With the ESV Classic Reference back in stock and now with added sumptuousness in the form of increased yapp, it seemed like a good time to assess the merits of what has been one of the key Bibles in the Allan range over the past 15 years or so.

In truth, it was the ESV Classic Reference – product code ESV1 – that really sewed the seeds of where we find ourselves today. The English Standard Version launched in the US in 2001 and a year after in the UK, and in my role as Editorial Director for Bibles at HarperCollins in the UK I had the privilege of launching the ESV in the British text editions here. A year or two later we sold some printed sheets to my uncle, Nicholas Gray, so he could experiment with a fine binding edition – the ESV1.

This was around the same time of the second wave of interest in the internet – after the first dotcom boom and bust – and R.L. Allan was one of the first Scottish companies of its size to get an internet shop website up and running. This meant that new customers all over the world were able to find out about our products for the first time – and they liked what they saw. In particular, the combination of the more traditional translation approach of the ESV, alongside the super-traditional fine leather binding style of our Bibles, seemed to make for a perfect match.

Over the years the quality of the binding has improved in little ways here and there – like the gold line inside, for example – and that of the printed sheets has moved upwards in tandem, including the shift to red letter text as we started to use Crossway’s sheets rather than the British text Collins edition.

A couple of years ago production moved to Ludlow Bookbinders, which introduced a few minor changes in the binding style, including a slightly different mix of colours so that a more mid-blue shade and a lovely dark burgundy became available for the first time.

This year we have increased the width of the semi-yapp for an additional level of sumptuousness, and we have been particularly pleased with the way this draws the eye to Ludlow’s beautifully formed hand-pleated corners and the incredibly soft calfskin liner material. As you can see in the pictures below, the liner is so soft that just from sitting in the box with the paper bands round it to train the yapp, it takes a clear impression from the edges of the pages.

Of course, this impression will soften and shift a little as the Bible is used, because the flexibility of our sewn book blocks and of the leather-lined binding style means that the pages will rest against the liner in a slightly different place every time the Bible is closed. This seems to me the perfect embodiment of the unique character of these handmade Bibles – so different from the fixed millimetre-perfect precision of a modern smartphone or a mass-produced Bible!

Founded in 1863 in Glasgow, Scotland, R.L. Allan is world-renowned for its beautiful hand-bound Bibles, both in the traditional King James Version and a selection of modern Bible translations. As holders of a Royal Licence as Her Majesty’s Printers for Scotland, we pride ourselves on the quality of the Bibles we publish – bringing together the finest available reference typesettings, printed on the best quality Bible papers, with the world’s finest handcrafted bindings, and bound for us either by craft binderies in the UK and The Netherlands, two of the most significant nations in the history of the translation, typesetting and printing of the Protestant Bible.

For the King James (Authorised) Version we have taken on the mantle of Oxford University Press’s traditional typesettings, with the Longprimer (10/11pt) double column reference setting as the flagship, recently rescanned from two vintage 1950s copies in order to get closer to the original clarity and crispness of this classic setting. Like all our King James Version Bibles and a couple of our ESV and NASB editions, these Bibles are printed for us by Royal Jongbloed in The Netherlands on the finest quality Bible papers. The papers we use for our own printings are milled in Europe, most often in France, and at each respective weight they offer the best available combination of thinness and opacity to minimise show-through.

For more modern translations we either print with Royal Jongbloed (ESV New Classic Readers, NASB Readers) or work with the originating publisher to identify their best existing reference settings and buy in sheet stock from them according to our specifications.

All of our Bibles are Smyth-sewn for maximum flexibility and longevity in the book block. You can’t see the tiny threads that hold together the many printed sections that make up your Bible, except for the odd glimpse at the centre of the page when you open the Bible on a page at the middle of a particular section. But they are critical to its combination of flexibility and strength – allowing it to lay flat on a table or mould to your grip when carried, yet also giving you the reassurance of knowing it will hold together much longer than a modern style glued binding. Our Bibles also have simple white head and tail bands, and three wide ribbons so it’s easy to keep multiple pages marked at the same time.

All our Bibles feature art gilt page edges, where the gilt gold or silver page edges are accentuated with a (usually) red or blue underlayer. Our aim is to offer the richest tone possible, and since this accent colour is applied by hand in small batches it does mean that a little of the red or blue colour can often be seen around the very edge of the page, particularly towards the front and back of the Bible.

Above all, though, what marks out an Allan Bible from any other is the hand-casemaking approach. Our leather-lined Bibles continue – and indeed develop – the finest tradition of Bible binding, with the outer case made entirely of leather, inside and out, for the utmost flexibility. (Please note that ‘Bible yoga’ – bending back or rolling the covers to demonstrate their utmost floppiness – is certainly possible, but is not recommended!) The overwhelming majority of our Bibles are made in this way, although a small number are non-leather-lined ‘paste-off’ bindings, enabling us to offer a more cost-effective way to access some of our classic book block styles. These use an imitation leather endpaper to join the book block with the leather outer case, with the endpaper glued over the leather turnover around the edge of the case – hence the ‘paste-off’ or ‘paste-over’ nomenclature.

The cases for all our Bibles are handmade: whether leather-lined or not, each case is individually cut out and assembled, with the leather edges turned over and the four corners pleated by hand. Ours are the only Bibles in regular production to be made in this way, and the small variations these hand processes introduce ensure that each individual Bible is genuinely unique. Each case is also individually embossed, with gold/silver and blind bands on the spine, and with gold/silver inside the case also, to match the page edges. The inside case of each Bible is stamped with the leather used for the outer case at the front, and ‘Allan Binding’ (or ‘Allan First/Limited Edition’ as appropriate) on the back.

This hand-casemaking approach is the only means by which a sufficiently generous yapp can be achieved in order to protect the art gilt pages in particular, and the Bible book block in general. (As a side note, although the definition ‘semi-yapp’ could mean anything beyond the kind of page overlap seen on a typical hardback, for our leather-lined Bibles we try to ensure a ‘full yapp’ means just that, with the leather fully overlapping at the front, and describe anything less as ‘semi-yapp’.) As the Bible is used the yapp bends over the page edges more, adding to the protection it offers, something that is more or less exclusive to an Allan Bible these days.

Over the past four years, as we have developed production of Allan Bibles with new binderies, we have striven always to push quality ever upwards, from details as small as increasing the line spacing and paper weight for the Notepaper at the back of our Bibles, through to retraining the old skills of genuine hand-pleating for corners.

The result of all these efforts is not the micrometre precision of an iPhone but the personality that comes only with the finest handcrafting methods – the gold standard of craftsmanship. Our aim is always to ensure that the outer form of an Allan Bible reflects the golden words it contains, and we would like to thank you all for joining us along this journey.

The Allan 53 Longprimer has long been the flagship of the Allan range – ignoring for the moment any potential competition offered by the more recently introduced Longprimer Sovereign editions.

Two years ago we reverted to a vintage copy of the classic Longprimer, printed in the period 1952-1958 under Charles Batey, then Printer to the University of Oxford, giving us a page image that is much closer to the original intentions of the typesetters. This new-old page image, retaining the large, clear type of the Longprimer we all know and love, but with a crisper letter form and less of the broken type that marks out much-used letterpress typesettings, has proven an immediate hit. Its positive reception has enabled us to broaden the range of Bibles within the Longprimer family to include not just the traditional 53 but also last year’s upgraded 52 Longprimer, leather-lined and bound in soft Meriva calfskin at Jongbloed in The Netherlands, and the Thinline 43 Longprimer bound at Charfleet here in the UK.

For 2018 we are making a further improvement for the ‘classic’ 53 style, with the (re)introduction of the 53 Longprimer with Cyclopedic Concordance – taking the all-in-one Encyclopedia-style concordance, dictionary-of-names, helps and tables that is always so popular in the smaller Brevier Clarendon Bibles, and setting it alongside the renowned Longprimer typesetting.

Initially we considered the possibility of enlarging the text from the smaller KJV Bible editions, but a couple of customers not only made us aware that the Longprimer itself had been printed with the Cyclopedic Concordance – in a couple of different variations – but kindly sent us their copies to review. We have gone with the most original of these, dating back, like the Longprimer text we are now using, to the days of Charles Batey, and with the same classical style font and layout. This printing is more expansive than the Cyclopedic Concordance in the smaller editions, with an increased text size set out over more pages, but also significantly more and fuller tables, and more (and different) photographs and illustrations. So while it remains unquestionably the Cyclopedic Concordance that is so well-known and loved – yet, ironically, through being more original, it will also have something new to discover for today’s reader.

As our standard 53 Longprimer has been off the market for a year or so now it may be worth highlighting some of the key features of this Allan flagship Bible. As usual, the 53C will be available in Black, Brown, Navy Blue or Crimson Red Highland goatskin, with full yapp and red under gold page edges, leather-lined in dark blue (or brown for the Brown, red for the Red), with double gilt lines inside, three ribbon markers, Allan presentation pages and family record in our improved design, Cyclopedic Concordance, 32 pages of lined writing paper and 16 pages of Oxford Bible maps with index. In addition, there will be 4 new colourways for this new range, with Green and Purple becoming part of the standard line-up, as well as Silver Line variations on the Black and Navy Blue goatskin editions.

UPDATE: We regret that Black and Navy Silver Line editions indicated above will not be available with this first binding run.

The 53C will be ready to go out to customers this summer – we hope you like it!

The King James Version Longprimer Bible was created by Oxford University Press back in the 1950s, but is enjoying a new lease of life as more and more avid Bible readers have (re)discovered its charms in the form of the Allan 53 range – and, more recently, the 63 Longprimer Sovereign editions and now the upgraded Longprimer 52, which brings the flexibility and quality of a leather-lined binding even to the ‘cheaper’ calfskin edition.

Inevitably, perhaps, the search for quality has led to an increase in volume for this signature Bible, as we have pushed up the paper weight in search of greater opacity, and increased the yapp to enhance the sumptuous effect and ensure full protection for the page edges. I have just held in my hand a copy printed under Charles Batey, who was Oxford’s ‘Printer to the University’ back in 1952, when this Bible first came out. It is a beautiful Bible, with the leather-lined binding we all love, tidy (though not perfect) hand-pleated corners, and the gilt edges still shine, albeit with a slightly faded elegance now.

But what is striking is the difference between the Longprimer then and now – the spine width is thinner, the yapp is tiny compared to the most recent 52, let alone the full yapp 53 and 63 editions, the ribbons are narrower…

We didn’t want to go back to the past – but we did think there might be room for something that recognised the charms of a slimmer, neater package.

That is the inspiration behind the latest addition to the Longprimer family, a Bible we are calling the ’43′ – still bound in uniquely grained Highland goatskin, still leather-lined and decorated with art gilt page edges, still with three wide ribbons – everything that makes an Allan Bible what it is today – and yet just that little bit easier to hold in the hand. So we have taken a quarter off the spine width just by printing on a lighter 28gsm paper – though it is barely less opaque than the 36gsm paper in the usual Longprimer edition – and given the Bible a generous semi-yapp that in fact still allows the leather edges to meet over the book block, but just makes the Bible that bit easier to carry.

The Longprimer Thinline is coming soon in six colours, including our usual Black, Brown, Navy and Red – plus Purple and Green, which seem to be the colours of the moment! We hope you like it.

Many of you reading this – keen Allan followers that you are – will be well aware that over the past several years we have had long periods where key lines have been out of stock. The binderies we’ve been using have had external pressures – but of course, there’s also the fact that making a Bible by hand just takes time.

So we’ve been working hard to develop links with new binderies here in the UK so as to release additional capacity – a year or so ago we sold our first Bibles bound by Ludlow Bookbinders, and there’s plenty more to come from them. Today, though, we are delighted to announce our partnership with Charfleet Book Bindery, of Canvey Island, Essex; although it’s not an entirely new relationship, as Charfleet are the successors in business of Neale Dataday, who used to bind Allan Bibles down in Cornwall 20 years ago…

Canvey Island may not be the most romantic of islands, sitting on the Thames Estuary with a natural gas storage facility and oil terminal just upstream – but on the plus side, it was first settled by the Romans 2000 years ago, so it has a long history, and the salt marshes dividing it from the mainland provide a home for a rich array of wildlife – one day we’ll have time to stop for a good tramp along the footpaths that wend around the creeks of the marsh.

But today we’re not here for the Romans, the oil or the wildlife, but for the craft bindery that sits on a light industrial estate quietly producing high-quality leather notebooks and diaries for some of London’s top stores, places like Liberty, Burberry and Dunhill. Over the past year we have been working together behind the scenes and the firstfruits have in fact already been seen, in the form of our most recent batch of Allan Journals and the new smaller format Allan Notebooks.

Now, though, we are on the brink of receiving Charfleet’s first Bible binding run, in the form of the NLT Reader’s edition, bound in our trademark highland goatskin in a choice of all four of our ‘standard’ colours, Black, Brown, Navy and Red. With a spec closely matching that of the ever-popular ESV New Classic Readers and a sheet stock printed for us by Tyndale with a large print size and double column reference layout, these Bibles are a significant move on from our previous NLT edition, and will be available to preorder very shortly, with the first copies leaving us in early March.

Here are a couple of photos of the work in progress:

The Journalling Bible trend first started by ESV’s original Journaling Bible editions some 10 years ago now shows no sign of abating, with Bible publishers on both sides of the Atlantic rolling out a range of editions in many different bindings and with double column and single column typesettings.

The style has become so popular it’s even attracted the attention of the satirists, with The Babylon Bee’s claiming to have inside knowledge of an upcoming ‘no-Bible-text’ edition, giving people ‘more space to write their own thoughts, ideas, and feelings as they study God’s Word’ – link here: http://babylonbee.com/news/new-journaling-bible-eliminate-scriptural-text-entirely/

Thankfully that non-Bible-Bible isn’t for real, but I suppose you could argue that our own Brevier Clarendon Wide Margin is itself a precursor to this newer trend, with its all-the-way-round margins giving ample space for the preacher or Bible student to annotate to their heart’s content.

However, this blog post is more to highlight a couple of our other product lines, namely the longstanding (full-size) Allan Journal and our new, smaller Allan Notebook range. Just to be clear, these are not and never have been Bibles! But they have been a bit like our Bibles in that they never seem to stay in stock for long…

The reason for writing now, though, is that working with a new bindery, Charfleet Book Bindery in Canvey Island, Essex – a near-island surrounded by salt marshes and right by the Thames Estuary – we are hopeful of maintaining a steady supply of Journals in both sizes and for all four of our ‘standard’ Highland Goatskin colours, ie. Black, Brown, Navy and Red. Plus there might even be some additional variations coming along, like a couple of ‘Silverline’ options and perhaps even a Purple Journal for the first time.

Along the way we have also made a further upgrade to the paper used for our notepaper, which is now up to 70gsm, on a coated stock that should suit a good range of pen types and with our now-standard 5mm navy feint lines, giving just that little bit more writing space than the older 4mm lines!

Here are a couple of pictures to whet the appetite…

Somewhat later than originally intended, here is a more rounded account of the recent re-print and rebind of the Allan Brevier Clarendon Wide Margin Bible.

The KJV Brevier Clarendon Bible is a vintage Authorized/King James Version reference edition, developed by Oxford University Press and now published exclusively by R. L. Allan. The Wide Margin edition is particularly prized for its substantial margins and writeable paper, with the highest levels of opacity, making it the ideal Bible for intensive study and notetaking.

Surprisingly perhaps, the previous 5WM goatskin edition substantially outsold the ‘standard’ (paste-off) 7WM split calfskin edition (if any edition of this particular Bible can ever be described as standard!) – and left us with a very clear challenge when it came to reprinting a Bible that had found so many committed buyers.

We were fortunate enough to be able to visit with the printers, Jongbloed, in the Netherlands, and talk through in detail our particular needs in terms of opacity and writeability for the paper on this edition, since the previously used 38gsm ‘SG’ paper was no longer available. It transpires that opacity and writeability do not necessarily go together, but after balancing the merits of various options we eventually settled on a significantly higher weight PrimaBible 45gsm paper that has improved writeability characteristics and opacity, while adding only 1mm or less to the spine width as compared to the previous edition.

The results bear out this decision, with outstanding print quality – though of course the page image itself still bears the marks of its vintage in broken type and lithographic ‘spread’, which emphasises the textual boldness at the expense of crispness – and a beautiful contrast to the creamy, 1.5 inch wide outer/inner margins (1 inch at top and bottom).

The classic 5WM edition is bound in Black natural grain goatskin with a generous yapp, leather-lined in dark blue with gilt line inside, hand-pleated corners and double-sprayed red under gold page edges, three navy blue ribbon markers, with Allan presentation pages and family record in our latest Charles Rennie Mackintosh-inspired design, as well as 26 pages of blank notepaper at the back of the Bible book block for further note taking, and 16 pages of full-colour Oxford Bible maps. For 2016 we have also added a Navy Blue option, and upgraded the ’7WM’ paste-off edition to the beautiful natural grain Buttero Calfskin.

We have also been working with Jongbloed on some other incremental improvements to these Bibles, including a new semi-matt finish on the 5WM natural grain goatskin editions – bringing this range much closer to ‘Highland’ feel and appearance – fully hand-pleated corners, double-sprayed page edges for a deeper art gilt effect, and improved flexibility in the hinge at front and back of the Bible so it lies flatter when closed and opens more easily to the first and last pages.

The 5WM in Navy Blue is proving particularly popular at this point but with its embodiment of traditional values, as it were, we fully expect the standard Black 5WM to be once again the edition of choice for the majority of users.

In a previous blog post (‘Starting over’, Jan 16 – see link at right) I talked a bit about the changes we’ve been preparing with the 53 Longprimer for this year’s binding of what is surely the flagship Allan range – changes that take the Longprimer back to its roots.

Not to repeat myself, then, for 2016 we have reverted to a vintage copy of the classic Longprimer, printed in the period 1952-1958 under Charles Batey, then Printer to the University of Oxford, which has given us a page image that is much closer to the original intentions of the typesetters. Despite its early date, the vagaries of metal type meant that even in this copy some pages showed some variations, and in such cases we weighed this copy’s page impression against a slightly later (1960s) copy printed under Vivian Ridler, and considered the benefits of substitution.

All told, this new-old page image retains the large, clear type of the Longprimer we all know and love, but has a crisper letter form and less of the broken type marks out much-used letterpress typesettings and particularly the ‘middle-aged spread’ that arises from them being subsequently transferred to film – and only more recently to digital scans.

In order to maximise the clarity of the page impression, we also increased the paper weight to 36gsm (previously 32gsm) using the best quality PrimaBible Bible paper, a coated semi-writeable paper with high opacity yet with minimal impact on the spine width. This paper is only produced to special order at this weight but is rapidly becoming the paper of choice for top quality Bible printing – and indeed, at the even heavier weight of 45gsm has produced the most amazing printing results for our upcoming Brevier Clarendon Wide Margin.

As our signature 53 Longprimer has been off the market for a year or so now it may be worth highlighting some of the key features of this Allan flagship Bible. The 53 is available in Black, Brown, Navy Blue or Crimson Red Highland goatskin with full yapp and red under gold page edges (blue under gold for the navy blue), leather-lined in dark blue (or brown for the Brown, red for the Red) with double gilt lines inside, three ribbon markers, Allan presentation pages and family record in new improved design, dictionary of proper names, subject index, concordance, 32 pages of lined writing paper – now on 60gsm white paper with 5mm navy blue feint rule – and 16 pages of Oxford Bible maps with index.

After a long wait these Bibles are nearly ready to go out to their new homes, and we are excited to see the response!

I grew up in the south of Herefordshire, in a small market town called Ross on Wye just on the English side of the border with Wales. Herefordshire is a thoroughly rural county, known for its rolling hills and vibrant red earth which makes for particularly striking scenery when the fields have just been ploughed – and thoroughly dirty roads and cars when it’s been raining hard, which it does quite a bit in the west of England!

Just off the northern edge of the county of Herefordshire in neighbouring Shropshire lies another little market town called Ludlow – a town with its own castle, and known for being a foodie haven with rather more than its fair share of Michelin-starred restaurants. It is also the home of a small craft bindery called Ludlow Bookbinders, with whom we have been working hard over the past couple of years – since the first month we took over at Allan’s in fact – to help them get to grips with the particular challenges of binding limp leather-lined Bibles.

Ludlows work with a number of mainstream publishers (including Hodder & Stoughton and Cambridge University Press, for whom they bind all their lectern Bibles) and with other specialist publishers including angling (sport fishing) and historical presses. Paul Kidson – who owns Ludlows with his wife Emma – has printing and binding in his blood and much of their work is bound in leather one way or the other, but historically that has mainly involved binding over hard boards, so the art of leather-lined binding was new to them. However, we are delighted to have now received our first 99 finished Bibles from them, in the form of 4 different colours of the ESV Classic Reference Bible. To celebrate with them, we headed up to Ludlow on Friday for a visit – which also of course gave us a great opportunity to talk through what else we can do together in the course of 2016.

The goatskin used to bind these ESV Bibles comes from New Zealand and has lovely natural grain with a slightly glossier finish than our habitual ‘highland’ style, but it makes for a beautiful Bible and the colour options are just different enough from our usual leather stocks to give these Bibles a bit of a twist – black is black, of course, but the blue has a hint of the ‘Marine Blue’ shade that was so popular back in early 2014 on the ESV New Classic Readers, the rich burgundy is quite a departure from our usual crimson – and finally the dark tan/mid-brown defies description to the extent that we can’t really decide how to even label it!

Obviously working with a new bindery is a learning process for all concerned, but we are delighted with all that Ludlows have achieved with this first batch and are looking forward to many more great Bibles to come during this year. The expansion of capacity they offer will allow us to ensure we are continuing to provide as wide a range of Bible translations and editions as possible to sit alongside our bestselling KJV Longprimer, Longprimer Sovereign and other ‘classic’ lines.

We hope you’ll join us on this journey…

Although more recent years have seen us branch out into the modern translations, the King James Version Bible is R.L. Allan’s heartland. Our official imprimatur as Her Majesty’s Printers for Scotland is actually a more recent credential, where in days gone by our close association with Oxford University Press to produce our Bibles enabled us to come under the umbrella of their status as perpetual holders of the privilege of publishing the Authorized Version (as it is more properly known). This partnership with Oxford University Press is what has gifted us some of the finest Bible editions available today, whether that be the pocket size Ruby editions or the Brevier Clarendon and Blackface.

Amongst the various editions we have now inherited from Oxford University Press since the decline of their fine Bibles business, though, it is surely the Longprimer – named for the 10pt type used in its typesetting – that is our most prestigious and widely-regarded Bible. Last year’s addition of the Longprimer Sovereign, with the same page image but a wider margin on the outer and bottom page edges in particular, has been a great success, but it is the ‘normal’ or ‘standard’ Longprimer that I want to talk about today.

As I say, the Longprimer Sovereign has met with a very pleasing reception, but the process of checking the running sheets and of seeing the Bibles in print raised a question in our minds: what if we could go back to where the Longprimer began? What if we could recreate the Longprimer as it was originally made to be, as its first typesetter saw it? The Longprimer first appears on our Allan’s price lists after its first printing in 1952: what it did look like then?

There are two key ways in which the text we have been selling as the Longprimer differs from the original. The first is that there are a fairly large number of places in which the type is ‘broken’, in that the original metal letters either got somewhat squashed or where little pieces broke off completely during the 30 years or so when it was printed from metal type. The second is that once this original metal type setting had been transferred to film so as to be printed by offset lithography, sometime in the late 1970s/early 1980s, the image of each letter ‘spread’ over time as the film degraded, so that the scanned image we use to print from now – although it will not degrade further – carries the hallmarks of this half-century and more of use and misuse.

After some conversations with and help from fellow Bible enthusiasts in the USA we tracked downone early copy, and the chance discovery of another in the archive of the old Scottish Bible printing firm William Collins and Sons – now HarperCollins, of course, and the company where both my uncle Nicholas Gray and grandfather Andrew Gray gained much of their publishing knowledge, and (in the London office) where I worked for 12 years myself – we were able to see something of what the Longprimer was supposed to look like, and we are now on the brink of being ready to share this experience with you all, in the form of the ‘remastered’ Longprimer, a new printing scanned from these original 1950s vintage editions. With a clearer, crisper page image – but still retaining a distinctive character – and by no means clinically perfect in the way of modern computer-driven typesettings – this king of Bibles is free to be its true self once more.

Longprimer rescan 2016

1952 Allan’s price list