Take the road up the hill out of Broughshane, along the coggly lane to the old farmhouse now converted into a cosy home. Here you’ll find Willow Leaves Handmade Books. The trees all round are hanging on to to their autumnal leaves, the views of Slemish Mountain are stunning and there’s a welcome on the doorstep.

Rosanne Cecil has baked scones and biscuits but they have to wait because we’re off to one of the stone outhouses, no longer sheltering hens but rather Rosanne’s beautiful handmade books.

It’s not often you get to meet a bookbinder of this professionalism and imagination and to appreciate the elegant results of the skilled work that goes into fashioning these books. We’re surrounded by work benches, and tools of the trade - the nipping press, a sewing frame where she stitches hand-folded papers, binding together four pages at a time using a special needle and thread.

There’s an old fashioned iron, heavy enough to press both the papers and the cover because you don’t want cockling... Stitching the spine comes in a variety of procedures and she likes to use the work of her artist sister for unique ‘endpapers’ - the pages fixed immediately inside the front and back covers - and some books will enjoy being marbled by stirring inks and pigments in water giving a swirling finish to the decoration. She confides that this can be achieved using........

© The Irish News