We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Corinne Bortner. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Corinne below.
Corinne , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I recently had the honor of working on a set of four Hebrew-German prayer books in rough shape. They had obviously seen some things. I don’t often get to hear the backstory of how these books came into the client’s possession, but this week my boss was out of town and I got to meet with the client when I’d finished the repairs.
The client’s grandparents were in the Holocaust. They were murdered at Auschwitz. But they were able to get their children out of Germany with few belongings: their father’s violin, their mother’s jewelry, and these four prayer books.
Eventually, the prayer books were given to the granddaughter to care for. Although I didn’t participate in her first meeting and consultation to leave the books with the bindery, I remember her hesitation. We had a rather large backlog of work to get through and we estimated that we would have her books for treatment for up to nine months.
These prayer books, Holocaust survivors, hadn’t been away from the family since they sent the children to the UK. Yet, the client trusted us to keep her books safe and well cared for. I’m so grateful for that trust. I had the honor of preserving part of her history, to give those four books new strength to keep telling their story.
This is why I started doing book repairs. I want to preserve books so that our histories and herstories can be saved and told. Our stories are worth telling.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I have always been a reader.
Much of my life has been spent with a book in my hand. I was the kid on the bleachers reading during pep rallies. I bring books to group outings and am frequently found recommending new books to friends and unwilling listeners alike. I love stories. I love them as a tool for understanding our humanity in all our messy glory.
I’ve always known I wanted to work with or around books, and finally, in 2018 I decided to pursue my Masters in Library Science. I found a school with an archival track and I pictured myself a regular Evie Hammond (Rachel Weisz from the 1999 cinematic masterpiece “The Mummy”) finding rare books in foreign libraries. What I found, was much bigger. An online course on preservation showed me that books, like many objects, can be repaired, strengthened, and preserved. I hadn’t the occasion to think about what happens when a book starts to fall apart, as a kid I thought you just got a new one. But what do you do when your family genealogical pages, with original handwriting and priceless data, starts to crumble because of poor leather or acidic paper?
An online course detailing a very hands-on trade is rather difficult to grasp. Of course, finding an apprenticeship in the spring of 2020 wasn’t easy either. Eventually, I was able to meet with Andrew Huot, conservator at Big River Bindery, and learn more about book repair and preservation. After a three-day “Repair and Preservation of Circulating Materials” workshop with Andrew and the Georgia Archives, I badgered Andrew into taking me on as an intern. We were still in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, so we started January 2021, fully masked and ready to rumble.
In January of 2023, I opened CB’s Book Works. I currently do book repair out of my house, at the kitchen table. When Big River Bindery relocated to Canada, the metro-Atlanta area was left without an option for book repair. I saw the opportunity to fill that space, and fortunately, there is still a need for this type of work. I am working through some work I’ve adopted from BRB, and I have a list of my own clients as well.
Most days you can find me at the kitchen table with my tacking iron and paste repairing small tears in pages or even filling in large areas of missing pages. Some days I’m color-matching to tone Japanese tissue to repair covers or spines. Some days are spent stabilizing spines that have loosened with time and use.
CB’s Book Works offers a range of services to repair books and documents. Most books require some stabilization of the pages, spine, and covers. I can provide paper repairs and new bindings with cloth or paper covers. I am currently teaching myself how to do custom bindings with foil art and designs. I’m also learning about airbrushing and graphic design to be able to offer custom-sprayed edges with custom bindings.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
I’m in a rather fortunate position in that I’m the only private bookbinder/book repair artist currently taking clients in the Atlanta area. So clients often find me in a Google search. I also use Instagram as a primary social media for CB’s Book Works to market my services. You can also find a few business cards furtively placed in bookstores or coffee shops.
However, the best source of new clients has been word of mouth. I truly believe that it takes next to nothing for some positivity. For me, that comes in the form of positive reviews when sharing completed work, or when clients recommend my shop to others with similar book concerns. I hope that my reputation is built on the proven quality of workmanship and that my clients are happy to share their positive experiences!
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
My husband and I were traveling teachers from 2009 – 2014. We lived in Italy, China, and South Korea and spent a chunk of time in Thailand. With my BA in English Literature and his BS in English Education, we took on the world. We filled our time with adventures, cultural exploration, and live music (we love concerts and hearing new sounds). While we lived in China (2012-2014) it became obvious that it was time for us to move back to the States. We were engaged and wanted to get married with our family present. We had been living abroad for so long, we were homesick for things we didn’t even realize. In China, the pollution is horrendous, and it spikes in the fall when factories are in overproduction for the Holiday shopping season. There were sunny days we couldn’t see the sun for all the pollution. We hadn’t heard a thunderstorm in 3 years. We missed the ease of communicating with our family and friends on the other side of the planet.
So we decided to return to the US in the summer of 2014, we saw the blue sky for days on end, thunderstorms most afternoons, and met with family members most days. With plans to continue teaching (I was teaching preschool and kindergarten and he was teaching high school maths), we moved to metro Atlanta. When we got home and settled, the job search began. It was relatively easy for me to find a preschool teaching position. I had excellent credentials and tons of experience. However, I quickly saw the major differences between teaching overseas and teaching in the US. I wasn’t given any curricular freedom to adjust lessons as students’ needs changed or development required. I had learned to foster relationships and open communication with parents, but it was a hurdle to teaching here. My husband was feeling similarly disillusioned with his teaching roles. He was working in inner-city schools with no funding, no resources, and students who weren’t being listened to. In the fall of 2014, I quit my teaching job and worked at Starbucks. In the Spring of 2015, my husband quit his teaching job and started grad school.
The main pivot here wasn’t just leaving teaching, it was deciding what we needed to do to support ourselves, and the family we wanted to build, and still be able to pursue creative interests. My husband went to grad school for Accountancy and became a CPA shortly thereafter. Finally, after several years of pushy customers and corporate middle management, I decided to go to grad school for Library Science.
The deep dive and late-night conversations my husband and I had while trying to chart our path forward ultimately led us to our goals. It was terrifying and unpredictable. We worked hard, cooperated, argued, mended, and adapted. Our work lives support our family and our home lives are harmonious (well, as harmonious as possible with a strong-willed toddler living with us). 
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cbbookworks.com
- Instagram: @cbbookworks