A city's skyline, drawn in one line

Every one of these is one continuous line: Parliament into the Eye into the Shard, the Castle into the Scott Monument into Arthur's Seat, or Liberty into the Brooklyn Bridge into the Empire State, without the pen leaving the cover. They sit along the base with a name above, so the city says where somebody went and the name says who travelled.

A single unbroken line is exactly the kind of drawing that suffers from being printed, so it is not: the line is cut into the hide by a laser in-house, at one weight, which is what keeps it looking drawn rather than reproduced. The name above it is yours, and the preview puts it there at the size it will be engraved before any money changes hands. The bit people want to know next is timings, so here they are.

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These are bought about a place somebody has been

Usually somewhere they went, and seldom where they live. That is worth knowing when you choose one, and it is why the name set above the line does most of the work: the city says where and the name says who went. A honeymoon, a year abroad, a stag weekend that nobody will discuss, the ski season somebody took off between jobs, the city a couple met in. It also makes these one of the few covers on the site that work as a present from a group, because everyone who was there recognises the skyline and nobody has to agree on a sentence.

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One line, and what that costs the drawing

Every skyline here is drawn without the pen leaving the cover, and that is a real constraint on the drawing. It means each city is reduced to the handful of buildings that survive being joined up, so what you get is the silhouette somebody would sketch from memory rather than an accurate elevation. That is the reason they read at a glance from across a desk. It is also why the cities on this page are the ones with a recognisable profile: a city whose landmarks do not join into a line does not belong here, and would be better served by the map, which draws the streets themselves.

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Whose name goes above it

A first name is usually right, because the line underneath is already the loud part and a full name competes with it. Two names work if the trip belonged to two people, and reading them out loud in the order you have typed them is the quickest way to know whether you have them the right way round. Some people put the year instead of a name, which turns the cover into a record of a particular trip rather than a souvenir of a city, and that is a different and often better present. The preview will show you which of the three you want.

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