Jack Fitterer is one of four design bookbinders featured in an article by Michael Clerizo in the December 2015 issue of The Wall Street Journal Magazine. Click here to see the online version. The print edition appeared the weekend of December 5. You can see more of our design bindings at fittererbookbinding.com/our-services/bookbinding/design-fine-binding/ I’ve added a […]
Book repair, book restoration, book preservation, book conservation or do nothing at all. With a worn or damaged book in hand, the choices for treatment (or no treatment) may seem bewilderingly complex. Add to this the contradictory advice and opinions offered by different authorities, it may seem impossible to come up with a ‘best’ course […]
Jack’s work is included in Cynthia Dantzic’s new book 100 New York Calligraphers. It’s an honor to be included in this beautifully presented collection, surrounded by some of the top calligraphers, current and of the recent past. Though my interest in all the book arts goes back to childhood, my formal training began with a […]
Many are the methods that have been used to decorate paper for bookbinding and endpapers. Often they are truly marbled (see our recent post about reproducing marble paper here). But other techniques were used that did not involve the marbling process, but instead the colors were applied directly to the paper itself. Still, many of […]
Computer-aided hand bookbinding? Have we gone over to the dark side? No, we still follow the old ways for the most part, using traditional materials and techniques along with tools and equipment as old as the books we work on. (Many visitors are surprised that our operation isn’t more ‘mechanized’. “Really?”, they might say. “You […]
As bookbinders who do a lot of book restoration and period style bookbinding, we are from time to time asked to reproduce marble paper. Sometimes the client wishes us to bind a book following the original, now deteriorated-beyond-repair binding, or in this case, to replicate the existing binding of other books in a set. This […]
This is the second part of a dust jacket restoration (see part one here) where I am removing a torn, wrinkled heat set plastic covering the entire front and rear panels as well as most of the flaps. While the dust jacket looks like it has seen better days, fortunately, the actual damage, in addition […]
This custom clamshell box made for a copy of the Robert Frost biography (inscribed by Frost himself), A Swinger of Birches by Sidney Cox, carries the birch theme into the decorative elements on the front board and spine. The client and I early on in our discussions of the project decided upon a circular […]
This week, I have a dust jacket restoration that has some interesting problems. The Outsiders and Others by H.P. Lovecraft is a rare book and an even rarer dust jacket. Perhaps only 1,000 copies were produced and, of course, there are far fewer remaining today. Interestingly, we had another copy of this same book and […]
If you are wondering how to preserve and protect your vinyl collection, these custom slipcase boxes for 45 rpm records might be what you are looking for. The pair of boxes shown here left the shop last week to their new home. The inner section of the box is a shaped tray that securely holds […]
