The Hammock Papers: Bookbindery.

22 December 2016

Bookbindery.

“I’m always in a good mood,” Henry tells me, with a jaunty, almost a rakish smile. His beard and sidelocks are gray, but there’s a nimbleness to his movements. His sleeves are rolled, and his shirt hangs open one or two buttons below what you might expect. Despite the long hours and the heavy lifting, he still enjoys the work. “Every morning I wake up and thank God.”

Henry’s workshop is five steps below street level, in the basement of the Congregation Sons of Moses synagogue. There are no windows and yet it’s a cheerful place, primarily because of Henry, but also because of the instruments he uses—the oversewing machine with its web of thread, the presses that are tightened by wheel crank, the hand guillotine and the foot guillotine. Some are wickedly efficient, others possessed of a Rube Goldberg charm. Grease is needed to keep these machines in working order, and there’s a sweetness in the air, from the lubricant oils, the leather polish and Elmer’s glue, all of it underlined by the nutty scent of paper recently cut.

Two rows of tables span the room. Their tops are covered in newspapers, discarded covers, fabric, brushes, pots of glue. A tinkerer’s chaos prevails, and as you pass through it, Henry watches and warns where you are most at risk of losing a finger, or of succumbing to schmutz.

135 Henry Street has been a bookbindery as long as anyone alive can remember. As a young man, Henry worked briefly as a sofer, transcribing the Torah and other holy writings by hand, then heard that his brother’s father-in-law, the bookbinder, needed help, and went to work in the shop. It was a bustling place. There were many others in the trade back then. One of Henry’s former colleagues, Moshe, was hanging around the day I went by to visit. Moshe is 86 now and a little stooped, but Henry assured me that in his day Moshe was the strongest of the bookbinders and did the work of ten men, or ten horses, even. Moshe nodded sagely. “I was strong,” he acknowledged. “Once I danced with six women in one night. September 17th, 1953.”

CONNECT

Thank You, Jessica.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL