Ivor Stone, manager of Chivers-Period Bookbinders, pauses for a few moments under the stern gaze of the firm's Victorian founder (a portrait of Cedric Chivers hangs upon Stone's office wall) before making his reply: If a client requested him to bleach the pages of a book to remove the stains, would he do it, knowing that by doing so the life of that book could be irreparably curtailed?

"If someone wants it bleached, I will bleach it. At the end of the day, we are here to make money," he says eventually. "But I will ensure they understand there is chance damage could be caused as a result."

Though to some this may seem a ruthless attitude, in the present economic climate it is a necessary one. And Stone is all too aware of the dangers the Credit Crunch threatens – it sent Cromwell Press, Chivers-Period's parent company, into administration in January this year.

Thankfully, ex-Midway Press owner John Boden stepped in and bought Cromwell press and its subsidiaries. "We knew Cromwell Press had problems, but we probably didn't realise that it was as bad as it apparently was," Stone reveals. "However, in the three months since John took over, we have been ahead of budget and providing a decent return." 

Providing a decent return is something Chivers-Period has done for more than 130 years. Cedric Chivers, whom Stone descibes as the "Victorian Richard Branson", set up the company in 1878 as a bookbinder. It continued as a close-knit family- and staff-owned enterprise until 1990. That year, Freddy Johnston of Johnston Press spotted an opportunity and bought the company, shifting it from its Bath base to a site in Trowbridge, where it still resides. In 1997, a management buy-out saw the company change hands again, before Cromwell Press took the reigns in 2004, merging Cedric Chivers with another recent acquisition Period Bookbinders.

Eye of the storm
Stone has been with the company since 1982, watching the different owners come and go. He says that, despite the management changes, the company has continued to operate in the same way as it always has. Its extensive bookbinding operation consists of delicate restorations with the help of the firm's paper conservation lab, new bindings for libraries and publishers, academic bindings and pretty much anything else you are willing to throw at them. "We will bind anything," Stone promises. Clients range from private individuals to the high-profile, such as Kew Gardens, the Imperial War museum and the Cabinet War rooms.

The work is highly skilled and requires a particularly patient mind. Unfortunately, as with elsewhere in print, there is a lack of training to ensure the future of the craft. Stone is frustrated by the lack of help available to counter the problem.

He says: "It takes a long time to train someone and you have to try and get some production out of them while they are training as it is expensive to incur an extra overhead. This industry is a dying art, but it is still needed, so it is only fitting that the government provide some sort of grant or tax break to enable us to train up the people to continue the craft."

The situation is perhaps more urgent for Stone as, unlike elsewhere in the industry, machines are not moving in to replace people. Take a walk around the cavernous warehouse in which it is based, and hung upon most walls are the ancient tools of the bookbinding trade. Look under the desks and you will see coffee pots filled with dyes for the leather bindings. Open the drawers and you will find small containers full of tiny metal letter stamps.

However, there are some concessions to the ‘modern' for the library binding market, but these are hardly your latest technology. "Those machines are 30-40 years old now," says Stone. "You can still buy them, but they cost a lot of money, so you just have to keep them together."

The same could be said for Chivers-Period. Stone explains how the bookbinding market is plagued with uncertainty. "You can come to the end of the month and say ‘That was a good month', and then you look around and say ‘What are we going to do this month?'."

Fortunately for Stone, Chivers-Period does not seem to have too many problems keeping its 20 staff occupied. At present, it is in the bracket of businesses able to show a profit in a depressed market. A lot of that is down to the legacy of quality passed down by Cedric Chivers himself, who still casts a perfecting eye over proceedings from the wall of the lofty manager's office and the signs are that he will still have something to observe for many a year yet.

Box
Manager Ivor Stone
Staff 20
Established 1878
Services Bookbinding, book restoration, paper conservation
Clients include Kew Gardens. Imperial War Museum, Cabinet War Rooms