This winter the Museum Shop at the American Bookbinders Museum is pleased to showcase the work of two extraordinary book artisans.

Pietro Accardi was born in Turin, in northwestern Italy, where his father, Gaetano, was the founder of Typografia Accardi. After working at his father’s press, Accardi went on to study restoration, paper marbling, and bookbinding; for over a decade his bindery, La Legatoria del Sole, was a vital part of the restoration efforts in Turin’s libraries and archives. Now living and working in the Sierra Nevadas, Pietro Accardi’s work combines marbling and binding techniques to create remarkable objects. The Museum Shop currently stocks his books, boxes, and scarves.

A native Muscovite, Sasha Mosolov received a degree in Book Arts from the Moscow Institute of Graphic Arts. While continuing his studies, he began a bookmaking career as an edition binder at a time when much–perhaps most– literature in the Soviet Union was banned. Mosolov bound photocopies of forbidden texts–Freud and Jung, religious texts, and anti-Soviet literature–in small-run editions. Because bookbinding materials were difficult to come by except through official channels, he developed techniques using cloth, paste paper, and cardboard to create his editions. These techniques became the basis for his unique works, bound in dyed-and-painted leather on which Mosalov fashions textured, raised images. The endpapers are handmade collage designs, and the pages are hand-sewn. The books come in a number of sizes and colors suitable for journaling, photo albums, and diaries.

Works by both Accardi and Mosolov are available to admire–and to buy–at the ABM Museum Shop through February.