Legacy Bookbindery

04/20/2025

Almost four years ago I was part of a collaborative project that resulted in a remarkable artifact: Binding Beowulf. Well, now I’ve had the honor to again work with the calligrapher and clien…

04/09/2025

This will eventually wind up with my other binding models at MU Special Collections.

Send a message to learn more

04/09/2025

Send a message to learn more

10/21/2024

No, really, I don't need a mobile phone app for my Legacy Conservation website.

1) I'm retired.

2) That's about the stupidest idea I've heard in a LONG while.

10/13/2024

OK, that's a very cool project.

John Barrett (Bodleian Imaging Studio and ARCHiOx Project) introduces the Bodleian’s growing collection of photogrammetric models Explore on: Holy Bible; Psalms, 1660-1661, London. Embroider…

08/18/2024

OK, that's completely bonkers.

I got a nice "hi, we're your hosts" email from the folks who have the first cottage we're staying in next month when we go to Wales. It included mention that they have a business on the property: a bindery. Doing fine binding, letterpress, and conservation work.

Yeah, I think we'll get along fine.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Dragon Press Bindery provides services in fine hand bookbinding, book and archives conservation-restoration, and letterpress printing. Clients....

08/17/2024

That's cool.

A rare artist’s book from East Germany

04/27/2024

It'll be cozy, but the weather shouldn't be an issue for doing some marbling with my niece and a couple of her friends tomorrow:

04/26/2024

Something interesting: traditional papyrus from Egypt for a small project. I need to do a practice binding with this, before I tackle a historical/artistic binding (of the Nag Hammadi design) for a client. No, I'm not returning to conservation work -- this is a custom binding, where I have more latitude to deal with possible errors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library

Sheets are ~ 11x16.

03/08/2024

That's an intriguing approach, and I wonder whether it would also help with fungus/mold mitigation for other materials held in rare book collections. Hmm.

Thanks, Cory!

Vapors from the delicious food have a surprising effect.

02/10/2024

I got a query from a High School student who was working on an essay. It was a good question, and I thought I'd share it and my answer.

Query: "do we need custodians of knowledge?"

Answer: I'm a writer with a modest following (how your dad knows me), and I certainly understand the instinct that people have that writing can extend knowledge, from personal experience to hard-won scholarship which synthesizes different threads of knowledge. I have tried to do that in my writing career.

But I was also a conservator of rare books and documents for 30 years, and in that time I was dedicated to preserving the physical documents which contain knowledge. Today we tend to think that anything we might want to know is readily available online, perhaps with a little searching.

But that isn't true. I have done conservation work on countless one-of-a-kind books/documents which will probably never be scanned, or written about, or shared with the broader world. Does that mean those items are unworthy of protection?

Hardly. It is impossible for us to know what will be important to people in the future. It might be a herbal that someone's grandmother wrote that winds up containing a description of a plant that can cure some illness not yet seen. Or a prisoner's account of life in a P.O.W. camp where the prisoners composed a symphony that is found and performed to great acclaim, changing the course of music history.

These things happen. I've seen it. But they can only happen if that knowledge has been protected.

In this way, "custodians" can be different from "gatekeepers". The former are the scholars and librarians and teachers and conservators who protect the sources of knowledge from whatever threat. The latter are those who manipulate knowledge to their own ends. There's a huge difference.