Properly Made Books

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BOOKS. MADE PROPERLY.

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Our exquisitely made Properly Made Books are the finest quality, off-the-shelf books available anywhere in the world.

ABOUT THIS SERIES OF BOOKS:

PUBLISHER'S SEMI BINDINGS

This collection is based on the aesthetic of books published in Russia between 1900 and 1917, pre revolution.

HISTORY Before the turn of the century, most cheap Russian books were sold as fragile softcovers, leaving it to the buyer to pay a workshop for a custom hardback casing. To meet the soaring demand for literacy in the early 1900s, publishers like Ivan Sytin and Adolf Marx revolutionised the market by offering pre-bound, cheap hardcovers. PUBLISHER'S SEMI BINDINGS became a highly specific, standardised fixture of late Imperial Russian mass-market printing.

POST REVOLUTION Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet government completely nationalised the publishing industry, transforming the look, material structure, and purpose of books practically overnight. The cheap, faux-traditional marbled covers of the late Tsarist era were cast aside as relics of a bourgeois past.

Anatomy of the Early-1900s Cheap Russian Binding

This mass-production model reduced material costs to a minimum while ensuring the book survived heavy handling.

Above; a pair of original Publisher's Semi Bindings.

Features of original Russian bindings

The Faux-Leather Spine (Quarter Cloth): To keep costs down, publishers completely eliminated real leather. They substituted it with a narrow strip of cheap, heavily starched industrial book cloth to hold the spine together.

The "Deceptive" Marbled Paper: Instead of using expensive, hand-dipped marbled papers, Russian printing houses used steam-powered lithographic presses to mass-print repeating marbled or "venous" patterns directly onto cheap, thin wood-pulp paper boards.

VPCo Publishers Semi Bindings

Intrigued by the aesthetic of these short-lived books (especially the skinny spines), we have made a series of 37 PSB in the Properly Made Books way - great quality materials and traditional hand techniques.

LEATHER SPINES

with simple blind tooled patterns.

HAND PRINTED PAPER COVERS

An assortment of marbled & paste papers, hand printed paper, plus a couple of weird outliers.

Each of the 37 books are bound in a unique way. Remember, we never make the same book twice. Your book will be the only one of its kind in the world!

INSIDE Filled with blank, natural white coloured, British-made, acid-free cartridge paper, these bindings naturally lend themselves to drawing and writing.

LAYFLAT All Properly Made Books are made to open completely flat and beyond, opening a full 360 degrees, cover to cover, without causing any damage to the spine and giving complete access to the papery real estate.

SIZE Just to confuse matters slightly, this series has been made in two sizes. The size of each book is detailed in it's individual listing.

SIZE 1: 8½ x 6 inches, 216 x 153 mm with 92 pages of medium text-weight paper.

SIZE 2: 9 x 6½ inches, 231 x 166 mm with 140 pages of lighter weight paper.

ABOUT PROPERLY MADE BOOKS.

Properly Made Books are made over a period of weeks and months. They are a world away and a world beyond anything else you'll see.

Imagine how a book was made in the 18th century - this is precisely how our books are crafted. They are bound entirely by hand in Scotland to the absolute highest standard using traditional techniques and only the finest quality materials. Properly Made Books are technically superior to any other off the shelf book.

Properly Made Books can be found in countless collections around the world including the Met Library in New York City, Harvard and Yale Special Collections, Miami U and many more.