Rai Peterson designs, hand-sews, and hand-builds a custom, heritage product: handmade journals, sketchbooks, and albums.
She builds archival journals and sketchbooks from loose paper, often using a mix of fine and vintage elements gathered during travels, especially while poking about in Indiana. Each of Rai’s books contains a talisman, or good luck charm—often a circulated coin or vintage medallion—set in its cover.

“I like to think that there is a certain Midwestern forthrightness about my work: what you see is what you get. We use honest materials like cotton-rag paper, hand-marbled decorative sheets, genuine maps, vegetable-tanned goat- and calfskin and Irish linen threads,” says the Carmel bookbinder.

A colophon on the last page of each book lists the raw materials from which each has been made. Rai accepts custom requests, and her shop houses a wide variety of maps, papers, leathers, and talismans.

Rai’s tools include 19th Century presses and a guillotine cutting device as well as familiar objects including knives, brushes, scalpels, bone folders, and patience that date back to the beginning of the Common Era to make her one-of-a-kind books that inspire writing, sketching, and personal reminders.

Rai earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in English from Ball State University, and served more than four decades as a professor and founder of Book Arts Collaborative, a public letterpress and book bindery in downtown Muncie. Her lifelong dream to be a working artist is realized through her artisan business, High Class Booker.