Bookbinding Supply Stores in New York City: A Local Buyer's Guide

What to take away

What to look for on the shelf

Bookbinding shops earn a second visit on depth, not breadth, and Talas in Brooklyn sets the depth benchmark. Blick Art Materials and Sam Flax in Manhattan carry partial lines, while four lines decide it: thread, board, cloth and adhesive.

A store carrying one weight of linen thread and one roll of spine cloth is an art supply shop with a bookbinding corner. Useful, but not a supplier.

Board is the first test. Ask for a genuine binders board rather than general chipboard. The U.S. Government Publishing Office style manual names Davey board as the standard for federal publications. A soft board compresses at the joint and rounds through its own hinge over a season of handling.

Board and cloth costs vary with mill, thickness and width. Ask for the per-sheet and per-yard price; typical ranges shift with mill runs, so a quote is the only firm number.

Thread comes second. Linen for bookbinding is labeled by size and ply, and those numbers are not interchangeable between brands. Bring a sample of the paper you plan to sew, then ask which thread the staff would use.

The Wikipedia article on paper weight explains the difference.

Cloth and adhesive finish the four. Book cloth is a woven cotton or rayon base with a starch or acrylic filling, and the filling is what stops glue from striking through. Ask about the filling, not the color. Handling the cloth before you buy makes choosing recoverable materials easier.

Questions to ask at the counter

Two minutes of questions can save a trip across the river. Ask these at Talas, Blick or Sam Flax.

A shop that has to phone someone about its own board supplier is telling you something. Answers take a minute and cost nothing.

Manhattan, Brooklyn and specific shops

Decide what should earn bench space before planning a route. Verify Talas hours and Sam Flax address before you go; both change often.

Seasonality and availability

Stock moves with the academic calendar and with mill runs. September and January are the heavy months, when classes start and studios restock. For a fall class, order board from Talas in July. Cloth and linen from European mills are often quoted at six to ten weeks, and a shop cannot sell what is still on a container.

What labels do and do not tell you

Acid-free describes a sheet with a pH of 7.0 or above at testing. Buffered adds an alkaline reserve to neutralize acids that form later.

Archival is a different case. The word has no single legal definition in the American consumer market, so treat it as a prompt. Staff at Talas who handle stock themselves tend to describe a fault with precise vocabulary, and the National Park Service Conserve O Gram series is a better guide to how book cloth ages than any sticker.

Example: reading a bolt of book cloth

You are holding a bolt tagged 'library buckram, archival.' Ask one question: is it filled with starch or acrylic? At Talas or Mood Fabrics, ask this directly. Starch-filled cloth can be dampened and reworked with paste. Acrylic-filled cloth resists water and wants PVA. Both are good cloth. Knowing which one you hold decides your adhesive.

Storing what you buy

PVA dies from bad storage. It is a water-based emulsion, and a hard freeze breaks that emulsion. A jug that has frozen and thawed looks normal, stirs smooth, then dries cloudy or tacky. Keep it above 40 F and seal the cap.

Paper and cloth want the opposite: stable, dry and off the floor. A concrete floor passes moisture into the bottom of a stack, and mold establishes in the lower sheets while the top still feels dry. Set stacks on a shelf. If you also marble paper, storage splits into three separate storage problems, and only one concerns paper.

Check your bag before you leave the shop.

Common questions