what holds a book together? a closer look at contemporary bookbinding
By thomai tsimpou I designboom
For centuries, the finest bookbinding was meant to disappear. The sewing was concealed beneath leather, the spine covered by cloth, and the intricate engineering that held every page together remained hidden beneath the surface. A well-bound book was judged by its durability and restraint as much as its decoration, asking readers to focus on the text.
Singaporean artist and bookbinder Adelene Koh approaches the book from the opposite direction, placing its construction at the center of her work. In Endless, a finalist for the 2026 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, a brightly embroidered endband escapes the head of the book and loops into space before returning to the spine. A small structural detail becomes an autonomous sculptural gesture. In other works, bindings stitched with fish-skin parchment, aluminum wire, or vividly colored thread reveal every decision usually hidden beneath a cover, inviting the viewer to look at the anatomy of the book.
Koh is part of a growing group of artists and artisans rethinking one of the oldest crafts in human history. Working from studios in Singapore, Chicago, Haarlem, Tokyo, Arezzo, and New York, these makers share little in terms of style or material, yet they are united by the impulse to treat the mechanics of bookbinding as a creative language in its own right. Exposed sewing, floating spines, woven structures, and experimental folds become compositional elements that transform the codex into an object that rewards slow looking as much as slow reading. Traditional Coptic sewing appears alongside laser-cut paper, translucent vellum meets industrial aluminum, and centuries-old structures are reimagined through sculptural forms.
Endless by Adelene Koh | image via @adelenekoh
Bookbinding has long relied on an invisible infrastructure. Beneath every cover lies a carefully engineered system of folded sections, sewing stations, cords, adhesives, endbands, and hinges working together to withstand thousands of openings over a lifetime. Historically, the highest level of craftsmanship often meant making this complexity disappear. The structure remained concealed beneath leather and paper, leaving only a seamless object in the reader’s hands. Today’s bookbinders are reversing that logic, exposing construction, turning threads into lines that travel across a spine, sewing patterns into ornaments and structural components once hidden inside the binding into defining visual elements.
French bookbinder Benjamin Elbel investigates precisely this relationship between structure and visibility. Working from his Haarlem studio through his project Bookbinding Out of the Box, Elbel develops bindings that open almost completely flat while stripping away unnecessary decoration. His minimalist constructions foreground joints, hinges, and board attachment, treating the movement of the book as carefully as its appearance.
For Chicago-based artist Karen Hanmer, structure carries narrative weight. Each binding begins with the text itself, with sewing, materials, and construction chosen to echo the ideas contained within the pages. Some books reveal exposed stitching to emphasize vulnerability, while others rely on traditional leather bindings whose restraint reflects the stories they contain. Hanmer has often described bookbinding as the point where she found the physical connection to making that photography could never offer, allowing readers to engage with an object through touch as much as through reading.
a brightly embroidered endband escapes the head of the book and loops into space | image via @adelenekoh
Among the many components that hold a book together, thread is perhaps the most ordinary. It is rarely noticed by readers, disappearing into the spine before reappearing as a thin line at the head and tail of the book. Its main purpose was to bind folded gatherings of paper into a durable object capable of surviving generations of handling. Contemporary bookbinders have begun treating this element differently. No longer confined to the book’s interior, it appears on the surface as drawing, texture, and sculpture. Stitches follow rhythmic compositions that travel across the spine, while colorful endbands, once intended to make the book block stronger, are enlarged, exaggerated, or extended beyond their practical function.
No artist illustrates this shift more clearly than Adelene Koh. In many of her works, embroidery thread, aluminum wire, and hand-sewn endbands loop, twist, and project outward from the spine, creating sculptural forms. Her bindings draw attention to the spine, the sewing, and the structural details that usually remain out of sight.
This renewed attention to sewing resonates across the field, as many contemporary binders celebrate the marks left by making. Every knot records a decision, every stitch follows a rhythm, and every variation in tension becomes part of the finished object. The traces of the maker’s hand remain visible, allowing the binding to communicate through evidence of its construction.
finalist for the 2026 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize | image via @adelenekoh
If thread reveals how a book is assembled, folding determines how it moves. American artist and conservator Hedi Kyle has challenged one of the book’s oldest assumptions: that pages must turn one after another. Through an extraordinary series of folded structures, including her now widely adopted Flag Book, Blizzard Book, and countless other experimental formats, Kyle transformed the codex into a kinetic object whose meaning unfolds through movement.
Kyle looked closely at historical bindings, maps, archival enclosures, and conservation techniques, discovering unexpected possibilities within familiar forms. A single fold repeated across a sheet could become an expanding landscape. An accordion structure could transform into an architectural volume. A book could open in multiple directions at once, asking readers to navigate space instead of simply progressing from beginning to end.
Her influence extends far beyond her own work. Many younger binders continue to experiment with movement as a primary design tool, creating books that stretch outward, rotate, unfold into sculptural forms, or reveal hidden compartments through carefully choreographed sequences. Japanese artist Ryoko Adachi, for example, whose books often resemble botanical specimens or geological formations, develops delicate concertina structures inspired by natural phenomena, allowing pages to behave like forms that flutter, bend, and expand.
Origin, 2025 by Adelene Koh | image via @adelenekoh
While historically, the binding existed to protect the pages it enclosed, artists today are shifting the focus toward the binding itself, turning its structure into the work’s defining feature. Italian calligrapher and book artist Mónica Dengo approaches the book as a meeting point between writing, gesture, and space. Her bindings often emerge alongside handwritten texts, allowing calligraphy and construction to develop at the same time. Dengo understands every page, fold, and sewn section as part of a continuous physical act.
A similar sensibility appears in the work of New York binder Sarah Smith. Trained in design before specializing in hand bookbinding, Smith moves between digital layout and manual construction, producing editions that feel equally at home in an artist’s studio, a design archive, or a museum collection.
In these works typography influences structure, paper selection becomes part of the visual language, and binding decisions determine how a reader navigates the work.
A Little Gray, 2026 | image via @adelenekoh
While contemporary bookbinding may remain a niche practice, it has become an unusually fertile space for experimentation. Free from the constraints of commercial publishing, artists can rethink almost every part of the book, from how it opens to how it moves and from what materials hold it together to even what a spine or cover can become.
Leather gives way to fish skin, vellum, textiles, acrylic, or metal. Sewing structures are reworked into exposed decorative elements, while folds, hinges, and endbands become opportunities for sculptural expression rather than hidden construction. Across studios around the world, centuries-old techniques continue to evolve.
Every handmade volume asks: how much can the familiar form of the book change while remaining unmistakably a book? For these artists, the answer lies in revealing just how much creative potential it still contains.
Maze by Hedi Kyle, Hand drawings and facsimiles of mazes / 2007 | image via @artofthefold.com
Hedi Kyle’s Journal, Eames paper, assorted pattern tape and stickers, leather / 2006 | image via @artofthefold.com
In Praise of Dusting by Hedi Kyle, Collaboration of conservation staff celebrating dusting of old books Open spread by Hedi Kyle Board, Vellum, Paper / 2001 | image via @artofthefold.com
The Natural History of Fishes, particularly their structure and economical uses by J. S. Bushnan, Edinburgh: W. H. Lizars, 1840. | binding by Karen Hanmer
The Natural History of Fishes, particularly their structure and economical uses by J. S. Bushnan, Edinburgh: W. H. Lizars, 1840. | binding by Karen Hanmer
The Natural History of Fishes, particularly their structure and economical uses by J. S. Bushnan, Edinburgh: W. H. Lizars, 1840. | binding by Karen Hanmer
The Complete Angler, or The Contemplative Man’s Recreation by Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton London: William Pickering, 1825. | binding by Karen Hanmer
The Complete Angler, or The Contemplative Man’s Recreation by Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton London: William Pickering, 1825. | binding by Karen Hanmer
work by Mónica Dengo | image via @monica_dengo
Italian calligrapher and book artist Mónica Dengo approaches the book as a meeting point between writing, gesture, and space | image via @monica_dengo
Adachi Ryoko – book art, paper, hanging pages
This article is part of designboom’s Crafting the Future chapter, exploring what it means to be a maker in today’s world and the future of craftsmanship. Discover more related stories here.
This article was originally published by Designboom.