Spine & Signature is a hand-bookbindery making journals, guest books, and custom-bound volumes one signature at a time, in a small workshop where the evening hours are the most honest ones.
Sewn directly through the spine with unwaxed Irish linen thread, so the structure is visible from the outside. Covered in Ecological Fibers book cloth in twelve colours. Pages are Tomoe River 52gsm, cream, 192 pages. Lies completely flat when open.
Vegetable-tanned leather from Walsall, hand-pared at the corners, with a ribbon marker in silk grosgrain. Acid-free cream cartridge pages, 120gsm, 80 leaves. Available in A4 or a square 250x250mm format. Title or names can be foil-blocked on the cover.
A4, 300gsm hot-press watercolour paper from St Cuthberts Mill in Somerset. The Coptic stitch leaves the spine open so you can see the thread, and the book opens completely flat on a table or an easel. Paste-board covers wrapped in natural linen cloth.
Hardback case binding for a printed manuscript or dissertation. Buckram cloth in navy, forest, or burgundy, with a foil-blocked title on the spine. We print nothing ourselves; you supply the printed and collated pages. Turnaround is ten working days.
Long-stitch sewn notebooks in a single cloth colour with a foil or letterpress label. Each notebook in the run is hand-sewn, so there is natural variation in the thread tension and the way the cloth sits. That is not a flaw. Paper is 90gsm cream Munken.
Bring the book in. We look at the text block, the boards, the spine lining, and the hinge condition. You get a written estimate within three working days. If you go ahead, the assessment fee is deducted from the final cost. We do not quote repairs without seeing the book.
Tell us what you have in mind. We will reply within two working days with a honest assessment and a rough price.
Contact usMost people who commission a journal spend a lot of time thinking about the cover and almost no time thinking about the paper. That is understandable. The cover is what you see first. But the paper is what you use every day, and a beautiful cover on a journal with paper that feathers under a fountain pen or buckles under a wash is a disappointment every time you open it.
Read more →Both Coptic stitch and long stitch are what bookbinders call exposed-spine structures: the sewing thread is visible on the outside of the spine rather than hidden under a covering material. People often ask which is better. The honest answer is that they are different, and the right choice depends on how you use the book.
Read more →Vegetable-tanned leather is not a fragile material, but it does respond to how it is kept. A leather-covered book that is stored in a dry room, handled regularly, and conditioned once or twice a year will develop a patina that makes it look better at twenty years than it did at one. A leather book left in a damp drawer or on a sunny windowsill will crack and fade. The difference is small habits.
Read more →Mara Ellison trained in book conservation at the London College of Communication before spending eight years as a conservator at the Gloucestershire Record Office, where she worked on everything from Tudor estate maps to 1970s planning documents. She left in 2016 when the conservation budget was cut, and opened Spine & Signature in January 2017. She still walks the long way home past the canal most evenings, and keeps a cup of cold tea on the bench that she forgets to drink. Her favourite commission so far was a hand-sewn field notebook for a retired botanist who had been using the same broken one since 1989.
