AUBURN — When Anna Low and her husband, Ben, moved to Maine, the couple took a leap: He, on a career path to become a college professor, would try to find a job brewing beer and she, a high school art teacher, would try to become a full-time artist.
Her mornings start in her Lake Street studio as early as 7 a.m. with National Public Radio in the background and their dog, Blackbird, for company. She folds, cuts and binds blank books by hand, marrying whimsical patterns with prints, carefully selecting paper, sewing everything together and each time considering who might use that book and for what.
Some page ends she dips in walnut ink for an aged finish. Some she wraps in leather. They’ve been used as journals, sketchbooks, guest books and for note-keeping.
Low’s Purplebean Bindery is at six wholesale accounts and counting. This summer she’s teaching at the University of Southern Maine’s Summer Book Arts Program, among others.
“(Business) is growing,” said Low, 43. “Sometimes I want to yell, ‘It’s working!'”
Low’s own love of bookmaking started with a love of the base material.
“I could totally nerd out about paper,” she said, giving a quick lesson as she walked through her paper drawers.
Japanese paper, typically silk-screened, feels rougher, more fibrous. Italian paper is typically machine-printed, smooth, often with gold highlights. Lokta paper from Nepal is handmade and silk-screened.
She pairs each paper print with a cotton cover. Most get traditional blank or lined insides. In others, the insides are random recycled papers — a grain bag, a slice of a map, half an envelope.
“Hopefully, people are getting inspired by a wonky little map or a scrap of decorative paper,” she said.
Low uses different techniques in assembly and stitching — there’s buttonhole binding, Coptic binding and long-stitch binding. She makes them in batches of 30 to 100 at a time, cutting and sewing in one swoop but making each book different.
“It’s sort of the special curse I have that I can’t make the same book twice,” Low said.
She sells on the peer-to-peer website Etsy, at craft fairs and festivals, and her products are stocked in shops like Quiet City in Lewiston.
The couple moved to Auburn four years ago. Her husband, Ben, has family in Maine. (And he’s director of brewing operations at Baxter Brewing, so his leap worked, too.)
In the future, Low has a goal of making more artist’s books, which she fills with her own pictures — she’s also a photographer — and with writing.
She pulled out one tiny pink floral book, untied a ribbon and let unfurl delicate origami with cursive writing on each panel. The writing is so small that you don’t notice at first that it’s all facts about the human colon.
On the first page: “When we’re born, our colons are sterile.”
For that book, Low was inspired by being a first-time septic tank owner. In researching how to care for a septic tank, she was fascinated with how it worked and how much it was like the human body.
It’s been an unintentional icebreaker: “I’ve had so many super-animated conversations about people’s colon issues,” Low said, laughing.
Other artist’s books feature Blackbird and lessons the couple have learned from her, such as: “Be slightly suspicious of anyone who doesn’t want to snuggle on the couch.”
“When I started doing this full time, it felt antiquated,” she said. “It seemed crazy to be making things in the digital age that felt obsolete.”
Now, seven years into her company, that seems to be part of the appeal.
“If my books can take people out of their computer or phones and make them a little more contemplative or quiet — it’s a lofty goal,” she said.
kskelton@sunjournal.com
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