By The Book

Designer Lunetta Bartz of Maker introduces us to the beautiful practice of binding books and journals the old-fashioned way: completely by hand

- Sylvia Mckeown

The studio is unassuming. A rectangular facebrick space painted white, with a sweeping view of a garden that seems to go on for a country mile. As you’d expect, there are books lining the shelves and stacked on wide tables, along with the odd vintage press and elegant pieces of beautifully patterned paper. It doesn’t instantly feel like a place where magic has been happening for many years – but this used to be the workroom in which sculptor Edoardo Villa made his smaller pieces, some of which still have homes here, on plinths dotted around the space.

In its latest incarnation, this is interior designer Lunetta Bartz’s book bindery. For many years, when not designing furniture and interiors for big names and their offices, Bartz has created books for her husband Warren Siebrits, the storied art dealer and collector. She’s been responsible for the design of his catalogues since the 2001 exhibition, Aspects of South African Art 1903–1999. Naturally, this soon progressed to working with the artists themselves.

While Bartz was working with artist Jo Ractliffe on a book, Jack Ginsberg – a major collector of artists’ books – convinced Peter Carstens, ‘probably the best book binder in the country,’ says Bartz, to run a six-week short course on the art of book binding for both artist and designer. Ginsberg was concerned that this important craft would disappear if not passed on to another generation.