To complement our current exhibit featuring Helen Anderson’s book collection on calligraphy and illuminated manuscripts, Witherle Memorial Library is offering a one-hour studio tour to Arno Werner Bookbinders.

Private transportation.  148 Hinkley Ridge Road, Blue Hill (approximately 20 miles from Castine).

Limited to 8 people. Registration required. All are welcome.

Request a spot on the Tour.

About the Tour

Master bookbinder Peter Werner’s projects vary with the clients who can be dealers, collectors or individuals. The books can be a cherished family heirloom, a family Bible, or a first edition Hemingway.

On this tour, Peter will present the various tools and supplies employed by antiquarian bookbinders.

Featured will be his work on binding the sets known as the “Lost Gutenbergs”, 128 two-volume sets of a 1961 facsimile printing of the Gutenberg Bible published by Cooper Square Publishers in New York. While most of the 1000 total sets printed were bound using modern-day techniques and sold into libraries, museums and private collections, these 128 sets were never bound. They weren’t even assembled. Instead, the folded, printed sheets were boxed up and placed in storage in the mid-1990s, gradually getting moved, forgotten and lost until the death of the owner.

In 2007, they were purchased by book antiquarian Tim Yancey of Georgia, who decided to have them bound in an historically authentic way so they would most accurately resemble the original Gutenberg Bibles printed in the 1450s. Through the small professional network of traditional bookbinders, he eventually connected with Peter Werner.

Peter deals with the Bibles one set at a time, stacking the folded pages in order, hand-sewing them with strong linen thread, then tying the sections together with thick linen cords that are looped through substantial, beechwood cover boards. “The cover boards are built like a cabinet door, with mortise and tenon joints, so they won’t warp,” he said. The book is then covered with an elaborately embossed, alum-treated pigskin binding produced especially for this project. He fits each volume with authentic-to-the period leather straps and patterned brass “bosses” — raised knobs attached to the front and back covers to protect against rough surfaces. Each two-volume set takes him about 80 hours to finish.  (adapted from the BDN)