Make Book: G.F Smith’s new bespoke book-printing service
We did a collective double take when a beautifully bound hardcover book landed on the Wallpaper.com desk bearing our online editor's name in white embossed lettering. No, she hadn't written that tell-all memoir after all. The volume was a prototype Make Book with a custom cover, care of the pioneering paper supplier G.F Smith.
Smith - which was recently rebranded by Made Thought to reflect nearly 130 years of selling paper - launched the Make Book service to improve on the current vogue for tailor-made creative printing. The operation distinguishes itself with access to premium bindings and paper stock the other ventures simply don't have. It follows a photographic printing process and silver halide technology, using professional Fuji papers. And the binding is done entirely by hand - each book works its way through a chain of seven employees, according to a making-of video set at the G.F Smith headquarters in Hull, UK.
Wallpaper's version has a two-tone, quarter-bound cover with embossed print in two colours. It opens perfectly flat, so you can design a panorama to run across the spine without losing anything at the fold - and it holds itself open on a desired page.
For this level of handcraft you will pay; the base price for a 20-page A4 book is £100. But it'll turn that memoir into a work of art for your shelves.
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Based in London, Ellen Himelfarb travels widely for her reports on architecture and design. Her words appear in The Times, The Telegraph, The World of Interiors, and The Globe and Mail in her native Canada. She has worked with Wallpaper* since 2006.
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