By Steve Hubrecht
What do you need to make magic? A needle and thread, a paintbrush, glue, a pit of patience and an eye for exacting detail.
The magic in question is the craft — make that the art — of bookbinding. And Invermere has its own resident bookbinding magician: Lila Berryman. She recently launched Mountain Bookbinding, turning her skills at recovering and fixing up old books into a business.
Berryman grew up in the Columbia Valley. Both her parents are writers, and as a youth she was an avid reader. One of her favourite books was the novel Inkheart, in which one of the main characters is a bookbinder who can bring stories to life by reading them.
“It kind of grabbed my imagination and never let go,” Berryman told the Pioneer.
Berryman graduated from David Thompson Secondary School (DTSS), then moved to Halifax to attend Dalhousie University. There she met her future fiance Brodie Parker, and they ended up staying in Halifax for eight years before moving to Invermere earlier this year.
The couple returned west (Parker is originally from Alberta), pulled by a love of rock climbing, hiking, and lakes of the Columbia Valley, and pushed by skyrocketing real estate prices in Halifax.
By then bookbinding had become a much bigger part of Berryman’s life. As a youngster she’d been fascinated by the process of it, and then when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, she suddenly had plenty of time on her hands. So she took up bookbinding as a hobby, learning how to do it piecemeal by watching online videos.
Initially there was a lot of bookbinding glue everywhere. Nitpicking little details like folding book cover cloth completely perfect were challenging — and frustrating. Slowly but surely, however, her skills grew and her hobby became a full-blown passion.
When Berryman and Parker relocated to Invermere this fall, she decided to turn her passion into a business. It’s been a month since Mountain Bookbinding began, and it’s been going well.
“I’ve had a lot of people interested,” said Berryman. She mostly focuses on re-covering and minor repairs, but also tackles bigger jobs, pulling together books that have deteriorated into little more than sheaves of loose paper. If you want a book bound right from scratch, she does that too, and Berryman also creates book boxes. These look like books, but you open one up and it’s actually a box with a false bottom.
Tools of the bookbinding trade include non-acidic archival quality glue, special paintbrushes to apply the glue, sewing needles and thread, a bone folder, a book press, scissors, knives, book cloth for covers, vinyl, and chipboards. Berryman spreads these out on a big desk and gets to work.
“I love books and I love art. Now I can combine them,” said Berryman.
She’s had some interesting projects so far, including rebinding a century-old dictionary, as well as fixing up another 100-year-old book — an old copy of Lewis Freeman’s 1921 travelogue ‘Down the Columbia’.
Berryman finds something richly satisfying about physical books, something that makes them markedly different than reading online.
“Having something tangible in your hands makes you connect to the story even more. I don’t know what it is,” she told the Pioneer. “Maybe it brings you back to being a kid, and the wonder of reading a physical book and disappearing into another world. That idea that books can take you anywhere.”
When she’s not binding books, Berryman is often outdoors — rock climbing (Grassi Lake is a common destination) or hiking (Chalice Creek is her favourite trail). When not in the backcountry she’s on the covered back porch, perched in a hanging chair reading a good book.
To find out more look up @MountainBookBinding on Facebook or Instagram or email Berryman at [email protected].
