COVERING OLD GROUND
Before these artistic choices can be made, aspiring bookbinders must first develop a broad foundation of skills in the art and become versed in a variety of techniques. At North Bennet Street School, which offers the only full-time bookbinding program in the entire country, students learn the basic procedures and fundamental skills of bookbinding over a two-year period. During the first year, students learn 18th-century-style binding techniques such as making composite models of traditional binding structures by sewing signatures—unbound sections of a book—to the spine. During the second year, students venture into creating leather covers for books using materials like calf and pig skins. As they gain more experience, many of the students usually try to implement what they learn into presentation work, making folders, portfolios, and gift boxes. Altepeter tries to make the course applicable, which sometimes entails allowing students to work on small, custom-edition projects for willing customers. The quality of the materials his students handle is also very important to Altepeter. “There’s not much of a point in making a cover if it’s going to be a throwaway,” he says.
The curriculum of the North Bennet Street School is focused on imitating historical styles in the interest of crafting books from scratch, but the biggest demand for hand-binding outside of the educational environment has still been in repair and conservation. “Bookbinders haven’t been involved in making books for a really long time,” says Katherine Gray, a conservation technician at Widener Library who studied at the North Bennet Street School. “Most students go on to do conservation because that’s what’s available after graduation. There’s a high employment rate for repair since the industry has turned towards making nicer books for bookish people, rather than paperbacks.”
Due partially to technological changes in the industry, the focus of the art form has shifted from making large editions of books by hand to working with books of a much smaller, personal scale. “Technology has changed our field, what drives our work, and what our work is,” Altepeter says. “No large volumes are made by hand now. That’s just not the way it works anymore.” Although machine-quality binding is faster, it cannot be used in conservation.
“GRANDPA JEFF’S KINDLE”
Contrary to expectation, e-reader technology and the higher productivity rate of commercial binding have not been significantly detrimental to the hand bookbinding industry. In fact, the people that are going to such bookbinderies in order to preserve their beloved books reflect a current trend: there is now a higher appreciation for the binderies among the general public and a greater emphasis on specialized, individual production. Independent binderies do quite well, according to Altepeter, since they are set up for the right scale of hand bookbinding work, which is not conducive to the “large-shop approach.”
Altepeter also firmly believes bookbinding is considered an art form, even though the underlying purpose for the craft has primarily been repair and conservation of other art. To him, every step of the process is entirely creative, from designing the shape of the outer boards to selecting the appropriate texture of leather in which to bind the book. Using the skills of bookbinding also allows creative binders to freely explore other projects. For example, Foster is in the process of creating his own book, a two-by-two-inch novel about an angel trapped in a net, presented physically on the inside cover of the book with webbing and a small paper angel. With the same techniques he employs to repair library textbooks, Foster is thus able to create art from scratch and produce an interactive book.
Additionally, most bookbinders have expressed their belief that people are now beginning to value books on a different level and to think critically about the books that were special to them and their families. The conservators at Widener Library say they have seen this positive change in their patrons and consider themselves lucky that those patrons are very engaged with the condition of the books they borrow. “It is a tremendous asset that our users care about the collections,” Rich says.
Foster also believes that the e-reader trend will mostly affect commercial binding because the materials that are typically digitized, he feels, are transient publications like computer programming materials. “The art of hand-binding will continue because people like the beauty of books. People will always like the feeling of opening up a book and taking the time to turn a page. With the electronic screen, there is a pressure to move along quickly,” he says.
Altepeter agrees. “My grandkids are not going to say, ‘This is Grandpa Jeff’s Kindle!’ They’re not going to relate to that. People don’t want to read certain things on an iPad, like literature or poetry.” The bookbinding instructor also thinks that the growing desire among the general public to reconnect with their beloved books, to treasure the unique experience that is reading and holding a physical copy of a book, has slowed the e-book craze.
“I want to think it’s a long-term phase,” he says. “I hope so.”
—Staff writer Connie Yan can be reached at connieyan@college.harvard.edu.