The bookbinder who refuses to hurry

Marta Oyelaran rebinds books that other people have given up on, and she is the reason The Slow Craft Fieldbook exists. She asked me for my workshop notes in 2019 and I did not have any worth reading.

A repair should be honest. You should be able to see that someone helped, and roughly when.
Marta Oyelaran

In this episode

1. 02:30 The book that took eleven months.
2. 15:45 Japanese tissue, wheat starch, and the argument about reversibility.
3. 28:20 Why she turns away about half of what she is offered.
4. 39:00 Teaching, and the first week that overwhelms everybody.
5. 50:10 Forty more years.

Mentioned

• The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding by J. A. Szirmai
• The Fieldbook, which she co-caused
• Her repair log, kept since 2004

Recorded in her workshop in St Werburghs, with a kettle.