Bookbinders, cardboard and ready-made paper products

Printing and bookbinding shop Grafikon cherishes the tradition of cutting by hand, making custom-made covers, hand sewing, hand gluing to this very day. But as new technologies and knowledge come to the picture, they can use paper to make anything that comes to your mind.

Upon finishing the Graphic School and becoming a bookbinder, working at the Graphic Institute and the University Printing House Liber, Zlatko Firšt, who’s Andreja Jakičić’s father, started a household business in his yard garage and in 1991 it became a craft called “Bookbinding and photocopy”.

Husband and wife Tonica and Darko Balen started their family’s business in a flat located in 28 Ilica Street. As their business and family grew ever larger, so they set about finding a new location. Kopir biro Balen has been located at 11 Kaptol since 1981 and you can still find it at the same address.

The fact that the trade of the bookbinder is so rarely encountered these days is an additional reason to meet Tajana and Davor Klanac. They describe themselves as artist craftsmen, and they have been running a small bindery for a great number of years. They are building on a tradition that is over sixty years long.

Ms. Vesna Hrkač is the third in the family line to continue the tradition of running a bindery at the same address in Zagreb. Zagreb has few remaining traditional binderies where everything is done by hand, and one of them is the charming Bindery 1924, which boasts expertise and excellent master craftsmen.

Mladen Radovinović founded his bookbinding and photocopying craft in 1983. He completed a vocational high school specialising in economics, but it’s was his uncle who got him interested in this profession. His uncle helped him a lot to get the business going

The trade that is becoming a rarity these days has been practiced in the Hudetz family since as far back as 1862. With a long history of doing business, Vilim Hudetz set up a cardboard packaging workshop at the current address, Gundulićeva 29, and was succeeded by his son Marijan. Today Marijan’s daughter Tanja Hudetz runs the family business as a member of the fifth generation.