Pistil Books creates our own line of blank books and journals made from discarded library books.
Product listings for Blank Books - Recycled Ex-library
Most of the old library books that we use have a library binding made from buckram, a stiff, durable cloth made from cotton or linen. Library buckram bindings are made in bright colors and multi-colored patterns, and are easy to wipe clean after marred by borrower's dirty hands. Often children's library books previous to the seventies had an illustration printed on the buckram cover.
These books are marked by the library with stamps, stickers, bar codes, pockets, and the like, I find these very markings and institutional traces to be charming and sometimes beautiful.
Some of the library markings that have their own special appeal are the perforated stamp, spelling out the library name in tiny holes, the stickers from the maker of library bindings - often in a metallic paper, with cool names like "Bound to Stay Bound," notices and warnings of fines to the library borrower, and instructions on the proper treatment of books.
