Back in the Bindery!
Old Meets New in our New Year
This book has been re-backed in leather with the old spine remounted. The top panel had been lost so we tooled it to match.
Happy New Year everyone! We were hard at it up until Christmas, and January certainly isn't breaking us in gently after the festive season!
After a couple of days to catch up with, and finish off a couple of smaller jobs we spent yesterday cleaning the workshop from top to bottom. Decluttering and tidying in preparation for an exciting year!
Having already been awarded a prestigious tender from a huge library in London towards the end of last year, we are preparing to apply for another! These large contracts are really important for us, not only to keep us all in a job, but for to prove how great our little bindery is! We are a small operation, but we take pride in taking the same care over each book in a big order as we do with those brought to us by individual customers who come to our door every day. The quality of every single book has to reach our high standards!
Our next tender application relies on us expanding our more specialised repair and conservation skills. As more and more binding of new books is being done on such a massive scale, mainly by machines, bookbinding by hand is becoming a dying art - especially book repair. Every book brought to us for restoration is different which makes our job more difficult, but also much more interesting!
We find a lot of people want us to rebind their favourite books, books they want to hand down to their children and some that have been passed down to them. Some folk find old books in charity shops and second hand bookshops and take a shine to them, love the smell of them. They are treasured for the pencil notes in the margins, inscriptions on the front page and beautiful illustrations - both the ones printed in the book and the ones your 3 year old scribbled when you left it out near the colouring pens. Books can hold incredible sentimental value for their owners, something a modern e-book could never manage.
If you have a book you'd like restored, just bring it in - we are always happy to chat about books! You could even have a go at fixing it yourself - under our expert supervision of course - on one of our Book Repair Classes.
