Small Edition of Hand Bound Books

Short Run Of Books Printed and Bound in Portland, Oregon

We love working with clients to build fine, custom hand-bound books. We specialize in exposed spine stitching, and can add debossing, screenprinting, and letterpress artwork to book covers. (Please contact us for further details if you have a project. See our FAQ page for general pricing and turnaround time.)

The project below was for the 100th anniversary of the local electrician's union. They asked us to build 20 books that included the history of their organization. We used black thread in a long stitch style to bind the pages, which were printed by local shop Bridgetown Printing. Within a recess on the cover is a plaque letterpress printed by KeeganMeegan & Co.

See Other Binding Styles • View Other Custom Work • See Logos on Book Covers

Heirloom Photo Presentation Box

A Personal, Timeless Gift

We were recently asked to build an incredible keepsake for a former First Lady. What an honor. Our client wanted to collect photos of the First Lady's experiences around the world, and preserve them in an archival, handmade album. Since the photos were going to be large and many, we ultimately chose to build a clamshell box. The box provides a stunning way to showcase the photos, and allows the viewer to hold and experience each photo individually.

Watching the First Lady carefully view each photo and talk about the experience it represented was truly memorable. We were so thankful to work on this, and to have a client who values and supports our craft. Thank you also, to Pushdot Studio, for their incredible work on the image printing.

View Custom Work • Shop Clamshell Boxes • More About Boxes

Blind Debossing Books in Portland

Logos Imprinted on Book Covers

If custom made books are great, then personalized books are excellent! Here at HSS we have a handy Kwikprint Foil Stamper (named Winston), which we use to imprint logos and names on book covers (sorry, we are not able to deboss on any other items). We recently completed a job for R/West printing Bridgeport Brewing logos on beer journals. Our own debossed branding and a portrait of Winston are also below. Have a look!

Contact us if you're interested in having us blind deboss for you. See more debossing samples in the Personalization section of our Gallery.

Our Family Has Grown

Please pardon the blog hiatus...

It has been a bit since I've updated our blog -- in August I gave birth to a baby boy. While Molly has continued cutting, sewing, tearing, binding, gluing, and shipping, I have been busy changing, burping, feeding, playing, and -- mostly-- adjusting.

But we are still busy here at the studio, and we are still making a shipping orders across the world. So this is just a quick "Hello! We're still around! We still love what we do! And our family has grown."

(P.S. This little boy shows remarkable dexterity -- he'll be sewing books with us in no time.)

Custom Book Cloth Colors

New Colors for Custom Albums, Portfolios, and Boxes

We're excited to announce that we've recently added ten, count 'em, TEN new cloth colors to our product line. These cloths are our "Professional Palette," and are perfect for post-bound portfolios, or for a clean, simple finish on photo albums:

For comparison, our existing colors, in our "Heirloom," "Nautral," and "Baby" palette are below:

All of our online products are now available in any of these colors. Woo hoo!

Shop Portfolios • Shop Photo Albums • Shop Baby Book