CARRBORO - The only person tortured by Susan Soleil's 800-pound guillotine was the artist herself. After moving into her second-floor studio space on busy Weaver Street last year, she discovered that the metal beast would have to be hoisted up by crane and moved in through the window.

The menacingly named piece of bookbinding equipment has a quite delicate purpose: It cuts paper.

"It's so precise that I can cut off a 64th of an inch," said Soleil, who spends her days making blank books to sell and restoring other people's old books, including family Bibles, children's books passed through generations and even treasured textbooks.

For more than three decades, Soleil worked out of an 1890s firehouse in a commercial strip in Rochester, N.Y. After the shopping district turned from funky to dangerous, Soleil, 61, decided to find a place where she felt at home. Chapel Hill and Carrboro fit the bill, she said.

"I'm really just now dipping my toe in the water here, but I feel right at home," said Soleil. "This is the studio of my dreams."

Last month she participated in her first local show, Arts at the Meadow in Chapel Hill, and is looking forward to her debut next month in the Orange County Open Studio Tour. "That's really my coming-out party," she said.

Learning from the masters: While Soleil started her career as a speech therapist, she wanted to learn an old-world craft when she and her then-husband went to Florence, Italy, for his studies in 1971. "All my grandparents were artisans," she said. "I'd done a lot with my hands before. I painted murals, did a lot of mosaic, made and sold candles." She ended up meeting a master bookbinder specializing in restoration work who took Soleil on as her apprentice for three years. "We worked on Italian national treasures damaged in the flood of 1966," said Soleil, who had found her calling. "It ignited my passion. I felt like a pinball machine that had hit the jackpot."

Plethora of paper: Soleil divides her time between making and restoring books. Her creations include journals, address books, archival photo albums, sketch books and what she calls Lewis & Clark journals. "They're made just like the ones they had," she said, holding up a soft, leather-bound notebook on 65-pound paper that clasps with a strand of leather. Most of her books are covered in ornately adorned paper, from sheets she has marbled herself to others she has bought from shops near and far. She lays them out in drawers, opening them one by one for visitors to browse through. "Whenever I travel, I seek out papermakers," she said. "Like this, it's made from tree bark by the Otomi Indians of Mexico," she said of a bumpy, tan sheet. "Or this one, it's made from asparagus. It's fun to see how design trends change over time. Right now '50s revival is big."

Paper chase: One of the delights of Soleil's job is helping customers pick out the paper that will grace the cover of a custom-made book. "I love to let people look through the drawers," she says. "If someone says, 'I want to make a book for a friend,' I'll first say, 'Tell me about her.' We don't speak to the paper yet. I'll ask several questions and then say, 'I think she'd like one of these five designs.' They usually agree." Soleil also will bind limited-edition printed books of up to 200 copies.

Under the covers: Stacked against Soleil's studio walls are bolts of different colors of book cloth for the covers. "Holland and Japan make the best," she said. "It costs $36 a yard." She also has stacks of archival-quality bookbinding leather, which she imports from Edinburgh, Scotland. To make a book, she folds sheets of paper into what are called signatures and sews them together. She has one machine that presses the book and another that stamps images on the covers. "Of course, the most important tools are my hands, eyes, and head," she says with a smile.

Intensive care unit: While Soleil uses similar materials to do restoration work, the process is quite different. Instead of creating something, she's attempting to return a book to its original state using the original cover and spine when possible. "I do everything I can to keep the integrity of the book and the appearance as close as it can be," she said. "The idea is to make it healthy. I really see myself as a book doctor." After finishing several projects from Rochester, she's now working on her first local restoration, a 1941 edition copy of "Lassie Come Home" by Eric Knight for a Chapel Hill man. "He had an aunt who gave him books, and now he wants to give his books to his grandson. This will clean up beautifully," she said of the worn and dirty orange cover. She estimates that the job, which includes cleaning the front and back covers and firming up the binding and inside pages, will cost about $70.

Booming business: Soleil said baby boomers have given book restoration a boost. "We boomers are in love with our icons," she said. "Just look at my shelves," she says, pointing to childhood memorabilia lining the studio walls. "I think the more that people become digital, the more they place value on the physical things they love. People bring me the books that they love. Maybe it's the Bible their great-great-great-grandparents brought from the homeland, or maybe grandparents want to give a copy of their childhood book to a grandchild. We boomers have become the archivists of our families."

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