Kade Veertien is a two-bench bookbinding and paper conservation atelier on the north bank of the IJ. We bind small editions by hand, build protective enclosures, and repair books, maps and loose archival paper for libraries, designers and private owners.
Bring us somethingCase, coptic, long-stitch and full-leather bindings for editions of five to about two hundred. Printed sheets welcome; we fold, sew and finish.
Dry cleaning, tear repair with Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste, deacidification, flattening and rehousing of water-damaged or brittle paper.
Clamshell boxes, phase boxes, portfolios and slipcases cut to the object. Buffered board, cotton tape, no adhesives that cannot be reversed.
Binding dummies and material mock-ups for publishers and graphic designers who want to feel the spine before the print run is committed.
Family albums and scrapbooks taken apart, cleaned, interleaved and resewn so the pages stop tearing at the hinge every time they are turned.
Saturday workshops for four people at a time: pamphlet stitch, Japanese stab binding, and a two-day course on the simple case binding.
Bring the object by, or send photographs of the spine, the boards and the worst page. Most questions are answered in ten minutes at the bench.
You get a short report: what is failing, what we would do, what we would deliberately leave alone, a price and a realistic date. Nothing starts before you agree.
Treatment is documented as it happens. For conservation work we photograph before, during and after, and the record goes with the object when it leaves.
Everything goes home in an enclosure that fits it, with a page of notes on how to store and handle it so you do not need us again soon.
Sanne Vermeer trained as a bookbinder in Den Haag and spent seven years in the conservation workshop of a regional archive before setting up on her own in 2017. The atelier took its name from the quay it sits on.
The work is slow on purpose. There are two benches, one board shear older than anyone who uses it, a nipping press, and a cast-iron guillotine that is wound by hand. Nothing here runs faster than a person can watch it.
We prefer materials that behave predictably in fifty years: linen thread, rag board, hand-made Japanese papers, reversible pastes. If a repair cannot be undone by the next person to open the book, we look for another repair.
Small jobs are welcome. A paperback whose spine has cracked is as interesting to us as a seventeenth-century atlas, and considerably more common.
Drop-in is fine on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. For anything heavy, fragile or larger than a shoebox, write first and we will agree a time and a door to use.
Quotes are free. Assessment of a damaged object is free. We do not buy or sell books.