The Legacy Press is pleased to announce that Aimee Lee's new book, As Good as Our Tools: Equipment and Tool Makers for Hand Papermaking is now available (https://www.thelegacypress.com/): For over two millennia, humans have made paper by inventing, improving, and adapting a range of tools and equipment to effectively create the best product. In the 20th century, European-style hand papermaking experienced a revival made possible by specialized studios and tools. This field of creative hand papermaking is small but robust, enabled by a key group of people: the toolmakers. These skilled makers build the equipment and tools essential to making paper by hand but receive little attention. This survey of fifteen makers across four continents gives center stage to these remarkable people, illuminating their personal paths towards these niche practices. Unfortunately, only a few are training successors while they age into retirement, even as interest in hand papermaking booms, but their stories inspire renewed commitment to learning how to make things – and, more importantly – how to make things work. Here, we listen to their voices, bring sustained attention to their vital contributions, and encourage a new generation of builders and tinkerers to advance hand papermaking. With 309 images. The people that Lee writes about detailing their critical contributions to the craft are: Beater Builders: Helmut Becker (1931–2024), Howard Clark, Lee McDonald, David Reina, Peter Gentenaar, Mark Lander, and Robert Woodruff Traditional Mouldmakers: Ron Macdonald (1933–2017), Serge Pirard (1974–2024), Claudine Latron, Timothy Moore Contemporary Mould- and Toolmakers: John Gerard, Bob Walp, and Alejandro Geiler, Brian Queen 304 pages softcover 309 images, full color $48.00 https://www.thelegacypress.com/ ____________________________________ The other book is the long-awaited Volume 9 of Suave Mechanicals: Essays on the History of Bookbinding; it is expected to be published in the week of July 14th (https://www.thelegacypress.com/). This is the last volume in the highly acclaimed series, all edited by Julia Miller. This volume features 16 essays on a wide range of subjects, all centered on bookbinding. The essays and authors are: Whitney Baker: Keeping the Books: Italian Stationery Bindings in the Rubinstein Collection of the Orsetti Family Business Archive at the University of Kansas Guilherme Canhão: Portuguese Gothic Binding: A Foral Charter from the Sixteenth Century Ashley Cataldo: Extension of Use: An Exploration of Printed and Manuscript Waste in Early American Bookbinding Kyle A. Clark: Bookbinding Education in American Degree- and Diploma-Awarding Institutions Tom Conroy: A Synoptic List of Jean Eschmann’s Post-Cranbrook Fine Bindings Tom Conroy: The Singer of Tales in Scottish Bookbinding: Layout, Design, and Social Function of an Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh “Wheel” Binding Amy Crist: A Technical Analysis of European Musical Partbooks Bound in Paper Steffi Dippold: The Gender of Binding; or the Matriarchive of the Wampanoag Bible Anna Embree: Best Practices for Making Models of Historic Books Anne McLain: Hidden Treasures: Searching for Scottish Wheel and Herringbone Bindings in Harvard Libraries’ Collections John Nove: Like a Fly in Amber: Analysis of a Group of Early American Scaleboard Schoolbooks Todd Pattison: How Did They Do That? The Role of Thoughtful Deconstruction in Understanding and Communicating Bookbinding Structure Jeffrey S. Peachey: Reading a Blank Book Filled with Mistakes: What Structural Evidence, Technical Manuals, and Craft Can Teach Us about an Eighteenth-Century French Bookbinding Olivia Primanis: What’s in a Cover: Exploring Nineteenth-Century Commercial Photograph Albums Richard L. Saunders: Bookbinding in Isolation: Lessons from the John B. Kelly Ledgers, Salt Lake City, 1853–1867 Jay Tanner: Marguerite Loeb – America’s First Designer Bookbinder? 832 pages hardcover, sewn (no sets of sheets were ordered for this book) 650 images, full color $160.00 https://www.thelegacypress.com/ ___________________________________ In the next few months, several more books will be published by The Legacy Press. To check out those titles, see: https://www.thelegacypress.com/forthcoming-titles Cheers, Cathy Baker -- The Legacy Press Cathleen A. Baker 1513 Long Meadow Trl Ann Arbor MI 48108-9633 "All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention" —Rudolf Arnheim www.thelegacypress.com | thelegacypress@gmail.com Publishing award-winning books about the Printing, Paper, and Bookbinding Arts.