The making of the Yeats book for President Obama

President Barack Obama today celebrated St.Patrick’s Day with some very special Yeatsian gifts presented to him by An Taoiseach Enda Kenny TD. Here is the story of how it was lovingly created...
President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden each received the beautiful hand-printed, hand-bound book of a selection of Yeats’ poems, in collaboration with the Design & Crafts Council of Ireland’s Irish Design 2015 initiative.
The book was printed by Mary Plunkett of The Belgrave Private Press in Dublin. Mary is 1916 leader Joseph Mary Plunkett’s grand niece. She was inspired by the work of the Yeats sisters Susan and Elizabeth, who set up and ran Cuala Press in Dublin, printing many of WB’s works.
Reflecting Yeats’s links to his spiritual home of Sligo, the book was bound in green leather at Ox Bindery Press in Tubbercurry, Co Sligo.
The work was done Benjamin van de Wetering, a master craftsman, printer and restorer of manuscripts and books.

[@JonathanCampDesigner]

Always great to see lovely craftmanship being used and showing that these skills still exist in todays manic world!

[@seanrichards3439]

The bindings are sadly quite plain and droll. And the marbled paper looked to be the cheaper paper from France. I would expect a Yeats book this special would be using uniquely Irish materials like griffin mills paper and locally produced Irish marbled paper. This project missed the mark sadly.

[@TerryTerryTerry]

Quite suitable for O’Bama and O’Biden then.