Welcome to Tropical Swallowtail Bindery

Hello and welcome to an independent bindery, and a creative publications, built around a craft that barely has a footprint where I'm based. I'm glad you're here, and I'm glad to finally be starting this.

TS Bindery seeks the power of a handmade book and to cultivate the act of journaling, to continue the ancient tradition of bookbinding. I believe what we write on matters as much as what we write about  - the medium of manifestation, or simply, a sweet escape from the noise. I hope more people will want to create their own book or have one made by artisanal bookbinders. Hope you'll find joy in the process of cultivating this practices.

With the end goal (not limited to): Becoming a more satisfied being.

Two things, really

The first is resources. This is where you'll find bookbinding-related information — you'll find the real history of bookbinding, the type of stitches, the difference between hardcover, softcover, and case binding, and whatever else I learn along the way that's worth passing on.

The second is a collective. A gathering space for the diarist, the logger, the one who tend to stared at the notebook to finally wrote something and you're proud of it, and you are delighted to share it for public reading. To please the desire for the tangible, the godly, the real. The submission form is open 24/7. It's for the community - a place to share our little trinkets of hope, despair, and joy.

Why

This idea serving nostalgia for a life people used to have before the industrial revolution and the vast world wide web. Those weren't an easy eras, I'm sure. But, for some of the things they practiced, were kinda romantic and real.

A polite criticsm on big tech that questions our existence at a speed, quite brutally. What's left to be save of our minds - not pure, necessarily but real. Must be defend.

I believe if this space serves value well enough, you will be willing to subscribe because you think and feel aligned, and you want to see this exist.

And honestly...
Subscribing is free, and everything I write here will stay free. But I'll be frank with my hope is that TS Bindery becomes a channel for the artist's circular economy and is sustainable enough. So somewhere down the road, there will be a small subscription fee for some of it, maybe the deeper tutorials, maybe a closer look at works in progress. Nothing sudden, nothing hidden. If you join now, you'll be here from the start, and I imagine that will count for something later.

Thanks for being here at the start of this.