A coffee-table book about Elswout Manor, created from a manuscript my father Wim Post wrote twenty years ago for Luigi Prins of Cobraspen.

At the end of 2023, Elswout Manor was officially opened following its final completion by Luigi Prins of Cobraspen. Around that time, Luigi asked me to bring the long-awaited book about the manor to life.

The manuscript had been written by my father twenty years earlier. For various reasons, the plans for the book had remained on the shelf ever since.

By then, I had already created a great deal of work for Cobraspen over the years, including luxury books, brand identities and visual communication for projects such as Bloomingdale, SugarCity, Htel Serviced Apartments and Villa Alsberg in Amsterdam.

For Bloomingdale, I created a large-format book about the history of Bloemendaal and the former PEN building, also based on a manuscript by Wim Post. The book was finished with leather and handmade paper covers, parchment and gold leaf.

The Elswout book became a very special project.

My father was 86 and living with Parkinson’s disease. I was living in Spain, he was in the Netherlands. The distance between us had become greater, and his illness meant that he was increasingly living in a world of his own.

Working on this book gave us a way to connect again.

My father is the man who taught me to see.

As a child, he taught me to look beyond the obvious. To notice nature, light, details, stories and the beauty in things that might otherwise go unnoticed. That way of looking has stayed with me throughout my life and has become an essential part of who I am as a creator.

And now, twenty years after he wrote the manuscript, we were creating the book together.

The process took place around two years ago. We carefully selected photographs from his valuable archive, discussed ideas and explored different directions. I developed the concept, creative direction and design, and brought the entire book to life from manuscript and photography to the finished publication.

The design changed several times along the way. That is part of how I work. I explore, question, follow my intuition, change direction and keep searching until everything feels right.

I create what does not yet exist.

In this case, I was not simply designing a book. I was giving twenty years of stories, history, photography and memories a new form.

Eventually, the printer’s deadline arrives. Decisions have to be made. And then you have to let go.

The result is my father’s 13th book and, in my eyes, his most beautiful.

For me, it is also one of the most meaningful projects I have ever created.

Not simply because of the finished book, but because we created it together.

A manuscript that had been waiting for twenty years finally became a book.

A story became something tangible.

And a professional creative project became a deeply personal chapter in our lives.

For my father.
The man who taught me to see.

Creative concept, art direction, design and realisation: Nicole Post
Text: Wim Post
Commissioned by Cobraspen