Craft
Inside the Print Shop: How Our Books Are Made
A photo essay from the presses outside Vienna, where our autumn titles were sewn, glued and trimmed.
By The PersePix editors · 7 August 2026 · 6 min read
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Forty minutes by train from our office there is a print shop with a letterpress older than everyone who operates it. This autumn’s clothbound editions came through those machines, and we went along to watch.
Paper first, ink second
- Uncoated cream stock arrives in 1.2-tonne rolls and rests for two weeks to reach room humidity.
- Plates are proofed in five colours; the fifth colour — the teal — is always mixed last and adjusted by eye.
- Signatures are sewn, not glued, for every hardcover above 200 pages.
- Each copy is trimmed to a tolerance of 0.4 mm and inspected by a person, not a camera.
“The machine knows everything except when to stop. That is still my job.”