Bookbinding/Introduction

Intro - Why? - Perfect - Japanese side stitch - Saddle stitch - Long stitch - Equipment - Materials

If books had been invented after the computer, they would have been considered a big breakthrough. Books have several hundred simultaneous paper-thin, flexible displays. They boot instantly. They run on very low power at a very low cost. -- Prof. Joseph M. Jacobson, MIT Media Lab

Books tend to be bound in factories these days, but the craft of binding books by hand has been practiced without interruption since the second century AD. There are many good reasons to learn these techniques, from preserving information to creating works of art in bound form. Whether the content is centuries old or yet to be created, whether the pages were mass-produced or written longhand, and whether the printing was done with a laser printer, movable type, or not at all, books have the same benefits: they turn a collection of loose, vulnerable pages into a compact, accessible package that's well-protected and easy to store.