Gracious Light (2020) is one of 500 handmade unique books Suzanne Coley has created in the past ten years. Suzanne Coley is credited with pioneering the style of "couture textile books," which combines precise design with bold experimentation by incorporating couture sewing techniques into bookmaking, often using unique fabrics and embroidery to create layered, artistic volumes. 

Like all of Suzanne's books, Gracious Light is a finely crafted book featuring traditional embroidery, quilting, and needlework techniques from her African American community and her studies of Asian and Continental embroidery and bookbinding. The cover of Gracious Light is decorated with over 6,500 hand sewn beads and rhinestones on a hand painted vintage wedding dress. Each page of the book is made of rare and vintage fabrics and the designs are inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet 7.

Gracious Light is part of Suzanne's Love Sonnets from Shakespeare to Baltimore series that she began in 2018. Suzanne examines and translates Shakespeare’s language through art with a variety of contemporary and historical textiles and needlework techniques. Suzanne's choice to use recycled wedding dresses for the covers and pages alludes to the emotion of Shakespeare's sonnets. These and other historic textiles are cut, dyed, painted, embroidered, and collaged. By altering our experience of the fabrics, Suzanne also draws our eye to their economic, social, and cultural histories. 

Suzanne is a 2023-24 Folger Institute Fellow specializing in Shakespeare and embroidered bindings. Her book Gracious Light has been featured in the Out of the Vault exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC from 15 September 2024 to 9 February 2025.

Born of Love (2024) is a one-of-a-kind textile book inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet 151, which begins with the line "Love is too young to know what conscience is." The deep and multifaceted message coded in the sonnet demanded a grand format for the book. The book, measuring almost 4 feet wide, offers a translation of the sonnet to the language of textiles, a language that celebrates worldwide cultures yet knows no borders.

Through color, shapes, textures, and visual movement of materials and design, Born of Love takes us on an emotional journey, line by line, through the poem. The cover includes three vibrant African Peafowls meticulously embroidered on a vintage French double mesh canvas. As a threatened species, the African Peafowl emphasizes how vulnerable we, and the world around us are to the more destructive aspects of love.

Technical: Traditional continental stitching from the 16th century that was used for medieval vestments, furnishings, and upholstery were used due to their proven record of lasting over the centuries. The embroidery of African Peafowls on the cover is reinforced with an additional layer of cotton fabric in order to sustain the vertical and horizontal pressures and heavier weight of the covers when the book is read or exhibited. This "double embroidered" technique is taken from African American Sharecropper quilting. They used this technique for over a century to extend the life of textiles, while simultaneously making materials beautiful.

Suzanne is a 2023-24 Folger Institute Fellow specializing in Shakespeare and embroidered bindings. Born of Love has been featured in the Out of the Vault exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, from 15 September 2024 to 9 February 2025.

Born of Love (2024) is one of 500 unique handmade books Suzanne Coley has created over the past ten years. Through the convergence of literature and fashion, Born of Love is both a multi-sensory response to Shakespeare and a contemporary social commentary. Inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet 151, Suzanne sourced velvet fabrics and sequins from France and the USA to create these pages. 

Suzanne examines and translates Shakespeare’s language through art with a variety of contemporary and historical textiles and needlework techniques. These velvet pages are in response to line 6: "My nobler part to my gross body's treason." Nobler fabrics such as velvets, sequins, gold lame, and damask were transformed into page material so that the pages could move from one voice to many, offering multiple readings to a wide range of audiences.

Suzanne is a 2023-24 Folger Institute Fellow specializing in Shakespeare and embroidered bindings. Born of Love has been featured in the Out of the Vault exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC from 15 September 2024 to 9 February 2025.

In Bloom (2023) is a commissioned book by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC. In Bloom, a unique textile book inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, is part of Suzanne Coley's Love Sonnets from Shakespeare to Baltimore series.

Shakespeare's sonnets gain additional layers of meaning on the book pages when they are complemented by Suzanne's linocut prints and embroidery. The pages move from one voice to many, offering multiple readings to a wide range of audiences. This page spread is created by embroidering a New York Times newspaper. Additional embroideries, a linocut, and collaged materials are added to create a deeper response to lines 2-4 of the poem: "Thou art more lovely and more temperate./ Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,/ And summer’s lease hath all too short a date." 

In Bloom is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.