Here’s a final look inside Kater Crafts.

The best part of the visit had to be Grace. Grace is responsible for making the final decorative looks for each piece. Perfectly cut and molded leather casings and imprints that wrap around are only done with her hands.

She’s worked most of her life not just for her three kids, but to make every book that comes her way as flawless as possible. After all the years, she’s embraced the simpler lifestyles and found that it brings out the true happiness that everyone else is hunting for.

Here, Bruce runs through the spines of all the different books. After the foundation to each piece is set, the bones that will support each piece is pulled from this rack, which then continues off to final adjustments and decorations.

Along  the production line a couple of these covers were lying around. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology bibles all had intricately designed stamps and embossments to tailor to each ethnic culture-filipinos, arabs, indians, english etc……Kind of crazy, but not sure if there’s a difference between the ideas of the books below and the images above?

This then made more sense why Tom Cruise’s private collection was all over the place and up in the mix……

Being one of the oldest factories around, the place was filled with crazy objects from a combination from Bruce and the employees. This a dried out skeleton of a blow fish sat on the high shelves overlooking the entire place.

And finally, the complete transformation of all the raw goods are processed and ready to go. Seeing this whole thing through gave me alot more appreciation for the value of books and the impact they have to each industry. It might not matter now, but when it’s all over, I got a feeling books are going to hold a lot more weight to who we were, and what we did then the internet. Until then.

I went along with Rob Clayton, and David Tillinghast to meet Bruce Kavin who gave us a run through of what goes into the art of book binding at the one an only Kater Crafts. Kater Crafts is one of last true traditional binding production vendors in this town, whose work carries out throughout every genre and industry out there. And who still actively supplies the declined, but alive need for print.

Everything from libraries, museums, school books, to Tom Cruise home editions and Scientology archives, to Mark Ryden specialties, and everyone else-the art of book binding remains the same as it did in the beginning of the 20th century–a form of art. Like everything else, you never understand the level of work, time and craftsmanship to each form of print until you see it for yourself.

Print will never die. Here’s why….

Once upon a time, when music had substance, when minds of the youth directed the  culture, and when people went to get information from things called books–mankind found a tool to document, describe, or rewrite history. Print, regardless of the form I think is crucial especially in the arts. Today google can solve your life’s problems, but you have to wonder how they did, what they did back in the renaissance or beyond that. Just the process of using your brain to hunt for information changed the way your brain functioned all together. Maybe having the world at your fingertips is too easy—maybe it’s poisen.

Bruce takes us into the daily production grind on how things are done, showing us every method from signatures, to side sewing, bounding, stamping, case binding–all of it.

A common client like LA ’unified’ school systems  used to drop off huge loads of old beat down text books on a regular, but these days the quantities have gotten smaller due to state’s budget and debt. In the fight for corporate finance, education is the last priority.  All the textbooks that you used to roll your blunt on top of in high school ends up here to get a facelift. The content body pages are re trimmed, glued, hardcover’s replaced, and transformed for the next generation to run through them.

The warehouse itself functions off of the old school machinery used since the beginning of the trade. All in-house, all love. The workers in a meditative state of peace, go through round after round of books throughout the day by hand. Bruce says that in China, the’ve replaced the human labor with hi-tech machines, but of course, the quality is never the same.

Old print news archives from The New Yorker, Times, etc. are all reformatted and archived like new to be shipped back out into circulation. Seems like more people spend time staring at a screen, click, tweet, click and tweet again. But there are still some of us that need the real deal. The feel and turn of each page versus a fixed screen makes the most subtle differences in the moment, but in the long run have proven to change brain activity–Apple calls it “the independently enhanced experience in the controlled environment.”

“the independently enhanced experience…

…in the controlled environment.”

Stay tuned for a final go around of  the warehouse production. In the meantime please follow instructions below.

Right before the rain….not a soul in sight…

Another 6am~ Art Center.

If your in LA you’ve probably seen the posters throughout the city. The Getty has been displaying their recent addition from their collection of lost blueprints of daVinci and sculptures from Rustici. I finally got to cut loose to look at the pieces up close…….speechless. Since you’ve seen our loyal clients and their  spiritual/renaissance collections that are posted here often and the tattoo culture at large who’s being fixated on the general theme, I think it’s important we get specific with some of the first to do it.

They have security all over these pieces trying to kill people with cameras…….. but because it’s you……

These Rustici pieces stand guard at the end of collection, towering over all viewers. Bronze casted, and flawless, all aesthetics hold true to daVinci’s study’s and view on human anatomy.

Seeing this and the sketches of da Vinci give testament and another reminder to this kind of work as a whole and the purpose that exceeds the hands of time.

When we talk about a true Renaissance man, we  are talking about an individual that pushes through to every level of mediums and sees past the given role in either his profession or society or both. Exceeding all expectations,  amongst the many different mediums he chooses to question, investigate and create changes where there is none–regardless of the conditions of his environment.

It’s stated the journals that are found contain plans and blueprints of ideas and inventions that have provided the groundwork for our present day science, mechanics, military, geology, mathematics, architecture and painting. After they first decode the scripts, many new ideas are just now being discovered.

I never believed them, and still don’t when people refer to someone having “talent”. Let’s be honest-humans aren’t born equal. The reality is we don’t all have equal opportunity, equal education, equal social class, physical health, money, lifestyles etc–everything for everyone, everywhere is different. What is constant is time–and how we choose to use it. Most of us look back at men like da Vinci and call him genius but then overlook the thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands of study’s, scripts, sketches and most importantly his failures. What separated him from his peers was the never ending hunger to learn, consistently, and constantly-not talent. What appears to be magic for outsiders is a lifetime of selfless work.

Here’s a look some other pieces in the later eras for reference.

If you have time, choose to use it. Go and see  da Vinci and Rustici.

Thank you to everyone who took time out to come to support the event. A special thanks to C1rca, SOV, DJ Mike my boys Lucks and Albert, and all of LT family.

Photos courtesy of Yuri