Sentiment and Nostalgia
The world of bookbinding illustrates how people remain attached to old ways and items.
A line of colour-coded paperback books covered the far wall. From black to white, from blue to red, they appeared to be the only thing organised in the small space. Tall and dressed in a simple black shirt and jeans, Phil Ridgway, invited me to look around his bookbinding studio. I walked slowly towards that far wall. To my right, in the middle of the room, sat a tall bench, the only spot with books, papers and other materials in an organised state. Shelves to my left held hundreds of metal letters; next to it a hot foil press. Despite the hundreds of books, the space did not have that iconic book-smell, but rather something faintly similar to a woodworking room. When I reached the far wall, I lowered my gaze to the many hardback books lining the shelves. It took me an embarrassing moment to realise that these must be the work of Phil and his students.
“Do you mind if I work as we talk?” Phil asked me.
“That’s fine,” I replied.
As Phil began to pull out rolls of paper and a glue whose smell reminded me of primary school art class, I asked, “How did you get into bookbinding?”
His passion for bookbinding happened somewhat accidently. Going on an overseas trip, Phil and his friends stayed with their friend’s aunt in Lyon, France. The aunt had a cabinet full of books she had bound and Phil said that the sight of them “set off something” in his head. He had always painted and drawn, and so he admired the amount of skill that was needed for bookbinding. After attending exhibitions and reading manuals about bookbinding, Phil began taking classes in England for one year, then moved on to France to study there for another year. Moving to Melbourne, he didn’t expect to make a profession out of binding until a friend pointed out a binding job advertised in a newspaper. Over nine years Phil worked at two bookbinders before setting up his own studio. Working mostly with older tools, Phil has studied the art of binding from several cultures and gives lessons to the many people who are interested in the craft.
Phil paused his work to pull out his books to show me. One small hardback was placed on the bench in front of me. Its cover was a basic brown leather but with imprints forming a pattern on the cover. Semi-circular leather tags protruded from each end of the spine. With thread visible at these parts, the book resembled something you might have found centuries ago.
It’s beautiful how so many people hold on to old ways. Even though there are some bookbinders with new technology who can produce books faster and cleaner, there are still people like Phil who trust old technology and have the patience and passion to work with it. It’s similar to sentimental possessions. Yes, it is nice to get something new, but new things don’t share the value of something that has been passed on and handled so much. Compared to the past, modern books appear more colourful, with both simple and bold drawings, and are usually bound in paperback. Even when you buy reprinted classics, there isn’t a lot of effort to keep that old-fashioned style. Today people will be attracted to bold colours and drawings rather than what they may see as a boring leather-bound book. Even modern hardbacks work hard to reel in some modern design, like Penguin’s line of ‘clothbound classics’ where Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’s cover is covered with bright pink flamingos.
When binding was a very early craft, design was hardly a thought at all. Starting with clay cuneiform tablets and then moving on to parchment, it took the Western world some time before paper was introduced, and to move away from scrolls. The earliest paper book is recorded as coming from the 1200s. At that time all books were handwritten and sewn together. They were expensive because of the expertise and time needed to make them. When Gutenberg created the printing press, books became more available and binding had to progress to keep up with the many pages now taking a lot less time to produce. The many books we buy now are paperbacks, glued together. Simple and efficient, but still people are going backwards, towards the art of handmade books.
It’s beautiful how so many people hold on to old ways
Phil told me that when he does get an old classic to rebind, customers tend to stay away from restoration or copy of the original and will request a new one to their liking. A woman once visited with her favourite childhood novel that was very worn. She explained that she would like it fixed with a new cover to give to her sibling’s newborn. She wanted this new cover to be fun, using several colours to give the book new life. Not knowing whether the baby would be a girl or a boy, Phil and the to-be-aunt worked closely on the cover, striping it with reds, yellows and purples.
Of course, for a lot of children, books are the perfect object to use as their sketch board or easel. Go to any household with screaming toddlers and find one of their picture books. There is no doubt that you will find it covered with Texta scribbles. When Phil faces customers with books to rebind which have children’s drawings inside he views them as a part of the book’s history. His clients will ask if it’s possible for the marks to be removed, he will answer with another question, ‘Is it necessary for it to be removed?’ Each mark or stain is a piece of history for that book. A coffee stain from those cold days when you settled with your favourite book and a blanket, or those drawings you did when you were younger when you didn’t even understand the words you would fall in love with. Phil pointed out that while these things decrease the money value of a book ‘if you lost that book in a fire you would be devastated’.
Even those birthday notes and dates written in books could one day be a lot more valuable than you realise. The most common book brought to Phil to fix is the bible. One very large bible he received had the names and birthdates of every person it was passed down to written in the front cover starting from the 1800s. One particular note explained how one owner of the bible had been born on a ship. To continue the tradition of passing the book on, this family sent the book around to each cousin, aunt and son around Australia so that everyone could join in on this piece of family history.
One very large bible he received had the names and birthdates of every person it was passed down to written in the front cover starting from the 1800s.
Of course, not every family will have such a book in their possession but they will have that simple ‘happy birthday’ written somewhere. Phil placed on the bench a children’s book full of poetry and short stories which had been closed for so long that the ink on both the endpapers and the written message had cast a white imprint against its opposite yellowed page. As Phil had to remove the original endpapers to rebind the book, this imprint allowed none of the history of this book to be destroyed.
Even with the history and love someone has for a book, sometimes people just won’t spend the money to get it fixed. It all depends on how much worth a book has to someone. Someone who only cares for the story will forget about restoring the book and just head over to the store to buy a new copy. There are plenty of good feelings mixed in when you buy a new book – the smell, the feel, how the book is in such a perfect condition. What happens to this book depends on the reader. There are readers who will work hard not to crease the spine or bend any pages, while on the other end of the scale are the readers who fold pages, are too captivated in the book to notice they are forming a crease in the spine and will literally read the book until it falls apart. This may cause the reader to buy a new copy, but a new copy feels almost like a replacement. You lose a toy, Mum buys you a new one, exactly the same as the one you lost, but it’s not that same. There’s something weird and different about that new toy. It could be exactly the same with a book. Replacing something you love is an act that just feels wrong.
Rebinding something, and even learning to do it yourself, makes that book you read to pieces extra special. You designed its cover yourself, you picked out the colours and what words would appear on the spine. While the outside is lost, all the content of the inside—the story, the stains, the rips and tears—is still there.
