In November (2020) we got a call from Paul Kellum who has this fantastic guest house.  He was looking for a bespoke solution to house a guest book in which his visitors could comment about their stay as well as a comprehensive guide to the property and the local area.

As always our initial question is, what is the size of the largest item to be housed in the portfolio or box. In this case it was information that was going into the Guest Information Book, which were 8.5" x 11" page protectors, so slightly larger than an 8.5" x 11" page. The format understandably, was portrait.  The leather guest book however was landscape and the pages were, of course, not in page protectors. This meant, therefore, that the box had to accommodate 2 different orientations of portfolio, both equally accessible. The top of the box had a matching leather plaque with the title, Cabin In The Clouds and Guest Information Book and Guest Log Book, blind debossed on the cover.

The favourite choice of all slipcase drawer box coverings is linen. Being a book cloth it's not always the practical option to ensure that your box stays spotlessly clean, but it looks fantastic, matches well with our brown leather and the mottled nature of it's colour and weave means it wears well for a book cloth.


So that Guest Information Book was easy to handle and could be read like a book, without the effort of having to guide plastic page protectors over binder mechanisms, we used Chicago screw posts. Pages going into page protectors meant swapping out information wasn't going to be difficult and presentation and ease of use for the guests made opting for screw posts the most obvious choice.

We envisaged that the Guest Information Book would used a fair amount and would not always be inside the box and with that in mind suggested a buckram book cloth for the outer cover that, with its acrylic coating, meant it could stand being wiped clean with a damp cloth and anti bacterial spray. That said in order to keep the coordinated appearance of the book against the box, the spine was covered in the same linen material as the box, with a leather handle attached, which obviously invited users to pull and reveal the binder.

The leather guest log book also had a screw post mechanism and we printed out Paul's own design and layout of the guest log book pages. As is the case with each of custom made products, it wasn't something that came off the shelf. If you would like something similar, then please use the contact us button on this website and drop us line.