elcome to ABA, a fine bindery located in Wilmington, NC. I'm Claire, and I make all the journals offered here. Each journal is unique down to the materials and made to last. They make excellent gifts, regardless as to whether you buy a book or two for yourself, or for someone you care about. I also take commissions.

Leather journals

When I make a leather journal, I envision the completed whole and tweak the design until I find the best possible book for a given piece of leather. My work features rich details such as contrast color stitching along the spine, intriguing pairings of leathers with different colors and texture, hand cut organic shapes, innovative clasps to hold the book closed, and decorative elements such as shells. These journals contain 240 pages of text weight acid-free soft white paper stitched directly to the leather using dyed Irish linen thread, which sets the standard in bookbinding for durability and beauty. All of the leather is genuine high quality cowhide special ordered from a leather company in Maine.

From an animal-friendly standpoint, when I work with leather, I purchase the material that larger commercial endeavors discard, not because of quality, but because it isn't enough hide to cover larger items. Then I use every possible scrap.

Coptic journals

My coptic journals are crafted with the same consideration for quality, beauty, and durability. Each coptic journal has 160 pages of the same fantastic paper used in the leather journals and is sewn using the same Irish linen thread. I use a wide array of decorative papers to cover my coptic journals, including Chiyogami, a hand silkscreened Japanese paper, and hand marbled papers, such as the one pictured here.

Handmade versus mass produced

The standard of craftsmanship for my journals is vastly superior to the machine made or mass produced journals on the market. Design and aesthetics aside, if you look at the way the pages are held together in a given journal or book, you'll notice that they've been either folded and glued together, or completely cut and glued together. There's generally no sewing. The only thing holding your pages in is glue, and every single time you open that journal, you are slowly destroying the only thing holding it together.

Since the paper inside my books is folded and sewn, the natural fibers remain intact. You can open them completely flat as often as you'd like without doing the binding any damage. My books are just sturdier. Coptic bindings look delicate, but it's an illusion. They're very tough. There are existing examples from the 2nd century AD. My journals are perfect for being thrown in a bag and tossed about. They tend to withstand heavy use and retain their good looks.

Buy a journal, support art & the local community

There's more concrete information out there, but as a general rule, any purchase of handmade crafts supports individual artists, as opposed to corporate interests. Your purchases make it possible for artists like me to continue investing time and resources into art. It's even better when you buy local handmade crafts, because virtually all of the money stays in the community. Since my journals are sold through Pomegranate Books, an independent bookstore, when you invest in one of my journals, you're earning twice the local artsy business karma.

How to contact the artist

If you have any questions, see a glaring typo, or would like to place a commission, please feel free to shoot me an email. My address is next to the copyright information below.

The contents, both text and images, and design of this site are the property of Claire Bateman and may not be redistributed, sold, or altered without her prior consent and knowledge. In other words,
© American Book Arts 2010