Shuggie Bain

Douglas Stuart

2020

Bound by Derek Hood and Kate Holland

Full biscuit goatskin with multicoloured goatskin and faux shagreen inlays, hand tooled gold dots and title, all edges gilt, hand-sewn endbands, printed edge-to-edge paper doublures, gilding on endpaper.

The main inspiration for the design is the housing estate Sighthill in Glasgow where we first meet Agnes and Shuggie, the pebble dash and blues and greys of the high rise buildings, and on the top floor Agnes leans out of her window gazing down on the carpet of Glasgow. On the back cover elements of black and white for Shug with the red light of his receding taxi cab. Over both loom the colliery wheels of Pithead depicted in a myriad of gold dots. Inside Elizabeth Taylor, Agnes’s heroine and touchstone, watches over a Sighthill walkway whilst a gilded beer can stain lies opposite