the News & Observer – www.NewsObserver.com
BY DIANE DANIEL – Correspondent
Published in: Home/Garden
Artisan at a glance
Who: Michael Greer, Leatherbound Book Works
Ware: Handmade bookbinding, single to small-run book production, book restoration and book boxes
Contact: 448-7847 orwww.leatherboundbindery.com
Price: Bookbinding starts at $200, book restoration starts at $100, transforming electronic documents to leather-bound book starts at $375, book boxes $130
Where to buy: From Greer directly
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jrottetNewly bound books sit on a shelf in Michael Greer’s workshop. He makes covers in both leather and cloth.
jrottetBookbinder Michael Greer puts a leather cover on a client’s book. He learned his craft in Morocco.
jrottetGreer
Understandably, Michael Greer didn’t pack many books when he headed overseas to teach English in 1998. But among the few he kept by his side, first in Kazakhstan, then Nepal, and, finally, Morocco, was the dictionary he’d had as a child.
So when a colleague at the American School in Casablanca who had an impressive collection of leather-covered books told Greer they’d been bound in Rabat, an hour away, Greer decided to take his cherished reference book in for a spruce-up and a leather cover.
“I’d never seen that done to a book before, and I really loved the feel of the leather,” said Greer, 42, now a bookbinder and restorer himself in Durham.
Greer was so mesmerized he asked permission to watch the bookbinder at work, taking his wife, Fouzia El Gargouri, along to translate from Arabic to English.
“He took us through the process, from a book torn apart to a more or less finished book,” Greer said of the bookbinder. “Books don’t look very nice when they’re in the construction phase, but when he was done, it was just magical. When we left, I said to Fouzia, ‘I really want to learn how to do that.’ ”
And he did, first through a nine-month apprenticeship at the Rabat shop and then teaching himself the rest.
After Greer and El Gargouri, who works at Duke University Libraries, moved to Durham in 2008, Greer slowly set up shop in his basement while also teaching English at Hillside High School. That job ended in 2009 with the state budget cuts, so he turned to bookbinding and restoration full time.
While still in Morocco, Greer had started an online service of turning electronic documents into books by designing, binding and covering them, and he continued that. Those might include blogs, corporate reports, and family histories.
“I just finished a book project with an NGO, with reports of some of its accomplishments. And family histories are pretty popular. I design all those from the ground up.”
Back to beauty
Restoration work accounts for about two-thirds of Greer’s time, from fairly simple rebindings to complete overhauls.
Recent projects have included restoring a 1784 first edition of “Cook’s Last Voyage” and a military history of Ohio published in 1885.
“Right now, I’ve got some very, very large 100-year-old Oxford dictionaries,” he said. “The leather on the spine has really deteriorated and the front boards have fallen off. I’m putting those back together. I’m also rebinding a 20-volume set, ‘The Writings of Thomas Jefferson,’ published in 1903.”
A collector’s take
The owner of that, Raleigh resident Paul Criscuolo, praised Greer’s work after he’d picked up the first five rebound volumes last month.
“They look fantastic,” Criscuolo said.
“It’s interesting to see the transformation. I’m a book collector and purchased them on eBay. About 10 of the 20 needed major work, and those are getting new endpapers and board fronts, and we decided on half cloth and half leather covers. Michael recommended trimming some of the pages – the edges were very, very rough back then – to make them more presentable and readable.”
This was Criscuolo’s first time working with a bookbinder, and he’s hooked.
“If you find the right books and the right bookbinder, you can create something at a reasonable cost that has some practical commercial value. Mostly, though, I like holding the books and reading them.”
Criscuolo is an exception,in that most of Greer’s customers come from other parts of the country.
“It’s more fun to do work face to face, but a lot of people find me online,” he said.
Tools he uses
Most of Greer’s tools are small, handheld ones, but his “pride and joy” is a century-old backing press. “It’s a big press used to shape the spine.”
Greer also enjoys making maps and etchings to illustrate books.
The longtime bibliophile sees the proliferation of electronic readers and e-books more as opportunity than hindrance.
“As everything goes digital, it creates a market for the books that aren’t – and people want those books to be really nice. Plus, as more people self-publish, bookbinders can step in to make really high-quality, short-run editions of books.”
Locally, Greer said, there’s been a boost in the book-art scene with the formation of Triangle Book Arts, a group of bookbinders, artists and admirers. Several members, including Greer, showed work last month in a book art exhibit at Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill.
Made to be handled
However precious books are to Greer, they’re made to be used, he said.
“The reason the medieval books lasted so long was because they were used for years and years and handled regularly. The spines need to be exercised or they get stiff. Oil from hands replenishes the leather. People should be comfortable handling my books. That’s what they’re for.”
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