Wyvern Street Art

This is not graffiti! It is the logo of the Wyvern Bindery painted on the shop shutters. The only way you will see it is to visit the bindery when it is closed! When open, the shop can be identified by its shop sign exhibiting equivalent talent.

Hand-made sign, hand-painted logo – a real labor of love and entrepeneurship characteristic of old Clerkenwell Road, London. It is here that watchmakers and printers made Clerkenwell famous, and now the area is the "largest media hub in Europe with, arguably, the greatest concentration of architects' and designers' offices in the world", according to Spotlight on Clerkenwell.

I was so curious as to what lay behind this shop shutter that I went in today. Blimey! It was like stepping into the past. Stacks of paper, rolls of leather, patterned inner binding, spools of binding ribbon, bound and unbound books on every surface, and in prime location, three old screw compression book presses. I thought the shop might date from the 1800s, but in fact, it has been in business only 21 years. On the shelf behind the till were rows of reference books, including one on "Japanese Bookbinding" (Weatherhill, 1986). Serious craftspeople, here.

If anyone needs their dissertation bound, they do it in two days. Much more fun to go there to have it done than at austere and sterile Prontaprint or the likes.