When is an object not just an object? The surprising answer is “most of the time”...
You see, most of the stuff we keep for a long time is kept not because it has some special monetary value. Instead, we choose to keep objects because of the stories and memories we attach to them. In the book Material Memories, authors Marius Kwint, Christopher Breward and Jeremy Aynsley say that objects are not “blank carriers onto which humans project prior psychic dramas”, but rather are receptacles of meaning through the memories that we associate with them.
When we at Schaeffner Co create custom Bibles and rebind Bibles for people, we understand that we’re doing more than just producing a simple object. We’re either creating a new memory (for a new Bible) or adding a valuable chapter to and helping to preserve an existing memory (for a re-bound Bible). These Bibles will hold meaning because they’re personal; they are attached to an experience, an event, or a declaration that creates this memory.
In the same way that we craft Bibles to last a lifetime, we believe it’s important that the stories behind these Bibles last a lifetime too. No matter how beautiful the Bibles themselves are, it is the memories they evoke and stories they hold that transform them into the precious heirlooms they become. So it’s our privilege to present to you the stories behind some of the Bibles we’ve done for people.
