The New York Times gift article: “First comes a love of books. Great patience and skill is required to restore old books, but equally important is the belief that each one is a work of art. The women who run the Atelier Devauchelle in Paris sew and create new bindings. They restore old bindings and torn pages. They create slipcovers and special boxes to protect fragile books. Their workshop is located near Drouot, the auction house, which sells antiquarian books…

Naïk Duca has worked at the atelier for 19 years. She presses a thin heated roller onto foil to repair gold lines on leather book covers, a process known as gauffering. She also uses an array of brass stamps to emboss elaborate patterns onto the leather. “What I like is that it changes all the time, even if it seems I’m always doing the same thing,” she explained. “I need to adapt to each book according to its structure and materials.”…