So after my talk at Carleton College today, in which among other things I praised the technology of the codex, my host Fred Hagstrom asked me, “Have you ever made a book?” I coughed gently and acknowledged that I had not. Fred replied, “Do you want to learn how?” I said that I very much would, at which point Fred marched me over to his studio, where we made a book. We chose and cut paper, sewed signatures, chose boards for covers and wrapped them in two tones of cloth, put the whole thing together and popped it into a press. I’ll stop by this evening to pick it up.

How cool is that?

If you want to learn the same basic technique Fred taught me, you can watch this video tutorial he made.