Musings of a Hermit Bookbinder

As I work at my bench this morning, creating handmade marbled endsheets and working on hand tooled 22k gold leather labels, I realize how obscure my work has become in 2010. The Fine Bindings I create are for the Greatest Generation, Silent Generation and Boomers. My generation, Gen X, barely knows what a fine leather binding is. My daughters generation, the Millenials and subsequent generations have no idea what Fine Bindings are. How many Fine Bookbinders are left on the planet at this point? Maybe 100, if that. I am reading a book about Easter Island, regarding the mysterious wooden tablets now located in Museums around the world, how in just a few short years, master craftsmen of a certain type can completely disappear. I appreciate how my teachers of the Craft, Maureen Duke, John Mitchell and Lester Capon, were brave in their last ditch effort to pass on their knowledge and skill by setting up a school in Surrey, England. One more generation was able to learn and continue an ancient knowledge. But now that we are in the Digital Age and natural resources are dwindling, why bother to continue? In a few short years all books will be read on hand held computers, libraries will disappear,every book of any signifigance will have been digitized, the book reading generations will be gone. I realize I am the last of the Fine Hand Bookbinders. There will be no need for us any longer. Our creations will become relics of a curious past, housed in Museums. Going into Fine Bookbinding 20 years ago, this thought never occured to me. Books were the only way of obtaining knowledge. Fine Bindings were the highest mode of preserving that knowledge. Strangely, I am not saddened by this turn of events. I am ready for the world to move forward.