Zachary Lifton

Founder & Managing Director

​Zachary is an culture and heritage aficionado with a passion for education, preservation and the arts. He was the driving force behind saving Milwaukee's last standing traditional book bindery in 2018 and now works with the book arts community in Milwaukee to shape a proud, inclusive, and multifaceted future for one of Milwaukee's historic businesses. 

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Zach wears lots of hats 'round the shop including heading up zine production, digital printing, letterpress work, and client consultations for each new project that comes through.

Zach was formerly the inaugural manager of CultureWorks Greater Philadelphia's space and programming for the creative sector. He holds an M.S. in Historic Preservation from Columbia University as well as a B.A. in Arts Management from Bennington College. 

Daniel Ehn

Lead Bookbinder

Daniel has an M.A. in History from SOAS, University of London and trained in bookbinding in Madison, Wisconsin under Master Bookbinder Christopher Brown. He has over a decade of binding and repair experience with a keen interest in historic styles and traditional practices.

Prior to joining the Bindery team, he was the founder of Hamlin Binding, a private binding and repair practice established in Seattle, Washington in 2015. Daniel is a long-time member of The Guild of Bookworkers.

Michelle Van Patten

Assistant Bookbinder

Michelle began as an apprentice at The Bindery in summer of 2022, eventually joining the team to assist with our archival binding program and retail production.

Michelle also teaches various Bindery classes including introductory hardcover classes and our popular line of marbled paper courses. Her marbling work can be found tucked away in some of our products as special decorative endsheets!

Design Squadron

[Our core design group]

The Bindery works with a small core team of local, independent designers and layout specialists to meet each client's direct needs. Book and print-work require a vast number of skills and we're set to select the right mix of folks for the job at hand.

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We've spent years building relationships with our squad and pull in the right person for the job based on client work at hand. This means a perfect match of skillset and passion gets applied to each book, poster, print, and zine we design (all here in-house with Milwaukee talent).