The Bookies are a passionate group of women dedicated to the art of hand bookbinding. Meeting monthly in each other's homes, Cheryl Mahowald, Mary Hagerty Sabo, Marilyn L. Schweitzer, Barbara Erickson ...

New York Times subscribers* enjoy full access to TimesMachine—view over 150 years of New York Times journalism, as it originally appeared. *Does not include Games-only or Cooking-only subscribers.

Few items in the home are as ubiquitous, and as unexamined, as the bindings around our books. We line books up on a shelf, pile them on the nightstand, arrange them for display on coffee tables. But ...

This article was originally published by Charlie Maring, sales representative at Suttle-Straus in Waunakee, Wis., on the Suttle-Straus blog. As long as there has been printing, there has been binding ...