Wooden sewing frame with text block.

Wooden sewing frame with text block.

In Europe and North America, from the hand-press period to the present, binders have used wooden frames to facilitate the sewing of gatherings. This sewing frame is used for bookbinding demonstrations that illustrate how codices are sewn. Folding printed leaves into gatherings and sewing were among the last stages of book production to be mechanized. Women most often carried out these processes in European and North American binderies up until the 20th century.

From the collection of Rare Book School