Kevin Noakes

Today is Tuesday, July 21st

Hello everyone! Today we’re featuring Kevin Noakes, the maker who supplies Rag & Bone Bindery with a very important tool in our studio. Kevin is the craftsman of Bookbindesigns, a family-run business “with over 50 years experience in the engraving industry". Bookbindesigns has been supplying bookbinders worldwide with the tools to finish off their works with a signature maker’s stamp or elegant lines and flourishes since 2012. At Rag & Bone Bindery, we use a set of Kevin's custom-made brass type to emboss our journals with your names or special messages. Once we've arranged the handmade letters into your chosen words, we press the type into our fabric covers over a sheet of gold foil to create a beautiful imprint on your unique book. Kevin Noakes tells us that it can take anywhere from 8 to 10 hours to make a full 100 piece set of standard 36 point type, including the brass strips for spacing the letters. He began learning the fine and detailed craft of toolmaking when he was just 16 years old, and left school to begin as an apprentice with a company he would continue working with for 30 years. He writes that there he “learnt all aspects of making bookbinding tools”. When we asked Kevin if he had a favorite tool he gets to make, he told us that he likes a lot of his tools, but his favorite would be a brass roll/wheel. He likes “the making of it and the decorative designs that it produces," and he likes the product “visually and how it makes the impression on the leather”. We’re so grateful for skilled artisans like Kevin who continue to be stewards of the bookbinding craft and help us at Rag & Bone Bindery to provide an extra personal touch to your special Journal or Album. Thank you, Bookbindesigns!

To see more tools made by Bookbindesigns, you can check out their websitehere. To place an order for a book with custom embossing, you can check out our pagehere.