There are some products out there that, when I come across them, they make me think, "Goodness, this was conceived especially for me." "The Jersey Project" by Bill Humphreys and Jerry Dunn is a book that has me convinced that the authors were sitting in a room developing their tome whilst staring at a photo of my goofy gnomish face tacked to the wall. Surprisingly, both men survived.

As background information, I should mention that I make my living as graphic designer and have done so for the past twenty years. This means I have acquired a lot of books with pictures of things in them, mostly pictures of posters and advertisements, but also books filled with photos of products: cars, consumer items and gnomes and such. So when I found "The Jersey Project" available for sale on the Gage+DeSoto web site, I leapt at the chance to purchase it. Here it was, a designer-y book of pictures with pictures of cycling jerseys, something I confess to being completely obsessed with. I admit to being excited about getting my copy (which I didn’t even use my "credentials" as a "journalist" to weasel a free copy from G+D), and when it arrived, I plowed through it with the enthusiasm of a pack of nursing home grannies tearing through a pile of crossword books after mistakenly being given methamphetamine in their paper medicine cups.

And The Jersey Project is a meth grannie’s dream, 198 pages of jersey after jersey, with some pages covered in rows of twelve and others with just one significant jersey and an accompanying description. The 1970 Molteni Giro leader’s jersey is the image that serves as the image for a description of Merckx’s career. Peter Van Petegem gets a smaller entry that sits aside an image of his 1994 Trident-Schick jersey, a team very few probably know about, and a team that fewer still associate with PVP. But that’s the quirky fun of The Jersey Project, the jerseys are categorized according to rider, with the book split up into sections according to races and regions. The section for the USA was added to the original Dutch version of the book ("Koerrstrui") by Bill "Bike Guy Humphreys, and is split into sections according to clubs, races and even "Greg Lemond". This makes for a frustrating experience for those looking to quickly find team jerseys (the index is according to rider), but it makes for a glorious experience for someone taking their time to discover the quirky and eccentric history of cycling jersey sponsorship.

It’s the completeness of the book that makes it so enjoyable, the collection has jerseys from the days of sewn wool and front pockets to the dye-sublimated, retina-ripping designs of the 80s, plus all of the modern teams and leader’s jerseys. If you want to see the evolution of the Belgian Lotto team sponsorship in the 90s (and who wouldn’t?), you can pick through the photos and see their design ethic evolve. If you want to see when Bricobi left the Mapei team, you can do that in a few pages time also. You can watch American cycling progress from small regional clubs to teams with juggernaut corporate sponsorship. There’s a million ways to approach and consume this book, and that’s what serves to satisfy the Meth Nana in me.

The sections that are translated from the Dutch version do seem as if they have been run through a Fabian Cancellara translator, the section for Oscar Freire is titled "Sometimes Dreaming Plays Tricks on Him", but to me that just adds to the Euro charm of the book. The Book also concentrates on a lot of riders from the Netherlands, "Fred van Dongen was a professional rider from 1980 until 1985. He started at M.B.W. Holland and finished a modest career with Wintermans.", because, well, it is a Dutch book, and I’m pretty sure van Dongen was available for comment. But that sort of idiosyncratic completeness appeals to me. I like seeing jerseys from tiny trade teams from the 70s, as for me it helps write the story of the aspirations of not only the teams and riders, but also of the sponsors that were willing to put their money into the sport.

The Jersey Project is a great book and resource. If you love cycling and its peculiarities, you will love this book. Buy it and give it to the cycling nut in your life (especially if you need time to yourself, as any bike nut will immediately sit down and rifle through this book), your GranMeth would want you to.

The Jersey Project
Bill Humphreys & Jerry Dunn
Trichis