The Art of Book Making

Preserving timeless craft for a changing world

Jul 16, 2024

"As a man travels on, however, in the journey of life, his objects of wonder daily diminish, and he is continually finding out some very simple cause for some great matter of marvel."

-Washington Irving, The Art of Book Making1

The culmination of my five years of college was a bound, black volume placed on the shelf of the Architectural Engineering graduate student offices.

"The Effect of Sample Dimensions on the Corresponding Compressive Strength Between Concrete Cores and Standard-Cured Molded Cylinders by Christopher Scott Beaty"

I thought it was funny to make an unnecessarily long title, so I used as many adjectives as possible to describe my graduate project. I could have called it, “Impact of Size on Concrete Samples," but I challenged myself and stretched the name of my thesis to a full 18 words.

The dreaded graduate project was a rite of passage for Master of Architectural Engineering students. Tales of all-nighters in the grad offices and people dropping out of the program as a result of plagiarism accusations were rampant during our undergraduate years. When you finally received the approved version after a careful review from your advisor, it felt as monumental as those old Marine Corps commercials where a white dude in a sweaty t-shirt climbs through a steampunk obstacle course, pulls out a sword, fights a Balrog derivative lava monster, and then magically gets transformed into a fancy military man in a dress uniform. Somehow, he learned how to do a cool sword twirl thing too.

This project was my lava monster. The bound, black book was my dress uniform.

"I'm currently printing off the final copy of my graduate project to be bound and placed in the AE project library. Pretty incredible."

-Facebook post, April 22^nd, 2013

●●●

A full 134 pages of work were printed twice on the $80 printer I got as a high school graduation present. One copy for me, one copy for the university. I also asked my mom if she wanted one.

"I can just read yours, right?"

She never read it.

I was proud looking at the black spine on my bookshelf and seeing my last name stamped on it. Even more proud knowing that a second version was housed back at my alma mater. I thought of the time I went on a college visit with my Youth Pastor Matt. We went to his seminary in Chicago, he hadn’t been back since his graduation. During the campus tour, we took a detour in the library. It wasn't clear where he was headed, but there seemed to be a specific destination in mind. He walked straight to a shelf with rows of identical spines and ran his finger across them until he paused on W.

Whitman.

Matt pulled out his thesis, read the dedication to his wife and daughter, and stood in silence for a moment. There was his work, forever housed in the library where he had spent so much time becoming the man he was today.

I couldn't wait for the day where I could run my finger across a row of identical black spines until it landed on B.

Beaty.

●●●

"Dear MAE graduates,

We have digitized all previous MAE projects as we continue to move more digital, and we are giving our graduates the opportunity to collect the university's copy of their bound MAE project books. If you had a university copy printed and are interested in obtaining it, please complete the following request form…”

Well fuck.

●●●

A friend and I were grabbing lunch and it was his turn to pick. We had an agreement that we would try out places that we couldn't eat with our wives, so it was always hard to guess what kind of suggestions would get thrown out. Today's selection: Louie M's Burgerlust on Vinton Street. I had never heard of the place. I had never heard of Vinton Street.

It was an old neighborhood on the outskirts of downtown— Omaha's limited high-rise buildings visible in the distance if you look at the correct angle. Most neighborhoods of this age carry with them a reputation among locals. South Omaha used to house the City's immigrant population, drawn to the abundant manual labor of the Stockyards and Omaha's meat packing industry. Dundee was old money, where the first wealthy businessmen built their literal castles. Little Italy was, well you shouldn't need help with that one. But I had never once heard someone reference Vinton Street, despite it being of the same vintage of these other classic neighborhoods that hipsters stamp on t-shirts and name their soap companies after.

I was about a half-hour early. I went for a walk. I had no idea what I was in for.

I passed by an upholstery shop and saw piles of wooden inserts and fabric rolls. I've never gotten anything upholstered, or know of anyone that has ever gotten anything upholstered, or even fully understand what upholstery is, but the amount of material crammed into the small floor space seemed to suggest that the demand was somewhere. Nice work upholsterers.

There was a Latino butcher, which I could smell before I could see.

A tattoo shop/art gallery/jam band practice space was located next to another local art studio, which was located next to another local art gallery.

There was a lack of retail where I could kill my time browsing, but I struck gold with the appropriately named "Plants and Magic (drips)." I don’t know what the (drips) were but I could see plenty of plants and an abundance of magic. Adjacent to the wall of bongs, hanging plants and terrariums covered the interior with a density of foliage comparable to the Lied Jungle at the Henry Doorly Zoo. The man behind the counter greeted me with a real chill, "hey, welcome," and I set off on my journey. There were three separate rooms to explore, each containing plants and definitely containing magic. I found bowls of zebra pill bugs available for purchase and old suitcases filled with flea market books and music. An electronic synth soundtrack pulsed throughout the store, and I located the source when I almost tripped over an iPad plugged into a set of speakers. On the tablet’s screen, the same man who greeted me could be seen in his living room composing the sick beats on his personal turntables.

I bought a sticker, and the owner of the shop invited me to come back for their rare cactus festival or the Buddhist monk leading a series of teachings in the store next month.

I was non-committal but thanked him for the unbelievable experience.

●●●

I had killed quite a bit of time, but not enough. I made an about-face and stumbled upon my favorite discovery of Vinton Street.

Capitol Bindery

Book Binding

Foil Stamping

The door was propped open despite the interior seeming in disarray. I let myself in.

There was no discernible organization. Piles and piles of old books were stacked where there was room between cardboard boxes, used Styrofoam cups, and over-filled ashtrays. I tried to decode the workflow, but no one had applied Lean Six Sigma principles to optimize the shop's efficiency.

There seemed to be no one working, until a gray head with a scruffy chin popped over a partition. A set of tobacco-stained teeth greeted me with a smile.

And that's when I met Kevin Brown. Book Binder.

●●●

I got a sense that Kevin didn't get a lot of walk-ins and it was up to me to drive the conversation. There was no sales pitch. No, “let me know if I can help with anything." Just a quizzical look as to how I had ended up in the front of his shop.

But I wasn't unwelcome either. Kevin clearly had plenty he could be working on but was in no real hurry to get to it. He moved at his own pace, and some curious onlooker seemed to be a welcome diversion. I felt I should explain myself; one doesn't simply come into a book binder to browse.

“I’m having lunch with a buddy but had some time to kill. I've lived in Omaha for about 15 years but have never been in this neighborhood. There's a lot of really cool stuff around here."

"Yeah, it used to be an old Indian trail used by the Omaha Indians. It's higher up than the area around it, so they could look out for miles and see if anything was coming.”

"No way, really?"

"That's what I was told anyways."

"Well, that would make sense."

"After that it was turned into a cattle trail for the Stockyards. They would unload the cattle and lead them through where the main street is. That's why it's not just a straight path."

“Oh wow, I didn't realize we were so close to that part of town. How long has your shop been here?"

"Since 1985."

"I bet things have changed a lot since then."

Kevin started listing changes, and though there was a nostalgia in his voice, there was no disdain. He rattled off the different ethnicities that have predominantly made up his business neighbors and told me how good a few of the Latino restaurants were. I asked him for a recommendation at the burger joint where I was headed. He said I couldn't go wrong with whatever I picked. Ultimately, he was right.

Despite the modesty of his shop, it was clear that there was more than enough work to keep a one-man operation occupied.

"We're the last true book binder in Omaha."

"Do you do it all yourself?”

''Yup, everything is hand sewn by me right here in the shop."

"What kind of books? I had a grad project that ended up getting bound when I was in college. Is it a lot of books like that?”

“Oh, some of that. I used to do a lot of those kind of books back in the day, but I don't do as much anymore. I think they started using someone cheaper. Most those places now use glue..."

Kevin's voice trailed off. A look of disgust at the mention of the word 'glue' was painted across his face.

“I graduated from UNO back in 2013, would you have bound my report?"

“Oh no, I would have stopped before then. Now it's a lot of older work. Re-binding things that fell apart. That sort of thing."

I looked around and could see several tattered hymnals and Bibles piled up in the entryway. Their covers in shreds but the contents inside intact.

"You can usually tell who did the binding by looking at the inside cover. A lot of places like to put a sticker with their name on it in there."

"I'll have to check mine when I get home."

At some point the inevitable topic of COVID's impact on small business came up. Kevin hardly noticed there was a global pandemic.

"I had enough books in here to keep me busy. I always had something to do."

I explained to Kevin that I recently started writing and had paper bound a bunch of copies of my work to give to friends and family as a present. I told him I should think about getting one hard bound from him. He kind of shrugged. He told me that I should look into the website blurb.com to get something bound way cheaper than he would do it.

“I’m going to put some thought into it and might be back.”

"Ok."

●●●

Outside on Kevin's entryway— right above a sign that read, "The County Attorney Prosecutes Bad Check Writers," — was a yellowed front page of the Omaha World-Herald newspaper announcing the new Mutual of Omaha headquarters being built downtown.

"PLANS WILL TRANSFORM SKYLINE AND STREETS

Underneath Kevin had taped a scrap of paper that read, “WITH PHALLIC SYMBOL."

●●●

Eric and I grabbed lunch. The burgers were fucking awesome. Turns out Louie M's Burgerlust used to be a silent movie theater. Louie, we were told, was the guy on the front patio smoking a cigar.

Before we left the neighborhood, we swung by a Mexican rodeo store and checked the price of saddles and leather belts.

●●●

I told Eric all about Kevin's shop over lunch, and continued thinking about it when I got home. I had a large stack of typewritten pages in my home office. The original drafts of each of my essays. I loved the physical representation of my creative work. The pure form of expression made on these initial typewritten manuscripts, filled with their grammatical errors and misspelled words. I had wanted to publish a version of these drafts. There was a beauty of the story in raw form. A more forgiving tone when the expression lacked all polish. The message matched the medium.

But they still took up a bunch of room. Stacks of paper aren't inherently beautiful either.

So, I took them all to Kevin. I brought along a bound copy of my graduate project— I now had two I could pick from— and made the 21-minute car ride back to Vinton Street.

●●●

"The artist's goal is not merely to produce, but to make the finest work they are capable of. The business thinks in terms of quarterly earnings and production schedules. The artist thinks in terms of timeless excellence."

-Rick Rubin, The Creative Act2

Kevin recognized me when I walked through the propped doors. I realized I never introduced myself during the past discussion, so we now entered that realm of awkwardness where we pretend to be familiar with one another but had never actually formalized the starting point of an ongoing relationship. I decided I would casually use the name off his business card at some point, which created way more internal stress than it should have.

"I found something I'd like for you to bind."

"Oh, ok."

Kevin grabbed a notepad and weaved out from behind the partition. I handed him my stack of papers. He fanned through the pages, an internal calculus clearly going on in his mind.

“Well, your margins are pretty thin, we'll cut off some text in some parts."

I knew this was inevitable. I asked him how bad the damage would be.

"I need 3/8 of an inch."

His thumb instinctively slid to this exact measurement on the side of my pages. Years of muscle memory guiding my eye to the specific point where the text would get cut off.

"A few pages will be close and pretty hard to read."

"Well, that's fine with me if you still think you could bind it."

"Oh, it's not my book. I can bind anything."

I told Kevin we were moving forward. On his notepad he sketched out the placement of the text for the cover and the spine. I handed him my grad project so he could match the style with my previous volume.

"Anything else on the cover?"

“Can I use one of those?"

I pointed to a metal plate that Kevin had propped up on the side of the wall with a mirrored image of an outdated logo.

“A plate? Well, I have a thousand of them but they're all for old businesses."

"Can I make one?

"Well yeah, I don't do that, but I can tell you the person I use. I haven't had a plate made forever.”

Well then that's exactly what I wanted to do.

Kevin took out his cell phone to look for the contact info of the engraver. He worked his phone like someone that had to relearn how to write a text message each time he wanted to send one. He held it in one hand with his fingers and thumb curled over the sides, and aggressively punched in input with the index finger of his other hand.

"UGGGHHH, I can't find it in here. But I know I have it somewhere in the back."

I followed him down to the bowels of his workshop, noticing a piece of heavy machinery as Kevin searched for his rolodex.

"Is this a sewing machine?

The torso high mechanism looked like something out of the industrial revolution. Two massive steel plates were attached to a bobbin of thread. An oil can was propped on the side, next to another ashtray.

"Oh yeah, it's a pretty cool device. My grandpa called it the Cadillac because in 1963 when he bought it, it cost as much as a new Cadillac. Probably still does."

"That's incredible. Do they still make those?”

"Oh, I don't know, but it's harder and harder to find people to fix them and spare parts."

I desperately wanted to ask Kevin to show me how it worked, but he was still searching for the name of the engraver. He was back on his phone.

"I’ll just send you a picture of this."

He had found the information written on a note that he had filed away. Die to be deep etch, mounted on metal, with excess routed out.

I now had a photo of the contact information for Pella Engraving saved in my messages. Kevin and I walked back to the front of the store and he finished up writing "PLATE?" on my order form.

“Alright, I won't get to it until next month."

There was no computer ordering system. No email confirmations with an estimated completion date. He simply stuck the paper form in the front cover of my grad project and put it at the end of the line of his stacks of books.

●●●

On the way out I stopped by a Supermercado and watched their massive tortilla-making machine in awe.

●●●

A few years back my niece Zoe brought her boyfriend to our annual family Christmas Eve party. My brother told me that her boyfriend was nervous, particularly about meeting Jason the graphic designer. Tyler and Zoe had met in art school, and he wanted to get a job like what Jason did. My approval of my niece and nephew's significant others is irrelevant, but I really liked Tyler.

Tyler was respectful but not weird about it. I enjoyed drinking beer with him in my basement and he fully participated in the night's events as much as a boyfriend could. I could tell he wanted to make a good impression, and I also really wanted someone to make me a logo for my home bar.

I smelled an opportunity.

I asked Tyler if he would design a logo. In exchange I would give him absolutely nothing. He enthusiastically agreed. I sent him a bunch of photos of different icons in my home bar along with the text: "The Buttery Est. 2018."

Within a few weeks he mocked up four different options with visuals on t-shirts and barware. I was really impressed. I asked for some input from the collection of graphic designer friends I had somehow assembled over the years, and landed on a jackalope with a beer barrel tied to its back like a St. Bernard mountain rescue dog.

I printed the new logo on coasters, mugs, and posters. My wife used it to make additional glassware and a koozie for a Buttery starter set. I ordered a leatherwork stamp and my wife gave me something that could melt the jackalope onto ice cubes. Finding new uses for my logo became a game, and despite Tyler and Zoe breaking up, I loved to share each new idea with Tyler.

I knew exactly what I wanted to stamp on the cover of my book.

●●●

I sent Tyler’s file to Pella Engraving and asked them to cut a die to Kevin's specifications. I checked their website ahead of time to make sure I was reaching out to the right place. They advertised custom wrestling championship belts.3 That's got to be it.

It took a few back-and-forth emails, but within the week I had a package on my doorstep. Inside, my jackalope in reverse greeted me. Deep etch, mounted on metal, with excess routed out.

I ran the die over to Kevin immediately. When I handed it to him, he smiled.

"That's a hell of a deal."

"Will that work?

"Oh yeah. That'll work."

●●●

I stopped by a Mexican bakery and brought home an assortment of baked goods for my kids. My Spanish was a little rusty but effective.

●●●

About a month went by without any updates. We went on a trip to Minnesota. And then went on a trip to Peru. And then went on a trip to Minnesota again. Toward the end of the month, I had a voicemail.

"Hey Chris, it's Kevin Brown at Capitol Bindery. Your book is ready. You can come pick it up whenever you'd like."

True to his word, it had been about a month-and-a-half since I dropped the papers off and the pile had made it to the front of Kevin's stack. I got in the car on the first chance parenting three children would allow, check book in hand. I had no idea how much this would cost—Kevin always spoke in terms of "oh, about $50 depending on the number of pages"—but something told me he wouldn't accept Venmo.

He recognized me as I walked through the propped open door and went to grab my new treasure. I admired it with awe.

I held it side-by-side to my grad project that I had loaned Kevin. It was obvious whose craftsmanship was superior. Whereas my treatise on concrete samples was held together with that dreaded four letter word glue, Kevin's was so tightly sewn that I could lift up one of my children by having them clutch a couple of pages. This was going to last forever.

"I decided not to shave the edges of the pages since you had text up to the ends of a lot of them."

I looked at the pulp in the middle and could see what he meant. They were roughly lined, who knew a bookmaker shaved the edges of the pages?

"I'm glad you didn't. I love it."

I turned the book around and there on the front cover, silhouetted in gold, a jackalope carrying a wine barrel was bringing me joy.

“Wow, that turned out great."

"Yeah."

I asked him how much I owed him and his preferred method of payment.

“Do you want a check?"

"Yeah, a check would be great."

He grabbed a paper pad of receipts and made one out, tearing off the yellow duplicate and handing it to me. I stuck it in the front cover of my new book, noticing that he hadn't put a sticker for the name of his shop inside. The work spoke for itself.

"I decided not to have them take those plastics. They just charge too much for a small business like mine."

I had no idea what Kevin was talking about. Clearly, he thought the two of us had had a conversation about plastic recycling or something on an earlier visit. I guess we were officially friendly to one another— following up on previous conversations even though they didn't really happen.

''Yeah, that makes sense."

I wasn't sure if it made sense.

"I'm very pleased with this, I'm still writing so I should have another one for you to work on at the end of this year."

Kevin wasn’t going anywhere.

"See you for Volume 2!"