Portrait of a Book Conservationist

Shelf Awareness

For more than three decades in Japan, Okano Nobuo "has been repairing tattered books and reconstituting them to look brand new" using "very basic tools like a wooden press, chisel, water and glue," Colossal reported, featuring a video in which the craftsman breathes new life into an old Japanese-English dictionary by approaching it "like an art conservationist repairing a painting."

Despite his gift for book conservation, Okano said, "It's not their shape or form but what's inside them that attracts us to books." Colossal noted that for a man "who makes it his job to repair the shape and form of books it's an incredibly humbling statement and is a testament to the value we still hold in physical books."