Bookbinder & Aspirant Publisher
Where handbound and digital meet...
I bind handbound leather books that I sometimes sell here. These are usually biblical and early Christian texts that I have typeset and published myself under the Paradosis Press imprint. If you don't see any here, that is because they have sold out. I don't take commissions, but usually put a batch of books up for sale and announce the details the day before. Please follow me on Instagram or Facebook to be notified of updates.
However, I am also starting to sell digital packages that will enable anyone with a printer and a bit of glue to bind their own book. These Bind-Your-Own-MiniBook packages are still in development and this website will hopefully be updated soon, with news of similar packages for my larger hand-sized books.
This is a hand-sized case binding binding of a Psalter and Gospels that have been stitched together as one book. It is made from veg-tanned goatskin that I have dyed and tooled myself, and has hand-stitched headbands, printed marbled endpages that have been waxed with beeswax, and two ribbon markers. It has printed marbled edges that have been finished with beeswax.
The text block comprises Father Lazarus Moore's translations of the Psalter and the Gospels. The books are digitally printed on 90 gsm Munken Pure paper in archival-quality pigment ink. The text of the Psalter has been adapted to render the forms of address in more contemporary English (You/Your instead of Thee/Thou) and some minor changes have been made in line arrangement. It uses UK spelling, capitalises divine pronouns, and follows the Septuagint numbering of the Psalms, while the Gospels use US spelling. It should be noted that chapters 23 and 24 of St Luke's Gospel could not be found and have been replaced with text from the World English Bible.
Approximate size, metric: 155 x 115 x 45 mm.
Approximate size, imperial: 6.1 x 4.5 x 1.8 inches.
Total pages Psalter: 288 pages of text, plus 4 extra.
Total pages Gospels: 292 pages of text, plus 8 extra.
Please note that this book is being sold at a considerably reduced price for two reasons. Firstly, I am not happy with the quality of the printed marbled edges, particularly on the fore edge. And secondly, some of the pages at the front of the book have narrow margins - see the photo of page 6. (There are around a dozen that narrow and then they gradually get wider).
The price includes international shipping with FedEx and currently takes five to eight days. Please note that FedEx requires a street address rather than a post office box, as well as your phone number. You will receive the tracking number once the order is shipped and you will be able to track it online. If you have any queries, please feel free to contact me.
Macrina Walker
I have loved books for as long as I can remember, but becoming a bookbinder was an unexpected development. I read, wrote, and edited texts in a previous life, and even dabbled in layout. But I never stopped to think about how a book is actually held together. That changed when I entered an enclosed monastery in the Netherlands and was assigned to work in its bookbindery. I was gradually initiated into the various facets of bookbinding and discovered, to my joy, that binding could be combined with various creative impulses to create works of real beauty.
I later left the monastery in order to become an Orthodox Christian. Returning to South Africa, I turned to bookbinding as a way of supporting myself.
More recently still, I have been returning to the world of typesetting and layout as I have begun to produce my own text blocks. In this way I hope that I will be able to share with others treasures that I have discovered along the way,