Meet a Maker: Edition 7

Meet Toben Lewis

1. What is your craft and how did you get into it?

Bookbinding. I trained in graphic design and started my working life as a book designer, doing interior layout and cover design in the publishing industry. In my spare time I enjoyed learning about and playing with letterpress printing. Eventually I realised that I could design a book and print a book, so I really should know how to bind a book. I thought I would bind one to satisfy my curiosity and that would be it. But I found an online tutorial, bound my first book, and haven’t looked back. That moment of curiosity led me to discover a small niche of the book world that I love.

2. What is one interesting fact about you?

I fear my career choice may in fact be the most interesting thing about me. Or that I have chosen to live on a fairly tiny island off another island off the left coast of Scotland. Perhaps the interesting fact is I have a tendency to make uncommon choices?

3. How long have you been making?

I’ve been bookbinding for a little over seven years now, though I’ve been making things in various forms most of my life.

4. Who is/are your favourite maker(s) in your craft? Anyone you admire in the craft field?

Historically, my hero bookbinder is TJ Cobden-Sanderson… and Talwin Morris, although he was a book designer not binder.

Contemporarily, there are many. My mentor, Karen Hanmer, whose work I hugely respect both as a bookbinder and as a teacher. I also love the design and craftsmanship of binders such as Kathy Abbott, Dominic Riley, Tom McEwan, Louise Bescond, Julie Auzillon, the Tomorrow’s Past collective… I could go on. There are many talented bookbinders practicing today and I’m very fortunate to have been able to learn from some of them.

5. What is the most challenging skill/technique you learned in your craft? 

I think thus far the skill that has hurt my brain the most has been gold tooling. Traditionally that aspect of the craft would have been done by the ‘finishers’, and that’s still the case in some other countries. It’s such a specialised technique that uses skills different to those in the rest of the bookbinding process. I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it now although I still have a great deal more to learn.

6. What is your favourite part of your craft?

Sewing. Whether it’s the book itself or the head and tailbands, I find I can really get into a meditative zone while sewing. It’s very soothing.

My binding of Compton MacKenzie’s Whisky Galore, that won the Elizabeth Soutar bookbinding prize last year. I used a traditional wooden boards binding, but used staves of a whisky barrel in place of the usual quarter sawn oak. It was a combination of historical book research, skills I have learned, creative license, and woodworking that culminated in a book of which I am very fond. I’m extremely proud that it’s now in the National Library of Scotland’s permanent collection.

8. If someone who knows nothing about your craft could know one thing, what would it be and why?

Books pre-date machinery by centuries. They have been around in various forms capturing people’s writings, in words or symbols.

Learn more about Toben