Hello!
Welcome to the first-ish edition of my newsletter, Imperfect Bindings.
Some of you might know me as a journalist or a podcaster, where I mostly covered and talk about politics, technology, identity and religion. However, like many people who got laid off during the pandemic, I picked up a fairly obscure and outdated hobby – bookbinding.
It is intended to be a space where I can document my binding projects, repairs and conservation work, in the hope that it can provide an incentive to actually get my various work-in-progress’ completed.
But, I also want to use this space to experiment, write about my artistic interests, and to document my own learning journeys as I try to teach myself how to repair and restore things.
So first, the title: Imperfect Bindings. Partly inspired by Michael Rakowitz’s Jewish Mincha prayer book, which you can read about here . It’s also a reflection of my own work. As someone who infrequently gets measurements fully correct, and whose stitching is left to be desired (see above), most of my stuff, while functional, lacks the perfection and symmetry that comes easy to some art workers. It’s taken me a while to come to terms with this and to actually find the imperfections more interesting and telling.
Though I had the idea for a newsletter like this for some time, I was hesitant to publish. I was unsure whether this could work. First, because bookbinding, book making and repair is often a long, tedious process, which largely involves obsessing over old structural techniques, or fawning over obscure artisans known for abstruse styles and techniques, pretty much detached from any kind of modern book publishing today. I wasn’t quite sure how interested anyone would be reading about stitching patterns, the differences between cotton and nylon based threads, or paper grains (As I type this, I am aware that I am in my mid thirties, and I do live in a suburb). Second, as a serial procrastinator, I was also unsure how frequently I would be able to post, and as a result, what value any of it would have in an increasingly algorithmically driven information environment. And finally, I was uncertain any of this would be sustainable if I couldn’t complete projects in a timely fashion.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been thinking about this newsletter more, and its possibilities. For most of my late teens and twenties, writing on the internet was a means to produce content – to get into a good university, to get a graduate job, for career advancement, to try get into parties. The usual stuff.
When I hit 30, and started to run out of steam, becoming fairly disillusioned with journalism, I also realised I had no idea how to really use the internet to have fun. I didn’t know how to use it to learn things, or to share the things I’ve learnt with other people, in spaces which would encourage, rather than to denigrate and demean if something wasn’t perfect (which, in most cases, meant monetiseable). In my youth, being online was so intrinsic to how I developed my own hobbies, tastes and artistic skills. And so, I hope that this newsletter can eventually bring some of that energy to people who also want to learn how to make books.
Michael Rakowitz, Imperfect Binding, 2019
This won’t just be a newsletter about bookbinding.
Without being too prescriptive : while most newsletters will have some element of book arts / craft / history in them, they’ll also be about artists I like, books I’ve read, films and shows I might have seen and have opinions on. Because I do still do journalism, I have a few ideas for interviews with people I find interesting. Some are book artists, most are not.
Depending on how things go, I’d also love to see if there’s a way to do some teaching or tutorials using this platform.
If that sounds good to you, then do sign up using the tab below. My aim is to publish something once every fortnight, and take it from there.
Thanks, and enjoy.
HK
Very excited this sounds wonderful. “I’d like it to be a space where we find joy and comfort in repairing things”: perfect