Back in early 2024 Jeff Peachey reached out to me asking about a weird contraption for sewing books (my description) that he found in Wilhelm Leos' 1920 catalog. Leos was one of the largest and most comprehensive bookbinding supply wholesalers and publishers in Germany and the field; they still exist.
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| Page from Leos 1920 catalog advertising the Schnellheflade. |
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| Detail view from the catalog page. |
The snap Jeff sent me looked very familiar and sent me into my usual rabbit holes related to the literature of the time. Now, where did I see this before?!?! Turns out to have been depicted in Hermann Nitz's 1931 Die Technik des Bucheinbandes (The Techniques of Bookbinding), a booklet aimed at bibliophiles, much like Ernst Collin's Pressbengel (The Bone Folder, read via links at left). Nitz was a fine binder who married the best of industrial/trade binding with hand binding.
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| Image from Hermann Nitz's 1931 Die Technik des Bucheinbandes (The Techniques of Bookbinding). |
Also incredibly intriguing, Jeff interpreted this contraption to build a working model.
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| Jeff Peachey's working interpretation. |
So, we decided to write an article about this together, a fun experience that revealed that a) the idea of this kind of device was older than we thought; b) existed in several variants; and c) was offered longer than we thought. The results of our adventure were published as Peachey, Jeff and Verheyen, Peter D. "German Hybrid Book Sewing Machines". Guild of Book Workers Journal, Vol. 54, 2025. (14-32). Read the full article here.
I love research projects like this – a huge thank you to Jeff for reaching out and very pleased to have contributed to this and some of his other publications. Also, a big thank you to Susie Cobbeldick, editor of the Guild of Book Workers' Journal for her work with us.
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