About / History

A brief history of Blissett Bookbinders

Frederick Blissett completed his 7 year apprenticeship with one of London's premier bookbinding companies when he returned from WW1 in 1919. In 1920 he started F.J. Blissett Bookbinders in a small room just 100 yards from where we are located today. His wife Mary joined him as they battled to make ends meet with their two sons Fred and Frank during the depression years of the 20's.

Frederick died in 1932 leaving Mary to run the business and despite the difficulties of a young family and being a woman in a "man's world" she maintained the business and made it thrive even during the days of WW2 when this part of London was heavily bombed.

Fred and Frank returned to the bindery in 1946 and the company moved to its current premises in 1962 in a purpose built 15,000 sq. ft factory. Over the next 25 years the business grew and today the bindery is set out over two floors with 8,000 square feet dedicated to bookbinding and restoration of old books with a further 3,000 sqaure feet being dedicated to printing on demand, commercial digital print, printed books and photo/year books and a host of allied services.

Gary Blissett joined the business in 1980 and up until 1992 there were three generations working together. In 1982 Fred retired and in 1992 Mary and Frank retired. The business employed 36 highly trained bookbinding staff and had delved a little into the new digital printing market place. Chris Blissett became the fourth generation to join the business in 2009.

As the largest specialist bookbinder in the South of England we look after the needs of many public, academic and specialist/private libraries throughout the UK and we were honoured to be granted a Royal Warrant by Her Majesty The Queen as bookbinders in 2010.

Today the organisation employees 50 staff overall and continues to invest in state of the art machinery whilst also keeping a close eye on the skills training of hand bookbinding and restoration and conservation of books. These core skills combine fantastically with the "on demand" and short run nature of digital print so that today our services are not limited to our traditional market of rebinding books for libraries. It includes photobooks, special books and digital printing for the most discerning of clients including museums, publishers, photographers as well as private individuals/collections.