Richard Baker, Baker Conservation

St. Louis, Missouri

Pierre Benoit, L’Atlantide, 2002

This book is bound in black goat skin with gray and orange goat skin onlays. It has chevron woven headbands and hand marbled endsheets. It is tooled in gold. The story takes place in the Moroccan desert so I chose to bind the book in the Islamic style with an envelope shaped flap closure. The design is based on a fourteenth-century Islamic pattern. 29 x 20 x 5 centimeters. Created 2004.

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Richard Baker has been doing hand bookbinding and book and paper conservation for almost thirty years. After starting as a student of Bill Anthony’s in Chicago, he worked for several institutions including the American Antiquarian Society and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Since 1989, he has had a private studio in St. Louis where he has taught craft classes in bookbinding for the past ten years. Richard served two terms as president of the New England Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers and has been active in the book arts community wherever he lived. Website at www.richardcbaker.com.