Binding a Book Like a Work of Art by Kitty Shields

Readers, you are in for a most fascinating Fearless Friday. So grab a cuppa, prop up your feet, and enjoy the post by guest Kitty Shields.

AFTERBEFOREHi, my name is Kitty, and I’m a book nerd. I have a book problem. I read them; I writethem; I… bind them. Not in a weird way. No, I’m a certified bookbinder. 

What is a bookbinder? Traditionally, abookbinder is the person who sews and covers a book. Nowadays, machines dothis, mostly with glue. Sometimes a machine will sew a book (depending oncosts, hardback vs. paperback, etc). Most contemporary books are bound withglue and the cheapest kind at that. 

What I do is sew books, cover them inleather, repair them. Basically, I do book makeovers. 

So, what the hell does this have to dowith #FearlessFriday? 

In 2008, the stock market took a dive.A lot of people lost their jobs, and I was one of them. I was a graphicdesigner for a trade business magazine, nothing fancy, but it paid the bills.The Great Recession, as it’scalled, forced me to move back home, where I spent a miserable year working inretail and trying to figure out my next move. 

I started researching grad schools andsort of stumbled on art conversation, specifically book conservation. See,conservationists are entrusted with the most important cultural objects.Paintings, books, jewelry, monuments — a conservationist’s job is to repair, maintain, preserve, and stabilize thesecultural treasures so that they can be passed on to the next generation.

You know the part in the movie NationalTreasure when they steal the Declaration of Independence from that specialroom? That’swhere the conservationists work. That’sthe kind of job I’mtalking about. A book conservationist gets to repair and handle the mostfascinating books in history: Gutenberg’s Bible, Shakespeare’s First Folio, a first edition Isaac Asimov, a clay tabletof cuneiform writing. Honestly, can this job sound any cooler? 

I may have stumbled upon this careerpath, but I wanted in bad. The prerequisite list for admittance into anart conservationprogram was long and arduous. And there wereonly two art conservation grad programs in the country. One of the requirementswas to have 150 hours of conservation experience already logged before applying. Um…where the hell was I supposed to do that? 

Enter: North Bennet Street School. 

North Bennet Street School is avocational school for old world trades. There you can learn violin-making, preservationcarpentry, furniture and cabinet making, piano technology, and, of course,bookbinding. This is a school where a special kind of hands-on nerd goes. Ifpeople go to Hogwarts to learn to change the world through magic, people go toNorth Bennet to learn to change the world through craft. As part of theircurriculum, students learn the basics of book conservation technique. As partof the curriculum, I could log 150 hours of experience. 

The catch? The bookbinding programonly takes eight students a year. It is a two-year, full-time program locatedin Boston. Two years of vocational school before even applying for grad school.Then another two years of grad school before I could play in the backs ofmuseums and libraries all day. And that was assuming I was accepted into bothprograms. 

The idea was ludicrous. Like a good,mature adult, I let it go. 

I found a fantastic job, got my ownplace, adopted a cat, traveled to foreign and wondrous lands. I rebuilt mylife, and it was pretty good. But I couldn’t help myself. On weekends, I went to bookbinding workshopsand rare book libraries. After a few years, I applied to North Bennet on alark, thinking they would never let me in. There was only eight spots! I was ahobbyist. Then I got a call to come visit. 

The school sits on the periphery ofthe North End in Boston. Two blocks down is the best Italian food outside ofItaly you’llever have. Across the street is a gorgeous public park, and you can smell thesalt water of the harbor from the front door. And the inside! 

The bookbinding department has over athousand brass hand tools just to decorate leather. There are book presses fromtwo centuries ago and more pretty paper than an art store. The teacher, Jeff,has a dry sense of humor and a mustache that curls at the ends. 

We launched into a conversation aboutthe program, books, tools. It felt like someone was finally speaking mylanguage. I had found my tribe. We talked for over two hours. At one point, hepulled out my portfolio, and we went over the examples I submitted one by one.Finally, the conversation wound down and he shrugged and said, 

“Well, we have one spot left. It’s yours if you want it.” 

If this were a movie, this would bethe moment where the music changed. I remember sitting back and remindingmyself that this was insane. I’dhave to quit my job, move to Boston, somehow afford to attend the school fulltime for two years. Who does that? Who leaves a perfectly good life when theywere just settling down to go to a foreign city with no friends, no family, toattend a school for bookbinding? 

I did. And I don’t regret it. 

I moved to Boston and graduated fromthe Bookbinding program. In those two years, I had many, many adventures. I gotto see Paul Revere’slibrary card, repair books owned by Franklin D.Roosevelt, touch a curl of the Statue of Liberty, visit the archives at theGuinness Factory in Dublin, hold a book bound in human skin, see Harvard’s conservation lab. I ate better than I have ever eaten inmy life. Boston is a foodie city for sure. I made lifelong friends anddiscovered that I did not, in fact, want to be a book conservationist. Bookconservation, it turns out, consists mostly of repairing itty, bitty, teeny,tiny rips in paper. Although they get to play in the backs of museums andlibraries and handle some of the most amazing objects ever, I found 150 hoursto be plenty of experience logged. I didn’t need anymore. It was the best midlife crisis ever. 

So what do I do now that I am acertified bookbinder? I take people’sfavorite books, graphic novels,
gaming manuals and transform them into works ofart. My Harry Potter set looks like it came out of the Hogwarts library. My RPGgaming manuals appear to have been stolen from the dungeon master. My graphicnovels match their super heroes. 

I can’t pretend I’m not lucky. Luckythey offered me this amazing opportunity, that I was able to go for it.Perhaps, most of all, I was lucky to discover that one path wasn’t for me. I’mincredibly lucky and grateful. All I can say is if you have a ludicrous notionthat equal parts terrifies you and sings to your soul—be fearless. Like me, youmay come out realizing that some paths aren’t your path, but the stories you’llcollect along the way will be worth it. 

You can find all of Kitty's books here: Kitty's Amazon Page

Author Bio: 

Kitty Shields(she/her) lives outside Philadelphia, where she writes to overcome the factthat she was born a middle child with hobbit feet, vampire skin, and a tendencyto daydream. In her spare time, she binds books, takes bad photos, and tries toavoid the death traps her cat sets for her. You can check out her writing at www.kittyshieldsauthor.com. Her new book The Second Pillar iscoming out May 2023!

Want to see morebookbinding? Visit her on Instagram @theshadowbindery or Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/theshadowbindery.

 

THE SECOND PILLAR AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER RELEASES MAY 2023 Kate McGovern has survived her first job long enough to get fired from it. But she has not come out empty-handed. Now a Pillar of Heaven, Kate bears the weight of a quarter of the sky. And she is looking forward to her next chapter, whatever that is. But the world is still in danger.

When another Pillar of Heaven is killed in a natural disaster, Kate must travel to Indonesia to locate the body and pass the Pillar on before the sky teeters and falls. Soon enough, Kate and her team realize the natural disaster was, in fact, supernatural. As powerful enemies strive to destroy the world, Kate, with the help of some new friends, fights to restore the balance. Oh, and she needs to find a new job too.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NGWLYD6?