Cleaning and Cataloguing the Pen Ruling Machine

This past Friday was Chronicle Books’ annual volunteer day.  While the majority of the company spent the day helping out at the San Francisco Zoo, my two stellar colleagues Neil and Ben joined me here at the Museum to assist archivist Jae Mauthe and Founder Tim James in cleaning, cataloguing

Continue reading

Everything in here that isn’t a book: An interview with archivist Jae Mauthe

As plans for construction progress and programming content develops, changes are taking place on the personnel side of things at the AMB as well: introducing archivist Jae Mauthe! Jae has developed and led all aspects of large scale digitization projects with libraries at University of California, Berkeley, Northern Regional Library

Continue reading

Ephemera of the Month: An Introduction to Bookbinders’ Tickets

Few things as brazenly flout their etymological origins as the idea of collected ‘ephemera.’  In Greek, ephemera lasts only a day, and the word was often specifically used in reference to short-lived creatures, like mayflies. Printed ephemera, too, was meant to be transient–one-off or single-use items that were expected to

Continue reading

The American Bookbinders Museum: A Brief History of the Museum, Library, and Archive

Founder Tim James has been collecting bookbinding material for twenty years, but the initial hunt wasn’t always for a museum. He began the collection with the thought that upon retiring he could move up to the Gold Country, open a 19th century bookbindery, and become the town curmudgeon. Fortunately for

Continue reading

Tim James Interviewed on KALW!

Check out this interview with our founder Tim James! http://kalw.org/post/making-book-beginning-end-one-san-francisco-s-last-remaining-bookbinders

Continue reading

Why A Museum to American Bookbinding?

The American Bookbinder’s Museum There is nothing quite like the feeling of an old book in your hands, the smell of the yellowed pages hitting you as you open it.  As you get comfortable and settle in to spending some time with this remarkable object, you may wonder at how

Continue reading