Dźwiedźma is a bookbinder based in Kashubia who hand-sews notebooks and sketchbooks using a 17th-century method – built to be indestructible, most often in velour covers. She designed and patented her own plein-air sketchbook, and she also binds and repairs books. You will find her notebooks, plein-air sketchbooks and suncatchers at Locus Artis in Gdańsk.
It started with a comic. For her diploma at an art high school in 2014, Dźwiedźma drew a story and bound it herself – and, as she recalls, the binding absorbed her far more than the drawing. Back then she didn’t know this could be a profession. She started looking, and in 2019 she found a bookbinding course and her masters. “It was definitely me who went looking for bookbinding, not the other way round,” she writes.
She holds a Master of Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk and has passed her journeyman’s exam, and since June 2023 she has run her own business. The name grew out of her first name: Michalina, Misia, Miś, Niedźwiedź (bear), and finally Dźwiedź – a nickname first made up for LARP games. She added the ending “-ma” when she took up the magical arts, but, as she writes, the greatest magic she found was in books.
She sews her notebooks by hand using a 17th-century method. A single notebook takes about four hours and some 80 steps, and they are made in series. She specialises in velour bindings and makes notebooks that keep up with whatever is written in them – ones you don’t have to worry about damaging. They are meant to be everyday companions and, in time, keepers of memories that can be passed on.
What she brought to Locus Artis.
She brought notebooks in colour combinations unusual for a collection, plein-air sketchbooks, suncatchers and handy little odds and ends. From this delivery she would pick for herself a notebook with green pages and heart-shaped dots, and a plein-air sketchbook.
Dźwiedźma takes custom orders.