I listened to a recent podcast that really affected me. It said something to the tune of, “part of being human is making something that lasts, something that people can feel and preserve for generations..” - the person that spoke this was no major scientist or artist. She was a bookbinder and in her mind, binding a book helps in preserving mankind’s memories. It brought me back to the memories of days in Chennai when we would go to get a “hand me down” book bound. We may have bought this book from the street-side footpath bookstore in Luz Corner or from a senior that got it from another senior and so on.

The room of this press would be filled almost entirely by the equipment, in this case the binding machine. The press worker would work diligently to ensure that the leather, the thread and other ingredients of the binding process were in place. The odor of the sheets, thread, the lubricant oil for the machine would all take you to a different time. The process itself takes focus, precision and “single-threaded” execution from start to finish. Depending on the quality of service and how much you pay, binding can be entirely mass production with no customization to a complete work of art.

None of those books I have bound have been preserved, mostly because those were time-boxed into an academic year and most of the books these days are electronic. With all this talk of AI, one may not even ever read a book cover to cover, leave alone bind it. Binding, the process, would have been so therapeutic and meditative.. like animals, this is one art form that is bound for extinction and therefore erasing another trace of mankind.

I listened to a recent podcast that really affected me. It said something to the tune of, “part of being human is making something that lasts, something that people can feel and preserve for generations..” - the person that spoke this was no major scientist or artist. She was a bookbinder and in her mind, binding a book helps in preserving mankind’s memories. It brought me back to the memories of days in Chennai when we would go to get a “hand me down” book bound. We may have bought this book from the street-side footpath bookstore in Luz Corner or from a senior that got it from another senior and so on.

The room of this press would be filled almost entirely by the equipment, in this case the binding machine. The press worker would work diligently to ensure that the leather, the thread and other ingredients of the binding process were in place. The odor of the sheets, thread, the lubricant oil for the machine would all take you to a different time. The process itself takes focus, precision and “single-threaded” execution from start to finish. Depending on the quality of service and how much you pay, binding can be entirely mass production with no customization to a complete work of art.

None of those books I have bound have been preserved, mostly because those were time-boxed into an academic year and most of the books these days are electronic. With all this talk of AI, one may not even ever read a book cover to cover, leave alone bind it. Binding, the process, would have been so therapeutic and meditative.. like animals, this is one art form that is bound for extinction and therefore erasing another trace of mankind.