Combining the skills of bookbinding and restoration with the cyber savvy of custom digital book publishing and podcasting, Octavia Book Bindery is a shop with one foot rooted in tradition and one in the future.
Curiously, the first thing one notices on a visit to the shop is a storefront sign that reads, “Established in 1926.”
“I am the fourth owner of The Calgary Book Bindery, and I decided to change the company name,” says the erudite and affable Robert L. Angus. “When I took it over in 2008, my mentor was 84. It was founded by his grandfather.”
The road to becoming an elite practitioner of the classic art of bookbinding started in 2003 when Robert was publishing chapbooks (handcrafted literary booklets) for a number of authors and selling them on eBay. His customers began asking if they could produce these books in hardcover or have them leather bound. It got him thinking. Then it got him studying. He apprenticed for four years under an expert mentor, and this eventually lead him to buy the book bindery and to adapt its services to the 21st Century.
