Mark

Mark Andersson is a book conservator, bookbinder and instructor. Mark was a two term President of the Guild of Book Workers, the national organization for those involved in binding, conservation and all aspects of book arts.  Over the years, since repairing his first book in 1987, Mark has also taught numerous workshops and short courses as well as tutored several individual students. 

Articles featuring Mark have appeared in the New York Times, the Seattle Times, and The Christian Science Monitor. He has also been a guest on both local and national NPR radio interview programs, as well as several local television news programs in Seattle and Boston. (You can find links to some of those articles and broadcasts by clicking here -- including a national NPR story which explains the letterman’s jacket photo on this page, click here for a chuckle or two.) Mark has given many lectures and talks on the history of bookbinding and on the care of personal libraries.

He started Panther Peak Bindery after moving to Tucson in 2007. Clients have included the National Park Service, University of Arizona, the state of Arizona, a few counties along with other governmental groups and numerous private clients.

In 2019 and 2020 Mark was on the team conserving and rebinding the Idaho State Constitution. This project was done at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library conservation lab.  Over four days in 2019 a prototype was created, and the constitution was bound in February 2020. Mark’s part of the project involved putting covers on the text block, applying the leather on the covers and decorating the final product.

From 1998 until 2007, Mark was Department Head and  sole instructor in the North Bennet Street School’s bookbinding program for nine years. During that time he taught students from around the world all major aspects of bookbinding from historical models to full leather fine bindings with gold tooling, and all significant aspects of cloth and leather book conservation.

Before accepting the position at NBSS, Mark was a book conservator in Seattle working privately for individual and institutional clients across the United States, while also working in the Special Collections division at the University of Washington from 1992 to 1998. 

In 1996 Mark received a Fulbright Grant for the study of Scandinavian bookbinding and conservation at Uppsala University in Sweden. He also received grants from the American Scandinavian Foundation and the Washington Library Association while on the Fulbright. During this period he also took week long study trips to Finland and Denmark.

He graduated from the two year bookbinding and conservation program at NBSS in 1992. Students at NBSS sit at a bench for six (or more) hours a day and binding and repairing books for two academic years. Prior to studying at NBSS, Mark worked in the conservation department at The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston where he first began to repair books in 1987 carefully following the instructions in Jane Greenfield’s repair manual!

Mark is a member of The Guild of Book Workers, The American Institute for Conservation, Designer Bookbinders, and The Fulbright Association. He was national vice president, and later a two term president of the GBW and was a presenter at the 2004 Standards of Excellence Conference in Providence.

In his younger years, Mark taught high school social studies and played in a rock band in Seattle.