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- Do I read books?
[laughs]
You betcha.
I've been asked if I read books.
That's my form of entertainment.
I'm not fond of screens.
I just like the page,
so I read.
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My name Florian Bieschke,
and I'm a hand book binder.
[tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap ]
[soft humming]
We do a multitude of things here.
We do restoration of rare books.
We teach workshops and we create books.
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Originally, I'm from Chicago.
But I have not been in a big city
since I was 18 years old.
I prefer rural environments.
[bird chirps]
Right now, I live on a small tract of land
in Arbor Vitae, Wisconsin.
And my neighbors are deer, and squirrels, and chipmunks,
and we get along just fine.
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None of it's really rocket science at all.
I mean, this stuff is 15th Century stuff.
This is a simple sewing frame,
but it's been around since the 15th Century.
Nothing's changed.
The design is exactly the same, and it works.
That's why it's still here.
When we create a book,
we start with a packet of raw materials.
[thump, thump, thump, thump]
By the end of day one, the book should be sewn.
From there on out,
it's like watching different colors of paint dry.
It's all the same. [chuckles]
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Time consuming.
And you have to like that.
You really have to like getting things just right
to be in this
because if you rush it,
[tap, tap, tap]
there's no hiding the fact that you did.
Challenges are presented minute by minute,
depending on what you're working on.
That means solutions have to come up minute by minute.
[friction of bristles on paper]
It requires patience
and it requires an eye for detail.
And the ability to anticipate disaster.
Because that's around every corner.
- So the last thing that you did I see is you took it all apart.
I was not here for that.
- And then, there's the preservation aspect.
Keeping the craft alive and passing it on to other people.
A lot of times,
the students' happiness comes from the fact
that they didn't realize
they could do such precise work with a few simple tools,
and brother left, and brother right.
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And that's their payoff.
And then, they have their book.
They can always look at their book.
And the thing about book binding is
once you get bit by the bug, there's no cure.
It's, it's gonna be terminal.
[tap, tap, tap, tap]
I've never met a binder who, uh, let it go
and just never came back.
And I've never met a sour one either.
They just seem to be very happy people.
There's something about it.
It's been around for centuries.
[friction from rubbing]
This will slow you down.
And if you're a perfectionist, this is for you.
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