I don't know about you, but we can't believe it's nearly two years since we took over at R.L. Allan & Son from my (Ian's) uncle Nicholas Gray. It has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride, beginning with the big move from Glasgow to London (including a massive spam email attack over the moving weekend) and continuing with lots of challenges along the way. Overall, though, we have endeavoured to continue the Allan tradition of steady and considered progress towards our goal of publishing the finest Bibles available - and delivering them to our loyal customers, wherever
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CELEBRATING 500 YEARS OF HAMPTON COURT PALACE,
BIRTHPLACE OF THE KING JAMES VERSION BIBLE
The time is coming for the first ever Limited Edition Longprimer Sovereign. This is going to be a rather special Bible, combining the very fine mustard yellow calfskin we first spotted at the bindery well over a year ago with a sumptuous purple liner and (world-first?) purple-under-silver page edges, along with silver embossing. And a special Bible deserves a special cause.
This year a local landmark near where we live celebrates its 500th Anniversary. But this is not just any old historic pile - Hampton Court Palace is where
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R.L. Allan has been sending copies of the no. 53 Longprimer all over the world since it was first published in 1952, 63 years ago. In that time it has become a favourite with many readers, renowned for its bold, clear type and our high quality leather bindings. It is certainly our flagship Bible - and, incidentally, our best seller.
Available exclusively from Allan's for some years now, and published by us under our licence from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as Her Majesty's Printers for Scotland, it was clear when Dominique and I took over at Allan's a year ago
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Exciting times at Allan's: we have just received a first sample copy of the new Allan Limited Edition 53 DG.
The dark grey leather (selected with the help of our Facebook friends) has revealed its true beauty on this Bible; its natural grain finish has a soft sheen that is subtly distinct from the waxy finish of our trademark highland goatskin. The richly coloured purple lambskin liner, silver foiling and blue under silver art gilt edges combine to give the 53DG a truly sumptuous appearance. For the first time, this Bible will feature our 'Allan Limited Edition' stamping on the inside
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I don't know how the original R.L. Allan spent his day, actually - but I like to imagine him starting out with a nice hot bowl of porridge, catching the tram across Glasgow to his city centre office and then spending his day giving orders to his staff from behind a massive oak desk, perhaps with R.L. Allan Junior (the 'Son' of our company name) sitting across from him.
What I do know is that life in the modern-day office of R.L. Allan & Son Publishers is nothing like that!
After a mad scramble to get children safely despatched school-ward in various
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Please note - this Bible is now sold out.
The latest Allan Limited Edition King James Version Longprimer takes its inspiration from two sources. Prosaically, the decision to look for a grey highland goatskin hide to use for this Bible was inspired by the success of the Smoke Grey Diamond Jubilee edition KJV 53 Longprimer published a couple of years ago, to celebrate the 60th year since Queen Elizabeth came to the throne.
That accounts for the grey, but when we came to look for a suitable companion to it in the form of a lining material, we wanted to find something
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We are seeing a lot of interest in our first foray into the colour green, in the form of the Allan New Living Translation Green Highland Goatskin Bible - and thought you might like to hear a little more about the origins of this particular leather.
A little like the wonderful antique dark brown we used for last year's 150th Anniversary Commemorative Editions, or the rich blue shade currently making its appearance on the ESV New Classic Readers in Marine Blue, this wonderful dark green leather wended its way to our usual binders via a convoluted route…
In this particular case, the
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A number of people have asked about the exact details of the leather used to produce the ESV New Classic Readers in the Marine Blue shade. Although it is not dissimilar in appearance to the highland goatskin that is perhaps our signature style, and is certainly at least as high quality a leather - if not better - its finish is a little glossier and, most importantly, we cannot guarantee whether the goats that have donated their hides for these Bibles did come from the Nigerian highlands (which is what the 'highland' moniker technically indicates).
This leather does have its own
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The thing about hand-crafting Bibles is that you always seem to end up with more of one element than you expect, and while this can be disappointing, if you don't get the finished quantity you wanted of a particular colourway or binding style, there are other times when it all comes good…
Like when you turn up at the bindery, and they tell you they've discovered they had 60 or so cases left over for the blue version of the NASB single column that was so popular last time around, when you thought it was just going to be black or
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Yesterday morning we headed around the M25 (London's orbital motorway) for a visit to our bindery, more or less on the opposite side of London. After a slightly more complicated journey than planned, since we ended up on a significant diversion to avoid a 10-mile tailback caused by flooding on the motorway, we arrived to beautiful sunshine.
The main purpose of our visit was to catch up on the various projects coming up over the next year or so, and to discuss priorities for those - so stay tuned for updates! However, we did also get the chance to see the
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