Bookbinding is a traditional craft, part of a greater group of book arts: paper making, printing & typography, book design, letter arts, marbling & paper decoration and more. It has a long history in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Although most books today in the U.S. are made by machine, there is a small but active population of hand bookbinders spread across the country whose work ranges from conservative to cutting edge. We use everything from rag paper, linen thread and wheat paste to sheet metal and glass. We conserve rare books, repair broken books, bind new editions of up to several hundred books and make one-of-a-kind books. We do work for publishers, individuals, artists & photographers, and book dealers; in libraries and museums, colleges and universities, and art & craft schools. Many of us have our own binderies. Our equipment ranges from 19th century presses and cutters to Teflon spatulas and sheets of spun-bonded polyester, but in the end it all comes back to hand skills at the workbench. For more information about hand bookbinding look into The Guild of Bookworkers (http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byorg/gbw/) or the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild (http://www.cbbag.ca/home.html).