Book art – the manipulation, recycling, up-cycling, embellishing, cutting, folding, sculpting, stitching, or myriad-other-things done to books (especially to old books) in the quest of creativity – is pretty popular today.

While some of the things paper artists do with old books are amazing, enchanting, and incredibly artistic – like these book-cut sculptures by Sue Blackwell – most of the creative approaches that require the destruction of a book don’t thrill me all that much. I chalk it up to years of teaching literature and an almost fanatical fondness for books as books.

So although stitching on pages of books is not something I’d normally consider enticing, there are definitely exceptions. This particular exception is fascinating – especially because it is a work of restoration.

Stitching on the pages of a book is apparently not a new thing.