Gaillac. Traditional binding, a communicative passion

During the book festival, the introduction to “old-fashioned” bookbinding, from leaf to book, was one of the most popular workshops. It was hosted as part of Rotary Gaillac Saint-Michel by Philippe Mauran, one of the members of the club. This former senior executive at Ciments Lafarge has returned to his Gaillac origins and intends to take advantage of the time available to rediscover another youthful passion, bookbinding, to the point of considering a career change. He acquired this passion for old Books at a very young age, first from his bibliophile family, then from a Toulouse merchant. “Mr. Cau, a bookseller from the rue du Taur. I was fourteen years old. I came home, I looked at the collections. He observed me and saw that I was interested but that I was not wealthy. He said to me: you have How much? 50 francs? He hands me a 17th century book.

Return to the country

The trick is taken. When he left the company in 2017, he began training as a bookbinder, passed and obtained his CAP in 2021, then set up as a bookseller specializing in old works, bookbinder and restorer of worn bindings. He still lives in the Paris region, but is restoring a house in Castelnau-de-Montmiral and plans to set up a workshop in Gaillac. During the children's book festival, in the performance hall, children took turns binding pages with the simplest tools: a string, a loop and a needle.

Philippe Mauran took his time to show them the meticulous gestures of the bookbinder, a school of patience. He hopes to have sparked some vocations. “Giving a second life to an ancient book based solely on the skill of the hand retains an element of magic.”