The Face Behind The Hands - handmaking beautiful South African notebooks

Come alongside my craft journey.

So, for those who may not know (and I'm sure there are a lot of you), I guess it’s high time for me to tell you a little bit about myself and how the entire Handmade By Clerrene Müller bookbinding brand become what it is now. I was born in Durban, South Africa and since childhood I've always been fascinated by creative things. As a kid, I'm pretty sure that one of my favourite daydreams was to be an artist or a creative type. My mom is no creative, but I think I got this gene from my dad's side. As a shopfitter, I guess he was creative by using his hands to make beautiful work. My grandfather on my dad's side was very creative, well known in his community for his calligraphy and other forms of artistic scribe. A few years on, and here I am! 

Now, one would assume that I do this for a living - but one would be wrong. I'm actually in the corporate space, what I refer to as my 'Clark Kent' role, but my 'Superhero' persona of being a self-taught bookbinder is way more interesting. It all started during the pandemic's lockdown, as many new businesses have, when I came across the most interesting woman (to me) from Brazil named Dani Barbara who inspired me with her amazing craft in bookbinding. Each time I watched a video of her handmaking a notebook - a notebook nogal! (only South African's will understand 'nogal') - I was mesmerized. As I shared her posts with my husband, he caught onto the interest I expressed for the art of bookbinding and secretly imported a starter toolkit with everything I'd need to get started. Apprehensive at first, perhaps purely just due to self-doubt, I pushed myself to learn different bookbinding techniques so that I could hand make each notebook. 

You know what, to me, bookbinding is personal, it’s not just a business to make money (as it should be because it’s not a non-profit after all), its truly my passion - I love being creative, I love stitching, binding, trimming the notebooks gets to me sometimes but for all intent and purpose, I love that too. My biggest achievement doesn't come down to just one thing, its each time someone comes back to me and says "Clerrene, I absolutely love the notebook" - that means the world to me. These hands... this desire to be creative, its a gift from God that I treasure.