Bookbinding Overview

By Craig Bevish

Bookbinding is a hobby, a skill, and a trade that fascinates thousands of people every single year. This is one of those rare things were the hand and art skills can combine with knowledge, history, and scholarship. While this might come across as kind of a scholarly, high brow hobby, bookbinding is a skill that takes a lot of patience and ability to work with one's hands.

Many people start out with bookbinding because they want to self-publish a book, a collection of manuscripts, or a manifesto of some kind. In this case many will use plastic binding, or spiral bookbinding in order to put something together. But some bookbinders will go the extra mile and deal with hardcover bookbinding and stitching in order to ger that just right look.

Other easier ways are to just get the bookbinding supplies you need to create a newly bound book from scratch. This can go from the relatively common and easy spiral bound reports to even creating your own self-published hardcover books. There are many different types of bookbinding, and we are going to go over some of those in this article.

The history of bookbinding starts all the way back in Egypt. Coptic bookbinding was practiced by the early Coptic Christians in Egypt as far back as before AD 200. The original method isn't used often, but a modern form of this is still called Coptic bookbinding today and involves the sewing together of groups of pages into one large book.

Long stitch bookbinding came next, and is a method that is still used today. It's important to note that "long stitch" methods of bookbinding don't refer to just one practice, but can include a wide variety of methods, all of which have the one common element of stitching that goes through a slotted cover, reducing the need for any glue.

Spiral bookbinding, also known as plastic coil bookbinding, is definitely one of the most common methods of bookbinding today. This method of bookbinding is most often employed to put together large office reports or local homemade cookbooks or other similar books.

This article has demonstrated just a few of the types of bookbinding that people practice. Do a little research to find the method that is most appealing to you and you may find a new hobby where you can truly see the results of your labor as they began to fill an empty book shelf. - 31989

About the Author:

Sign Up for our Free Newsletter

Enter email address here