Welcome to Abacus Bookbinding Florence Store
 

 
To our customers:
We are starting now our on line sell they are a little pieces of all our productions step by step we want to offer you more!
Thanks for your pacience and yours requests.

Press left bottons for catalogue list.

We suggest you to order more books
(1 kilos minimum) for to have
the best shipping cost because the price may be the same,
for example the book ''Florence paper binding'' cost for ship one book is euro 12 and cost for ship 18 books is the same !!!

Shipping costs will be calculated when you complete your order with payment options and destination info.







THE BOOKBINDING ( little history of bookbinding extract of Bolzacchi)
       
The book is an object with a history of its own, based not only on its contents, but in its proper aspect, graphia, pictures, materials and ornaments.
The first form of bookbinding was a rolled perchment or papir, trasformed by the Copts in the binded book as we presently know codex.
Archeological remains from Egypt allow to reconstruct the following ratios of existing rolls and CODICI, changing through the centuries (Roberts, 1954):

II century: 465 rolls - 2 codici
III century: 297 rolls - 60 codici
IV century: 25 rolls - 71 codici

Early in those days, writing in codex instead of rolls was not so popular, as testifies S. Agustin in his letter number 171 to S. Jerolamous while apologizing for writing in the codice- instead of the roll-form.
This attitude was nevertheless to change more or less quickly, if one considers that the iconography of S. Jerolamous depicts a saint surrounded by codici.
It is difficult to understand why the codici were preferred to the rolls by the first christians. Saint Paul asks his disciple for his "note-book" (latin term "membranae": 2Tim 4, 13), testifing that the bookbinding of perchment was probably used by the Romans.
The art of bookbinding borns with the advent of fascicules, sets of leaflets tied by means of threads.
The oldest known bookbinding techniques were executed by copt craftmans, the old cristians that long influenced this art. The Copt Museum in Cairo helds one of the oldest bindings, a IV century manuscript formed by 19 fascicules of two papir leaflets each and with a brown leather binding, in a perfect state of preservation (Regemorter, 1954).
Each fascicule of the greek-bizantine codici were incised in order to let the tread pass through. This operation was made possible by the use of a tool called the "greca", holding the fascicules together tight, a technique called "grecaggio".


THE "NERVI" (SPINE)

The presence of nervi on the dorso of the bookbinding dates back to the carolingian period (VIII - IX century).
The binding was executed without looms and the axes were of the same breadth of the fascicules, but a novelty was introduced in the form of an external support around which fastening the binding thread: the spine type of binding is used for the first time.
This is the first important revolution in the art of bookbinding, for nervi are supports that streinghten the structure of the book dorso, allowing for the introduction of heavy ornaments on the side of the book, typical of the Middle Ages.
Another important step in our history of bookbinding is the introduction of the "Pergamena floscia" technique, invented in Siena, Tuscany, Italy around the year 1000. "Pergamena floscia" stand for ".............. perchment" and refers to the complete absence of glue in the binding.
Following the birth of paper factories the production of books sharply increases and the research of fast methods of bookbinding is imposed to craftsmans.
The use of looms becomes widespread, allowing to separate the phases of binding of the book and to subdivide mansions within the "scriptoria" (book factories). Before this introduction, the axis of the book had to be built first and the fascicules tied around it in a second instance. The nervi, first made of canapa, were then substituted by rolled leather stripes .

History of Abacus Bookbinding

Since 1985 our store is well-known in Florence for offering the best in bookbinding and book restoration, with absolute honesty and professionality, and for the skill used in accomplishing the commissioned work.

From our customers' requests, in 1991 the line "special products" appears in our laboratories. The florentine market, very exacting, saw the appearence of hand-sewn blank-bookbinding, guest-bookbinding and photo-albums, appreciated in the whole world for the streinght of their bookbinding.

In 1992 the line "limited products" borns with its distinct objects, unrepeatable in their tracts, which make them collection items.
Each one has embossing in the inside, with 23,75 k gold, the number and signature that garantee for its autenticity.

Today our "limited products", appreciated from every soul sensible to the art of bookbinding, as one may guess taking a look at the ABACUS guest-book (check it out!), includes a line devoted to the art of storing photographs, one for guest-books specially treated for time resistant scripts ( alcaline contents and acidity controlled in our laboratories ) and, last but not least, particular objects such as fake books, boxes, "lighted" books and new products that are continuosly being produced from our never-lasting fantasy.

The "normal products" bookbinding line is devoted to the common needs for personal objects such as blank-books, address-books and personal books, all at a contained price.
We will be happy to receive you in our store, located in one of the most beautiful streets of downtown Florence, in the S. Lorenzo block.

Be our guest!

Raffaele De Dominicis e Rita Sparvieri







ABACUS CRAFTSMAN
Artisan Workshop,Artistic bookbinding of Florence Italy,
Genuine leather items with our marbled paper,photo album,
book-binding, book binding, fine bindings, bindings, binding,
binding cover,bookbinding