The question turns up in most first emails to the studio. _What is sundayfawn, exactly?_ It does not have a one-line answer, because the studio does not fit neatly into the usual categories. The short version is this: sundayfawn is a small independent studio that makes one-of-one hardcover storybooks for the people you love. The longer version, which is the rest of this page, is for anyone who has read the short answer and wanted more — the buyer who has been disappointed by a custom gift before and would like, in some detail, to understand why this one is different.
The studio has been asked the question often enough that it now keeps a written answer on hand. What follows is that answer. It is not a marketing page. It is the page we send to friends and to journalists and to the occasional curious bookseller. If the short answer is enough, the rest of this page is unnecessary. If the short answer is not enough, the rest of this page is here.
The plain definition
sundayfawn is a studio. The studio makes a single kind of object — a hardcover storybook — in many shapes. Each book is written and illustrated for one named reader, from a brief the buyer fills out in about ten minutes. The book is hardcover, foil-stamped on the cover, section-sewn, signed at the colophon, and shipped in a cream slipcase. The studio is run by a writer, an illustrator, and a binder. Books take three weeks from brief to door. The price is eighty-five dollars. There is no second tier and no second copy.
That is the entire answer to the question of what the studio is. Almost everything else on this page is a clarification of one of those sentences — what _shape_ a book can take, what _one named reader_ means, what the brief actually asks for.
Why the word _studio_
We use the word studio rather than the word company on purpose. A company is a name applied to whatever is sold under it. A studio is a small group of people who write, paint, and bind the things they make. The distinction matters because most custom-book operations are companies — names applied to a fill-in-the-blank printer pipeline — and we wanted a word that would mark the work as a different kind of object. The word is older and more specific. It is the word the studio earns by doing the writing and the painting and the binding itself.
Why _one_
Every sundayfawn book is an edition of one. The studio writes the book, paints the book, binds the book, ships the book, and closes the file. The book is never reproduced from an archive because the archive is not kept. If the original is lost, the studio will accept a new brief for a fresh book, but it will not reissue what was lost. The rule is foundational rather than promotional; it is the constraint that makes the object what it is.
The kinds of books sundayfawn makes
Different occasions ask for different shapes of book. The studio writes them all in the same hand, on the same paper, in the same binding — but the contents bend to the moment. Here is the full catalogue of shapes a sundayfawn book can take.
Books for children
There are adventure storybooks, where the recipient is the hero on the cover and the people they love appear in the story alongside them. There are ABC books, where each letter is anchored to something from the recipient's actual life — A is for the apple their grandfather peels in one whole strip, B is for the blue bike on the porch. There are first-year books for a child turning one, and bedtime-quiet books for a child who likes a slower spread before sleep. The reader is named. The cast is real.
Books for milestone birthdays
A book for a fiftieth, sixtieth, seventieth. Written around the recipient — the work they did, the trips they took, the friends who came to the kitchen on Friday nights, the specific way they laugh. Not a card. Not a slideshow. A hardcover storybook the recipient can keep on the shelf with the novels and reach for in twenty years.
Books for couples
Anniversary books — first, tenth, twenty-fifth, fiftieth, golden. Wedding books for the couple on the day. Engagement books for the proposal. The book is written around the two of them: how they met, the apartments they have lived in, the bad joke he tells at every dinner party, the dish she always makes for guests, the trip they keep meaning to take.
Books for new arrivals
A book for a newborn, written before they have done much of anything — about the people waiting for them, the house they are coming home to, the dog who is now their dog. A book for a sibling on the day their sister or brother arrives. A book for the parents, from the family that loves them, about the year that just changed forever.
Books for partners, parents, grandparents, friends
A book for the partner you would write a book for. A book for a parent, on no occasion at all, because they have been your parent for forty years and you finally found a way to say it. A book for a grandparent on their ninetieth, written by the grandchild who knows them best. A book for the friend who has been your friend since you were both small.
Books to remember someone by
Memorial books, written carefully, around a life that has ended. Pet-memorial books for the dog or cat or rabbit whose absence the house still carries. Eulogy keepsake books, made after the service, for the family to keep. The studio writes these with the most care of all.
Books for no occasion
Some buyers do not need an occasion. They simply want to make a book for someone they love, on an ordinary Sunday, because nobody has ever made a book for that person before. The studio writes those, too.
What the studio makes (the physical object)
Every sundayfawn book — adventure, ABC, milestone, anniversary, memorial, otherwise — is the same physical object. Hardcover. 2.5mm board. Section-sewn binding. Foil-stamped cover. Cream uncoated interior stock. Watercolour and ink illustration throughout. Cream slipcase, twine closure, signed colophon at the back. The dimensions are slightly larger than a novel and slightly smaller than a coffee-table book. The book is meant to be held in two hands and read in a single sitting.
The variation between books is in the writing and the painting, not in the form. The form is fixed because the form is the studio's signature. A buyer who orders one book from sundayfawn and then a second book a year later will find that the two books are the same object in every material respect — same paper, same binding, same foil, same slipcase — and entirely different in their content. The constancy of the form is what allows the variation in the content to register. The book on the shelf is recognisable as a sundayfawn book the way a Penguin Classic is recognisable as a Penguin Classic.
How a book is made here
The process has four phases. The brief, the writing, the painting, and the press. They happen in that order, over three weeks, and the buyer is involved only in the first phase.
There are no drafts shared with the buyer for approval. The brief is the buyer's contribution. Everything after is the studio's job. This is unusual in the custom-gift world and is deliberate. A book made by committee is a book diluted by committee. We have tested both ways.
What the brief asks for
The brief asks for ten specific details about the recipient. Not what they like in the abstract — _what they do on a Tuesday_. The way they answer the phone. The dish they make every January. The route they walk. The song they hum. The studio uses these details as raw material; they appear in the book as scene and gesture and weather, not as bullet points. The brief takes ten minutes because ten minutes is enough. Forty minutes does not produce a better book. We have tested this, too.
Where the studio lives, and who runs it
The studio operates online and ships internationally. The brief is submitted through the order page, the book is made, and the book ships in a cream slipcase by tracked mail. The people behind the studio are a writer, an illustrator, and a binder. They have day jobs in publishing and come to the studio on evenings and weekends. This is not a large company. The books are made in living rooms and at kitchen tables, slowly, in the rooms where the people who run the studio also live.
The colophon mark on every book the studio has ever made is the same mark. The name on the cover is the same name. The hand that ties the twine on the slipcase is, often enough, the same hand that wrote the book. The studio does not pretend to be larger than it is. It also does not pretend to be smaller. It is what it is: a small, working studio that makes one book at a time and signs the colophon when the book is done.
Who orders a book from sundayfawn, and why
Buyers fall, broadly, into three groups. The first is people preparing for a major occasion — a milestone birthday, an anniversary, a wedding, a retirement, a memorial — who have decided that the ordinary registry items will not hold the weight of the day. The second is people who want to write a kind of letter they do not know how to write themselves, and who would like the studio to write it for them from the specifics they can provide. The third is people who simply like the form: the small hardcover, the foil, the fact that the book exists in one copy.
What the three groups share is patience. The book takes three weeks. The brief takes ten minutes. The result arrives in a cream slipcase, in the ordinary mail, on an ordinary day. Whoever opens it is, briefly, the only person in the world holding this particular book — and they remain so. That is the entire promise. The studio keeps it by doing nothing more than what it said it would do, in the time it said it would take.
Common occasions
The most common occasions the studio makes books for are: milestone birthdays (50th, 60th, 70th), anniversaries (1st, 10th, 25th, golden), weddings, new arrivals, first birthdays, graduations, retirements, memorials, and the occasional book made for no occasion at all. Read the journal entries on milestone-birthday books, anniversary books, new-arrival books, graduation books, and books for a grandparent for the full catalogue of shapes.
What sundayfawn is, in one paragraph
sundayfawn is a small independent studio that makes one-of-one hardcover storybooks for one named reader. We make adventures, ABC books, milestone-birthday volumes, anniversary keepsakes, books for a new arrival, books for a graduating student, books for a partner, a parent, a grandparent, a friend, a pet, and books for no occasion at all. Each book is hardcover, foil-stamped on the cover, section-sewn in 2.5mm board, slipcased in cream, signed at the colophon. The buyer fills out a ten-minute brief; the studio writes, paints, and binds the book over three weeks; the book ships in a cream slipcase and is read in a single sitting. The price is eighty-five dollars. The book is an edition of one. There is no second copy. To start your own, begin a book here.
_— That is the studio. That is the work. The colophon is the same one every time._