Everything you wanted to know about the process of professional antique binding:

The process of binding an ancient book is complex and delicate, but when we want to return the book to its original state – it is a real work of art! A book printed in Venice cannot be bound the same way as a book that made its way from Baghdad or Warsaw. Also, the cover of a 500-year-old book is not comparable to a book that was printed only 150 years ago.

The first stage in bookbinding is the planning and constructing the sketch, adapting it to the age and origin of the book.

Years ago, as in any profession, the bookbinder made every effort to do his job efficiently and without cutting corners: the cover was dressed on the book like a tailored suit, with perfect precision. This way, the cover protected the book for hundreds of years.

In most places the cover and the sewing of the leaves were combined, so that the cover practically never parted from the book, and the book’s sewing threads integrated into the wood from which the cover was made. Even in later years, when they started to cover the book with cardboard, the sewing threads were sewn into the cardboard. Also, they would produce a kind of mushroom-shaped shoulders, on the edges of the book, so that the cover kept and held the book even when the book stood in the shelf.