European Business Awards 2013/14 Golden medal on Poznań International Fair 2014 - Consumers' Choice Golden medal on Poznań International Fair 2013 Microentrepreneur of the Year 2012 Golden medal on Poznań International Fair 2009 Golden Denar 2008 strona polska

Bookbinding - Kurtiak & Ley

Creative artistic bookbinding

How should books be bound to achieve creative and magical results?

What key factors should be taken into account when binding and rebinding?

Why is it so important in binding to harmonize covers with books?

Our artistic bindings are done to match where and when the action happened or when it was written. In our bibliophile bindings we pay special attention on contents, thoughts and ideas found in the book. If all is in harmony books become more friendly, irresistible and useful since contents and thoughts can be well assimilated with ease.

William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew. Purple suede with inlays of red, light violet and gold beige leather in artistic decorative renaissance design. This creation was inspired by Florentine binding.
We use the best quality material such as silver, gold, stones, velum, hand made papers, leather, silk and other fibers. This contributes to the exceptionally unique nature of our bibliophile and artistic bindings.
Most of our clients ask for our exclusive bindings to use as presents for others and some ask for Contemporary bindings as well. Some of our clients are The H S B C, The Citibank, IBM, HP, Hotel Sheraton, Becton Dickinson, Late Pope John Paul the second and Benedict the sixteenth, The Polish President, The Polish Government and some lovers of books.
Our design bindings are always justified artistically and intellectually. This allows us to achieve the best results.

The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings

Two different bindings of  The Lord of The Rings (polish version: Władca Pierścieni) were published and both were done using  a new kind of binding invented by The Artistic Publishing House in Koszalin called Erudite binding.

The first edition was hand bound in high quality black calf leather with dragon optic leather, amber and crushed white and blue foil at the top of the cover. The black binding portrays the mystery and the lurking evil that was threatening  Middle-Earth. The tower of Mordor on the cover was made with relief technique on the top of which is the scary eye of Sauron presented in red exclusive amber in silver. The fore edge beautiful Tolkien themed paintings of Saruman’s fortress was done by excellent artists.


The Chinese Panpipe
The Chinese Panpipe – the collection of Chinese poems bound in the circular form of the Yin-Yang symbol

The Trilogy
Henryk Sienkiewicz’s The Trilogy with hand made paintings on the edges of each volume

Adam and Eve’s Diaries
Mark Twain’s Adam and Eve’s Diaries – the innovative „framebook” binding

Letters of St. John of the Cross
Letters of St. John of the Cross printed on hand-made paper

Conservation of old prints

Conservation of works of art including books is a laborious task requiring very comprehensive knowledge, practice and skills. Since 1989 our art studio has been repairing valuable old printings thus restoring their beauty. For years, old printings of the Pomeranian Academy of Pedagogy were repaired in our artistic bindery and everything had to be done so that there were no traces of any changes of the printings. Old books have been entrusted to us by many collectors, and some of the books received new artistic bookbinding. French bookbinders often repair old printings in the same way for the National Library in Paris. In fact old printings often do not have original antique binding from the epoch because of the continuous repairs of the bindings and printings over the centuries. Nowadays it is not necessary to make new artistic bindings look like bindings in that epoch. We like the brave French approach to old printings.