George A. Baer


George A. Baer was a German/Swiss/American bookbinder. He specialized in fine bindings, including gold inlays.
Much of Baer's work involved the restoration of old and rare books for both private customers and numerous rare book libraries around the world. His well-established reputation in this field led to an invitation to help restore books in the Florence, Italy libraries that were water-damaged in the 1966 Flood of the Arno River.

Biography

George Adolf Baer was born in Hoboken NJ of German parents, who had immigrated to the US in September, 1902, but returned to Germany shortly after George’s birth. George grew up in Wiesbaden, a German city along the Main River, near Frankfurt. He served a three-year apprenticeship at a book binding company in Wiesbaden from 1919 to 1922. As he recounted to Mary Morrow in a taped interview, this was not a fine binding establishment. It involved strictly binding books with cloth covers. After a year working at a paper making factory and teaching bookbinding in an art school, he decided to pursue fine bookbinding. He was accepted in 1924 at the Berlin School of Applied Arts as an assistant to Paul Kersten, one of the foremost bookbinders in Germany. There he learned about leather binding and gold stamping. He continued working with Kersten as an assistant teacher of bookbinding at an art school in Berlin. In October of 1925 Baer moved to the Staatliche Kunstgeverbeschule in Kassel to teach bookbinding.
In March of 1927, Baer had an offer to teach bookbinding in Lixuri on the Ionian island of Kefalonia in Greece. He spent 3 ½ years there before returning to Germany in 1931.
By 1931, the Nazi movement in Germany made it difficult for Baer, whose father was Jewish, to find employment. So, he decided to move to Zurich Switzerland. Within a few years he set up his own shop, married Martha Lena Guyer, and eventually in 1939 bought a farm house in Bassersdorf, a small village just outside of Zurich. During the war, Baer contacted the US consulate in Zurich to establish his right to US citizenship. Through Baer’s earlier work in restoring ancient Aramaic letters for Ludwig Borchardt, an Egyptologist in Cairo, he made contact with Prof. Keith Seele at the Chicago Oriental Institute. In 1949 Baer moved to Chicago and with the help of Prof. Seele found a position in the fine binding department of the Cuneo Press. He worked there as well as for private clients and libraries from his private workshop until 1971 when he retired and moved to Chapel Hill, NC.
Books bound by him were sold to patrons including Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, the President of France, and Pope Pious XII. In 1977 he moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Exhibitions