Slow books: The art of bookmaking at Toronto’s Lumiere

It seems like things aren’t made in the city anymore. Objects we can pick up and hold. Physical things are now made in far-off places. This once-mighty industrial metropolis is into more ephemeral things now — finance, arts, technology — and many of the locations where such industry happened have become expensive loft conversions.

However, in a workshop on the near-west side of Toronto, Michael Torosian publishes exquisitely made books on photography that have made their way into collections across the globe. Lumiere Press, operating for over thirty years, makes books the slow way.

“It’s staggering to some people that a person can make a book,” says Torosian of his unique and now rather old-fashioned process. “The technology in this shop dates mostly to the early 1920s.”

Linotype machine

The linotype casting machine, which Torosian calls one of the most revolutionary machines in history, is the most complex-looking item in the shop and the place where the books first move from the idea stage to physical form. Unlike today’s books designed on computer screens, Torosian conceptualizes the book in his head and then, through trial and error, creates it on the casting machine, where molten lead is injected into brass typeface ligatures creating “slugs” that are laid out by hand, line by line, creating each page. “First we experiment, there’s some mathematics, and then we make a trial page. We might try six different typefaces,” says Torosian of the long process of prototyping a book. “It takes as long as it takes.”

Letterpress

Dating to the mid-1960s, the machine where the books are printed, the “letterpress,” is one of the newer pieces of technology in the shop. Single sheets of paper are hand fed into the press & copies are printed, then a new page is laid out using the lead slugs, and the process repeats. As most of the machines and their parts can no longer be purchased off the shelf, Torosian has novel methods of finding the things he needs. In the letterpress’s case, he got a call from somebody who knew he was looking and said there were two old ones that Torosian could make into one good, working one. “I’ve dismantled and rebuilt everything in here,” he says. “You’ve got to be part mechanic.”

Sewing Machine

A complex contraption of heavy iron and delicate threading, the ancient sewing machine binds individual sheets of paper, called “signatures,” together, but does not look like anything you might hem your pants with. Manufactured in Leipzig, Germany, in the 1920s, it’s the second-oldest piece in the workshop. “Very few were brought over to Canada,” says Torosian. Needing a manual for it, an assistant at Lumiere who spoke German called the factory in Leipzig and spoke to an old timer, who searched for one but said the part of the factory where those were kept was bombed in the Second World War, so none existed. “So we figured it out on our own,” he says. “If it breaks, we just have to figure it out.”

Book Press

Lumiere has two book presses from the early 20th century that squeeze together and hold still stacks of books once the “guts” or pages are glued to the cover. The screwlike vice is perhaps the most steampunk of all the items in the shop, and testament to how slow and manual the process is. One book will take up to a year and half to produce, and Torosian, also an accomplished photographer and photography historian himself, will often also write an accompanying essay for the books. Calling his workshop “its own world” and a “wonderful refuge,” Torosian has been able to do something many dream of: find creative independence doing something they love. “There’s no end to the curious delight in here,” he says.