Bookbinding shop to close doors after nearly 100 years
Pettingell bindery owner to complete long chapter and retire after Dec. 31
BERKELEY >> Stepping into Pettingell Book Bindery shop in Berkeley is like stepping into a time machine with a mix of nearly 100 years of history.
It smells familiar, like a used bookstore or library; leather-bound books sit in stacks behind the counter. Metal and wood tools hanging on the wall resemble pizza cutters; on the wall are black and white photos of owners past. And a device not many millennials are familiar with rings the sound of an old bell loudly: a rotary phone.
But after Dec. 31, the bindery will shutter its doors for good.
Master bookbinder and owner, Klaus Rotzscher, 65, is closing the bookbindery business that has had a 94-year presence in Berkeley. The original owner, Luis Pettingell, opened the shop in the 1920s; it was first located on University Avenue, then Center Street, until its current location at 2181 Bancroft Way.
Rotzscher has owned it since 1994, sold to him by the former owner, Theodore ( Ted) Hirshberg. He thinks he’s likely the third, or maybe fourth owner.
But business has been slow for
Rotzscher for some time now, and the coronavirus pandemic only made matters worse. He said with his lease coming to an end, and unable to find a new owner for the shop, he feels it’s time to move on and retire.
“It’s a good time for me to say goodbye,” Rotzscher said.
The shop used to be the go-to place for binding the dissertations of UC Berkeley students, newspapers, courthouse records and even police records. But now some things have gone online, or people have found other methods to bind their documents.
“It’s with a tear and a smile,” he said. “I’m happy to retire, but on the other hand, it’s a loss to the community. It’s something that can’t be replaced. Like many other skills, once they are gone, they are lost.”
Once his store closes, there are a handful of bookbinding shops in the Bay Area, including in Oakland, San Francisco and Brisbane. But not all may have the history of Pettingell.
Behind the storefront, where Rotzscher sells items he’s made, such as journals and notebooks and other paper products, is his workshop. On the shelves are rolls of leather used for book covers, paper, a paper cutter, a nearly 100-year-old press and a just-as-old cab
inet of drawers filled with various typefaces.
Rotzscher demonstrated how he puts a gold-leaf Persian design on his leather notebooks to sell. The gold leaf sheet is placed under a heated press stamp, which contains the design, and Rotzscher simply pulls down on a lever that leaves the gold design on the cover.
Besides binding books and documents, he also repairs and restores books: family heirlooms, first edition books, books damaged by water or that are just breaking down by old age. He flipped through a family Bible from the late 1800s, which had a space in the middle of the pages for marriage certificates and for family members to write down births and deaths.
“In most cases, it was the only book people had, so it was a family treasure,” he said.
For this one, the hardback cover was falling apart, and he explained it will need a new spine and end pieces, and he’ll need to mend loose and damaged pages.
He restores hundreds of books a year, working alone with music on, talking to customers on the phone, but surrounded by books. It’s sometimes meticulous work that requires patience and creativity on tough repairs and restorations.
“You have to have a love for books, for the object itself,” he said.
He’s seen everything
from people using duct tape to keep books together (not a good idea), to serious mildew damage, which he won’t really touch because mildew can travel, and he can’t have that on his books in the shop, he explained.
Earlier this year, he bound a book of songs by a local composer that was given to Pope Francis.
“It’s very rewarding when you finish a project, and you give it to the customer, and they are happy. Because in many cases, they can’t imagine what it would look like when they give me an old, beaten-up book. Then they get it back, and it looks almost like new,” he said.
When he first began his work more than 40 years ago as an apprentice in Germany, his father took him to meet the local bookbinder, to see if he would be a good fit.
When they shook hands, the bookbinder told him: “I’m glad you don’t have sweaty hands, or else that would disqualify you,” Rotzscher said with a chuckle.
He went on to get two master’s degrees in bookbinding in Munich. Before owning the shop in Berkeley in 1994, he had a store in San Francisco.
In his retirement, he hopes to get some sleep at night, not worrying about a project or the business.
He wants to spend time in his garden, volunteering and working on his stamp collection.