Vogel Bindery

For over 20 years, the Vogel Bindery has been crafting books entirely by hand using traditional techniques virtually unchanged for 300 years.  ABC news recently aired a feature on Paul Vogel and his gorgeous work.  

Not ones to be outdone, the NY Post also featured Paul.  Here's an excerpt, you can read the full article here.  

You can’t judge a book by its cover. But you certainly can judge the cover.

And if you’re looking for the highest craftsmanship in custom bookbinding, then meet Paul Vogel.

It’s a niche trade, for sure. But for nearly 30 years, the master binder and restorer has applied an artist’s touch to cloth, leather and gold leaf to craft exquisite covers on books displayed at the White House, Library of Congress and the Morgan Library. He’s also worked for celebrity clients from Oprah and Ralph Lauren to Henry Kissinger.

Originally from New Jersey, Vogel opened his first bindery on 26th Street in Manhattan in the early ’80s before relocating his workshop to East Hampton. With help from artist wife Abigail, the 60-year-old Vogel estimates he’s bound maybe 11,000 books to date, and currently has more than 100 regular clients.

Colorplan & Beauty in the Making

Our UK based friends at GF Smith created a one of a kind exhibition called Beauty in the Making.  It takes visitors through the history of paper and the process of its making through a series of public talks, workshops and exhibitions. The exhibition aimed to tap into designers increased interest in traditional techniques and highlight the authentic heritage of this brand.

Interested in using ‘what we have’ and celebrating the product, we created bold installations using stacks of multi-coloured paper which acted as signage and information points throughout the space. Introductory copy and gallery plans were then stencilled. Exhibits were placed onto coloured sheets with a single turned up corner to reveal the caption.

Check out some of the photos from the exhibition. They did an amazing job showcasing the Colorplan papers.

Tour de France Poster Series on Somerset

Lead Graffiti kicks off their second year of Tour de France posters to produce 26 clamshell portfolios consisting of 23 posters (each about 15” x 22”). Printed at Lead Graffiti, slowly & patiently via letterpress, there is one poster for each stage of the 2012 Tour de France (opening day prologue, Saturday, July 1 through Sunday, July 22) plus its two rest days.

Read more here

Our new website

After doing this for so long, we often take for granted how much we know about papermaking, paper mills, applications and paper itself.  We've often been told "you should write a book".  

We considered this briefly before realizing that while we know paper, we're not the most eloquent when it comes to putting our knowledge in writing. (Sorry!)  Plus, we figured that a website would be easier.   

When we set out to create this site we had a lot we wanted to accomplish.

• To share as much information on our papers as we can (or at least as much as we thought people would read at one time).  Besides just sizes, weights and colors, we wanted to give some of our papers context.  Why were they created?  How are they being used?  What are our opinions on them?
• To go heavy on images.  While there is absolutely no substitute for holding a sheet of paper in your hands, high resolution images were the next best thing.  We hope you agree.
• To make our sample department easily accessible and affordable to encourage people to try out papers that they may not otherwise have used (or even heard of.)
• To allow you to search not just by names of papers, but by end use or various categories (that we made up.)
• To open up our custom papermaking capabilities - we can only stock so many papers but what we can make is nearly limitless.
• To use our gallery to highlight creative and interesting uses of our papers - as a way to thank our customers for making our papers look so good.
• To create a forum for people to ask questions and look up answers.  We get a lot of questions each day and this is a way to reply to "the world" (he said, modestly) instead of to one person at a time.

The site is at a point where we felt comfortable releasing it.  But there are still a lot of things we'd like to add.  Within the next few months, we'll add the mother of all paper search tools, as well as customer login to check invoices, order status and more.

For now, we hope you find this site useful, informative, interesting and other positive adjectives we're too tired to look up after writing the equivalent of hundreds of pages of paper-related info.  Maybe we should've just written that book after all.