The Book Makers
Something that I used to post about more often was this idea of book-as-object.
* It was sometimes in a playful way: Are fake books ok décor? What about spines-in shelving? (FYI, I’ve cooled my jets on rainbowtizing shelves.)
* Sometimes in a “wow, humanity” way: Whose eyes were skimming this exact library book before mine? And what were they thinking?
* And sometimes in an archival way: I love the idea of antiquarian/rare books (watch the documentary The Booksellers!), but I am mostly happy just to own a bunch of beat-up paperbacks. Either way, the paper, font, cover art, and blurbs all point to a moment in time when a specific edition was printed. Add in readers’ penned-in notes and underlines and you have a perfect artifact.
I stumbled upon this short documentary called The Book Makers this weekend when the other occupant of our home was watching either football or random YouTube cooking channels. (Btw, I watched The Book Makers for free via the streaming service Kanopy, which is one of the many non-book benefits of having a library card.)
Interview subjects ranged from the young people behind a small private printing press that uses old methods and equipment for which no manuals exist, to book artists, to book collectors, ie “bibliomaniacs” according to one of them. The documentary even approached digital books head-on by interviewing people at Internet Archive. As one person affiliated with the project explained, “Access drives preservation.” 💯
When it comes to any meaningful tool or idea, I think reasonable people are hard-pressed to claim “my way or the highway” — things with permanence dance between two poles instead of espousing one extreme or the other. (Yesssss, I do have a Kindle.) But this lovely little film was a fascinating counterpoint to what sometimes seems like a digital-heavy narrative in our culture.
As book designer and illustrator Lu Jingren says at the end, “No matter what medium is used, the purpose of books is to communicate. So if we have good communication, there is power, there is energy.”
originally published on instagram