Explore the Magical Art of Bookbinding with Susana Domínguez

The award-winning artistic bookbinding icon reflects on her incredible career in this Domestika Maestros

Susana Domínguez is one of the world’s leading artistic bookbinders. Her work is held by major institutions including the National Library of Spain, the National Library of Scotland, and the Museum Meermanno – House of the Book in The Hague. In 2017, she won Spain’s highest bookbinding honor: the National Artistic Bookbinding Award.

Susana has also created two Domestika courses, Handmade Binding Without Stitches and Bookbinding Your Artwork Without Folds.

In this post, she talks to us from her studio iconic bookbinding studio Códex (founded in Madrid in 2006 with Guadalupe Roldán) about the intricacies of crafting beautiful books and working in an ancient profession, that was traditionally male-dominated.

Learning from your mistakes is the foundation of any career

After dedicating nearly twenty years to the art of bookbinding, Susana reveals she found her calling by chance. When many Spanish art schools and professional training centers closed in the 1980s, studios and workshops sprang up to fill the void and teach the decorative arts. This gave Susana a unique opportunity to learn the art of bookbinding firsthand.

Reflecting on the industry when she first started out, she explains, “Bookbinding was traditionally a male profession, it was born as an art done by men. So traditionally, women were banned from becoming apprentices. And whenever a woman wanted to become a bookbinder, her vocation was always seen as a ‘hobby‘."

"Getting into bookbinding was always a question of 'Why not?' It’s one of my guiding questions. Why not try this? Why not try and do that other thing? Why not break new ground?"

Without many opportunities in the field and as a bookbinder who broke the mold, venturing down this career path was an act of great bravery by Susana. As she explains, “When bookbinding became an industrial process, the great masters disappeared. A lot of people love bookbinding, but very few really know how to go about it.”

Susana stresses that mistakes are a source of progress, they provide answers and unexpected solutions that can help you find your own style.

Towards contemporary bookbinding

A skill that has two sides—specialist knowledge and a strong understanding of design—bookbinding is a rich and evolving art form.

Almost everyone knows what bookbinding looks like when you talk about ancient manuscripts, decorated with gold leaf, Mudejar designs, or eighteenth and nineteenth-century texts, explains Susana Domínguez in the introduction to her online Domestika course. In fact, she sees that, “Many people get into bookbinding through their love of old books, including me. I started out specializing in traditional bookbinding.”

But, she gradually learned how to achieve more contemporary designs. Her hallmark innovative style has received awards all over the world. She was the winner of Spain’s National Artistic Bookbinding Award in 2017, and her work has earned recognition in Spain, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. “My work is held in the National Library of Spain, the National Library of Scotland, in the Museum Meermanno – House of the Book in The Hague, and in private collections,” she adds proudly.

Bookbinding is designed to protect

Susana defines bookbinding as the art of protecting both text and images. She believes that the key thing isn’t the binding itself, it’s what you’re protecting that's important. So as a binder, your job involves creating a shield for the work inside.

She herself experiments with all sorts of materials and techniques, often borrowing from other disciplines. In her view, a book cover should reflect its contents which means what’s inside shapes the outside design and her choice of materials, allowing her to create something that fits.

“We’re not graphic designers. Cover design and creation is always very subjective. Books were heavily decorated even into the 1960s and 1970s. But binders have moved away from the obvious and now rely on more personal interpretations,” Susana explains.

The central challenge involved in binding a novel or story is that you need to protect the work without warping its spirit. You can’t distort or contaminate the author’s work.

The value of handmade bookbinding is its creative process: the choice of materials, the way in which you combine and work them. When Susana finishes a book, it no longer belongs to her. She has fulfilled her purpose. The book is now free to establish a relationship with the world and its readers. Her project leaves the sphere of the intimate and personal to take on a wider context, opened up to what other people think.

Códex, a studio that brings bookbinding to life

Susana wants her studio Códex to foster creativity and seek new approaches to bookbinding and art. It’s a place for sharing knowledge, ideas, and promoting the importance of artistic bookbinding, a profession that doesn’t receive much public recognition.

Códex is the way in which she and her colleagues fight to keep the profession alive—in both its traditional and contemporary forms.

Rather than becoming trapped by fear of failure, Susana encourages people to always experiment, whatever their field or passion. She tries to capture this philosophy in all her work and to teach her students the importance of trial and error—she even kept the first book she ever bound, to ensure none of her students ever feel embarrassed. After all, it's not just about the finished product, it's also about the journey and lessons along the way.

To learn more about the art of bookbinding with Susana Domínguez, explore her online courses, Bookbinding Your Artwork Without Folds and Handmade Binding without Stitches.

For more top advice from creative legends, explore the Maestros section of our blog.

English version by @studiogaunt.

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