com/purchase).   It would make a nicely esoteric Christmas present.