Book Arts
Alphabetical list of book arts projects
Bookmaking, bookbinding, book creation, book restoration.
I began by restoring broken, old books—a hobby of mine, evolved from a love of books. Unfortunately, I don’t have photos of those early restorations, but they were good enough to please their owners.
I worked for two years at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Collection, a research library in Harlem, whose rare book collection was wonderful. I wish that I had my current skills then so I could have helped restore some of those old bindings.
A few years later, I got my first paying job. The book was a hardbound edition of Mark’s Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers, a thick volume with a broken spine and loose pages. My job was to restore the book to usability, not just fix a pretty book to go back on the shelf. I succeeded, of course, and went on to restore others.
In the course of my calligraphy studies, I discovered bookmaking. This was an exciting craft for me and I took to it at once. I created several books and now show them as examples on these pages.
The day of the e-book is upon us, but you can’t pass those down from generation to generation. If you are interested in a unique book for yourself, a family album, or restoration of a treasured book, consider my skills and artistic touch to help achieve your vision of a real—or revitalized—book.