About
In my life, there has never been a shortage of paper … but there has always been a desire for more.
My dad was a printer, and he regularly brought home paper in various forms & formats: stacks of paper, scraps of paper, pads of paper… and assorted printed samples. This was my absolute FAVOURITE part of the day.
In my childhood bedroom was a little walk-in closet, where I regularly hung out for hours, amusing myself by arranging and rearranging all my paper samples. I think of my bookbinding studio today as a much larger version of that closet.
I hope you will enjoy this retrospective of memorable moments & milestones in my evolution from paper collector to custom bookbinder to shopkeeper and teacher. (I’ve included links to my blog posts describing details & developments.)
June 28, 2022 My seven-year anniversary on Lincoln Avenue. To celebrate the occasion, I offer shoppers a BZS creativity keepsake: 7 sumptuous scraps in a Cambridge Imprint envelope, super-sealed with a baby butterfly clip covered in Japanese paper AND flap-happy-strips of washi.
May 2022 I fly to San Diego to film two bookbinding and two boxmaking workshops for The Crafter’s Box. My preparations are extensive, as I need to make “progressive” models of each structure. I feel a bit like Julia Child! The workshops will debut in the summer and fall.
July 2021 Janet Bouldin, Alyson Kuhn, and I collaborate on Glimpses & Whimsies of Bari Zaki Studio, my first set of shop postcards (10!). Janet illustrates, Alyson captions, and I wrap & rhapsodize.
February 2021 My postal muse & I collaborate on an intricate kit we name More Art of the Handfolded Envelope. Janet Bouldin does the illustrations. Customers delight in showing-and-telling me about their favourite envelope fodder. Such creations are among my favourite mail!
December 2020 Merrill Smith, a long-time customer, debuts her Apple a Day fundraiser to honor a friend who had died of ovarian cancer. Merrill had made a hundred glazed ceramic apples, and had asked me to help her design a display box for them. She made dozens of bookboard boxes, covered in Japanese and other decorative papers. Merrill’s apples sold like hotcakes.
November 2020 Bari Zaki Studio holds its first online studio sale. Shoppers everywhere can get in on the action. Because the software pings me every time an order comes in, it sounds like a pinball arcade!
October 2020 The Cambritish are coming! Brilliant paper goods from Cambridge Imprint arrive: a party, a plethora of happy patterns on sheets and envelopes and origami butterflies. Our hearts take flight…and I order more and more and more Cambridgerton novelties.
September 2020 Cat Bennett and I co-teach our first four-Saturday Bookful workshop via Zoom. She is in Boston, I am in Chicago, and we are delirious. Bookful of Art attracts 40-ish students. Several of them will go on to take four, or five, or six more Bookfuls in the next two years.
July 2020 Jill Schroeder is the first student to take a private bookbinding workshop via Zoom. She makes a Long-stitch binding covered in a big botanical illustration, with Hahnemühle Eurokraft pages. She takes it with her when she moves to Europe, describing it as “a perfect memory keeper.”
June 2020 I create a booster edition of Bundles of Stationery Joy to help save the USPS. Good taste stops me from naming them Bundles of Anti-DeJoy Joy. Thanks to my kind customers, I raise $700 to donate to MoveOn’s #Save the Post Office campaign.
Mid-March 2020 Pandemic! I close my retail shop, cancel in-person/in-studio workshops, buy masks, and begin to muse. My first blog post of the shelter season is “Stationery for the socially stationary.” Appreciations (and sales) motivate me to start posting twice a week.
Early March 2020 Steve and Carla Sonheim make their first visit to Bari Zaki Studio, to film me making a loopy link stitch book for their Words & Pictures 2020 year-long online class. (They are almost the last people to be in the shop before you-know-what.) My segment sparks a loopy lot of sales.
Jan. 2019 I travel to the National Stationery Show in NYC. I get to see the beautiful Studio Carta booth, and to attend my postal muse’s talk about creative retailing.
Dec 2018 The year ends on a high note when I stitch many sets of beautiful booklets (shipped from California) for Johnston, a client’s grandmother’s memoir. The covers are letterpress printed on paper handmade from heirloom family linens. They are luscious. I invite customers to drop by and peruse!
Sept. 2018 I fly to Boston to teach a weekend of workshops at Angela Liguori’s Studio Carta. I also fit in a visit to the studio of Cat Bennett in nearby Watertown.
Sept. 2018 Alyson Kuhn, a.k.a. my postal muse, sends me a birthday envelope made from a September 1962 Serizawa calendar page. This inspires A Season of Serizawas, a second season, and a subsequent season, and, in due course, a Serizawa-centric bookbinding workshop.
2017 Carla & Steve Sonheim invite me to Seattle to film a buttonhole stitch workshop for Sonheim Creative. I have a glorious time and learn a lot.
2016 The Cubs win the World Series! I receive a grand-slam commission to make a one-of-a-kind, two-volume commemorative album.
2015 The space next door to Union Handmade becomes available! I open Bari Zaki Studio on June 28 … and start offering classes in September, some taught by me and some by talented guest calligraphers.
2014 The success of my papeterie trunk show at Union Handmade further feeds my now-less-recessive retail gene.
2013 Leigh Deleonardo invites me to be the “paper purveyor” at her new collective, Union Handmade on Lincoln Avenue. I go to visit the space and swoon with delight. I experience my second Dorothy Moment.
2009 My tenth annual holiday sale is a fabulously festive milestone.
2005 I launch barizaki.com.
2004 I learn to email.
1999 I send elaborate invitations via mail to my first holiday sale. Decorating and assembling and wrapping, oh my! This fans the flames of my desire to have a studio/shop/salon.
1997 I start collecting mostly epistolary accessories: stationery, postcards, vintage postage, books, and ribbon. And pencils. O, and did I say pencils? I begin to dream of having a studio/shop/salon.
1996 I set up shop in a teeny tiny storefront in Roscoe Village, initially sharing the space with a letterpress printer. We hang beautiful gauzy linen curtains in the display window. I work on private commissions, primarily for photographers, graphic designers, artists, and other people who love paper.
1995 Michael Zaki (a.k.a. Zak) and I get married in Italy. We return with an extra suitcase overflowing with paper treasures from Venice, Florence, Fabriano, Siena … and England for dessert.
1992 I commission artist Audrey Niffenegger (who will go on to write “The Time Traveller’s Wife”) to illustrate a bookplate for me. I love “Lady Ardour” immediately. Thirty years later, I still love her. You can see her atop every page on my website.
1991 I become a frequent shopper at Aiko’s, a Japanese art materials shop downtown. I am in awe of the papers, the owners, the everything.
1990 I decide to become a bookbinder! I purchase a board-cutter, a bookpress, and tons of paper. I set everything up in a tiny corner at my dad’s printing company. And I begin making book after book after book.
1989 I take a series of classes at Artists Bookworks in bookbinding and boxmaking. They are transformative.
1988 One afternoon, I am shopping at Paper Source (in its original incarnation as a small, independently-owned shop) for drawing papers. Inside a plexiglas cube, I see a handmade book. I am amazed and curious. Somebody in Chicago has made this by hand?! I am incredulous. And I need to learn how to do it too.
1987 I receive an Italian blank book from a friend. He has made the first entry in it for me: an endearing doodle. In retrospect, this was my first Dorothy Moment, when I found my way home to my earlier love of paper. (Yes, I still have the book.)
