The non-profit association Estonian Association of Designer Bookbinders was founded by seven professional leatherwork artists in 1996. The need for such an organization arouse from the feeling and understanding that the assembling of the bookbinders will facilitate to solve issues connected to bookbinding and to promote the preservation and the development of that particular field of art in Estonia. For half a century our scope was restricted. We learned the established binding techniques and created new fancy ways of decorating boards, but at the same time we satiated with ourselves. We were not aware of that was done elsewhere, beyond the frontier. Together with the collapse of the political system ten years ago the doors to the world opened. The first thirst for information in the field of artistic bookbinding was quenched by our colleagues in Sweden and in Germany, for what our special thanks go to Marlis and Christoph Egli, to Manne Dahlstedt, to Ingrid Schultheiss, and to Hans-Peter Frölich.

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