In my very early 20’s I was living in a rural area with no car and no accessible teaching position. So I took a job I could walk to in the nearby town at a commercial bindery. They needed someone to do hand sewing on certain books that couldn’t be entirely bound by machine. In very short order I fell in love. With passion and determination I decided that THIS was what I wanted to be — a bookbinder.
Over the next 30 years as I taught and raised a family, I kept this passion alive by apprenticing to a bookbinder in Los Angeles, and taking courses at the Center for Book Arts in New York. I started collecting papers from around the world, which complemented my Eastern textile collection. Eventually I applied to the bookbinding program at the North Bennet Street School in Boston.
After completing their two year full-time program I worked at Harvard’s Widener Library and the Harcourt Bindery in Boston. In 1998 I started the Seven Hills Bindery where I apply my bookbinding skills and artistic sensibility to making unique, useful objects, such as tissue box covers, jewelry boxes and event albums, many with one-of-a-kind papers. My work has been in the galleries of the North Bennet Street School and the Fuller Craft Museum.
Please make an appointment to visit the Bindery via our contact form.
Please visit our Etsy Store to browse our boxes, journals, albums and other items!
Judith Cohen 