6.21.2010

The Gilded Leaf

So Claudia and I went to pick up a guillotine from Robert Owen Roberts whose business is called The Gilded Leaf. He is upgrading a lot of his equipment and had some things for sale. Trained as a bookbinder in Chicago, Roberts has relocated to Maryville, TN. His work is astonishing. While some of his work is extremely creative and has beautiful texture and color combinations as well as unusual decorative elements, he actually specializes in historic restoration. Much of his work is in restoring family bibles and historical ledgers. He showed us a sample of a springback ledger, a style of binding we had never seen. He has an extensive collection of very high-quality marbled papers, made for historical accuracy. Even the cases for the books were as amazing as the books themselves.

There is more information about his work and detailed photos on his blog for the Gilded Leaf:
http://gildedleafbindery.blogspot.com/ (Also linked in the list to the right.)