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They ‘Wrote The Book’ On Restoring Books: "“Books impede the progress of stupidity,” reads a sign on the wall of McSpadden’s Bookbindery. Stacks of family Bibles and rare books with tattered covers, yellowed pages and broken spines sit on tables throughout the shop waiting on repair.

“No one thinks you can do anything with books when they are like this,” Gayle McSpadden said, pointing to a stack. “When a book is torn and falling apart people are afraid to look at it and use it. But once it’s put back together they can go through it with their children.”

As a young man, Corry McSpadden, a master bookbinder, learned the craft from his father, C.B. McSpadden. He opens an old book that he will soon repair for a customer. On the inside cover are handwritten genealogy notes — treasured family history.

“Everyone has family heirlooms. You don’t know how many people have books like this sitting in a plastic sack up in the closet — and it’s not because they don’t treasure it. They just don’t know what to do with it in this condition,” Corry McSpadden said.

And that’s where the McSpaddens begin their work — restoring a book to its original condition, bringing it back to a functional life.

“I want it to be pretty, but I also want it to be functional and to last,” Corry McSpadden said.

The McSpaddens say that like some of the books in their shop, their trade is a rare find as well.

“There are a lot of bookbinders but not a lot of craftsmen. There are probably about 20 master bookbinders in the United States,” Gayle McSpadden said.

“It’s a vanishing trade,” Corry McSpadden added.

What makes what they do unique in this day and age of blink-of-an-eye technology is that Corry and Gayle do all the work by hand and each job is custom, using tools from as far back as the 1800s. It’s a skill that you learn by training as an apprentice, Corry McSpadden said, which takes approximately seven to 11 years.