A DYING BREED

One of the few bookbinders left, she is on a mission to educate and spread the therapeutic joys of handsewn bookmaking one workshop at a time.

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“What is the definition of a book?” asks Yang Shihui, founder of Based Book Arts and one of the few bookbinders in Singapore. A dying art, bookbinding is a craft that’s mostly taken for granted. Brick-and-mortar bookstores struggle to stay relevant in an age where Kindles and audiobooks are the preferred choice for many — eight independent bookstores in Singapore recently teamed up to open e-commerce platform Bookstore.sg in a bid to draw local readers away from Amazon. While readers increasingly lean towards digital copies, bookbinders have found their niche in custom rebinding and conservation work. I stumbled upon The Binary Bookbinder on Instagram, run by Emma, who lives in the United States, whose account is filled with elaborate rebindings of fictional novels such as J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Closer to home, Yang organises workshops at The Bee’s Knees Press, an indie printmaking studio in the old Tiong Bahru estate. She holds two to three workshops per week, each lasting up to three and a half hours, where guests are taught how to make a notebook from scratch using various methods, such as the French Link Stitch or Japanese Staple Binding.

HANDS-ON APPROACH