Joseph Smith's first handwritten journal is a small book. Its blue cover has faded and the paper looks brittle.
Some pages appeared to be loose as Richard E. Turley Jr., assistant historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, turned them carefully to show reporters at a meeting on Monday. He held the book reverently with white gloves.
At one point in the meeting, Turley began to put a white glove on as he reached for the newly printed "The Joseph Smith Papers: Journals Volume 1: 1832-1839." He caught himself and took it off before picking up the volume, but the impulse to show reverence for the book and what it represents seemed natural.
This is no ordinary book.
"We have tried to create a book that is not only a remarkable piece of scholarship but is also a fine piece of craftsmanship," Turley said.
This commitment to craftsmanship was noted by Chuck Nason, president of Worzalla, the 116-year-old book manufacturer in Stevens Point, Wis., that printed the book.
"It is a lovely book," Nason said in a telephone interview. "It is one of the finer books, from a quality standpoint, that we have done in quite some time."
"This is a documentary editing volume," Turley said. "It is a volume that is intended to be on the shelf for a very long time. We have gone to great lengths to make certain that the book itself, as a volume is very beautiful and durable."
That quality doesn't come cheap. The book's cover price is $49.95. Although the initial print run of 12,500 books hasn't sold out yet, a reprint order for 5,500 copies has been placed, according to Nason. A special leather-bound edition is also in the works for spring, but no paperback version is planned.
Turley and Nason explained the specifics of the craftsmanship of the book.
"You can see that we created a very nice jacket for those who like book jackets," Turley said. "But we also created a book that can be on the shelf for a long time without the jacket."
The fabric on the cover is navy blue "brillianta" that takes foil-stamping well, according to Nason. Joseph Smith's signature is stamped on the cover.
The paper was manufactured at the Finch Papers mill in Glen Falls, N.Y., and has an archival quality of 400 years.
"The paper itself is an ivory paper that is thin and yet does not allow the images to bleed through to the other side," Turley said.
The pages are attached to the spine of the book by the "Smyth-sewn" method — creating a flexible and soft binding.
"That's why you get the feeling that it is already broken in," Nason said. "A Smyth-sewn book is designed to lay flat, it won't want to close by itself … and the only way to get a page out of a Smyth-sewn book is to rip it out."
"Everything from the line lengths to the choice of font, the size of the font, all of this has been very carefully crafted to make a very durable book that is worthy of a major historical figure," Turley said.
The font, by the way, is Adobe Garamond Pro. Spencer Deery, a publicist at Deseret Book, said it was "chosen because it was based off of a very old font that would give it that antique feel, but it has a modern twist to it so it wouldn't sacrifice readability. Because the version was also modern enough, it allowed them to be flexible in how they transcribed the documents so they could put in the special characters they needed — the dashes and such — so that you could have the editing marks that a project like this required."
The craftsmanship of the printed volumes of the series doesn't mean that an expensive hardcover book is the only way to access the information.
"We hope that much of the content will eventually be online. We recognize that we live in a world where people want access to materials electronically," Turley said. "But we also feel that Joseph Smith, being a major figure in the history of the church and American religious history, deserves a set of volumes on the shelf — a set of volumes in libraries, where people can access the papers in hardcopy form."
Said Nason: "This is a complete book that conceptually the publisher wanted, in my opinion, to pay tribute to Joseph Smith and his papers by putting out a quality product. And they have done that."
Of the 15,000 titles that Worzalla manufactures each year, Nason said only about 50 titles approach this quality.
"This book, I don't believe, was necessarily designed to make money," Nason said.
E-mail: mdegroote@desnews.com