The Story of a Bookbinder and Weaver

With the recent introduction of woven goods, it's probably time I shared a bit of background on how my little business arrived at this point.

My name is Imogen, and I set up my own little creative business, Pasgadh Bindery & Weavery, a year ago.

Pasgadh is a Gaelic word which means ‘(the act) of folding’. You’ll see why this is such a fitting name for my business when you read on.

Originally, I was just making notebooks and sketchbooks. The ‘weavery’ part wasn’t added to the name until just a month ago, after picking up the craft back in the summer.

How did I get started? That’s a good question!

I spent four years at Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 2016. It’s not a time in my life that I particularly enjoyed, as it mostly crushed any confidence I had in myself as an artist. However, one of the few projects I actually enjoyed was the one where I first explored the art of bookbinding to create my first casebound book.

It wouldn’t be until eight years later that I’d get a sudden urge to try bookbinding again.

The urge came when walking through an extremely cute wynd in the Borders town of Melrose, where I spotted an adorable-looking bookbinder's studio and thought to myself, ‘Isn’t that just such an idyllic life to be a bookbinder with a very Instagrammable studio location?’.

How cute is that?!

I had been looking for a craft to do in my spare time that would satisfy my creative need and allow me to unwind from a busy day of office work, but without the frustrations that drawing and painting now cause me.

Back home, I immediately took a deep dive into learning as much as possible online about bookbinding.

It took a fair bit of trial and error, but it wasn’t long before I had decided on a style of book that I liked and the materials I wanted to use.

I knew from the start that I wanted the books I created to reflect the wild but beautiful landscape of the Scottish Highlands. I can always feel the stresses of life lifting from my shoulders when I’m outside in the Highlands. It’s not a feeling that I experience anywhere else, and I wanted to reflect this feeling in my work.

As for the weaving, that’s something else I got into quite by chance after spotting the book Weaving by Mary Maddocks in The Highland Bookshop, a wonderful independent shop in Fort William, which I highly recommend popping into if you’re passing by. The book had me hooked straightaway, and before you knew it, I had ordered a small frame loom and some cotton thread to get me started.

Initially using a few odd balls of wool from previous abandoned hobbies, I was soon having lots of fun experimenting with the different techniques.

Again, inspired by the Scottish landscape, it wasn’t long before I was spending a good chunk of my wages on gorgeous Scottish yarn, mostly from the Uists, after a fantastic trip out there, and creating bookmarks and wall-hangings based on Scottish scenes.

When I first started this particular creative journey, I thought bookbinding was the best craft for me, as I didn’t seem to get quite as frustrated while making books as I did when drawing and painting. However, my self-critical side still emerges when bookbinding, and I often berate myself if the books aren’t absolutely perfect. I have to remind myself that these are handmade books, and the whole point is that they don’t look like mass-produced Moleskine books. But strangely, this doesn’t seem to happen when I’m weaving. I seem to be much happier to just enjoy the process of weaving without being critical of the end result, accepting any small imperfections as part of the character of the weaving.

So while I’ll still be making books, I’ve got to say that weaving has become a total addiction and obsession for me!

I hope that the passion and care I put into my books and weavings come across to you when you hold these items in your hand, and that they capture the beauty and essence of the Scottish Highlands.

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