The Floor-Standing Paper Cutter

This wasn’t an impulse buy—this was a long-held dream, finally funded by pandemic money and a very specific vision of who I wanted to become.

Now I use it constantly. I make artist books, which means cutting a lot of book board and paper, and there is nothing—nothing—like the clean, decisive slice of a floor-standing cutter. It feels professional. Authoritative. Slightly dramatic.

Unfortunately, not everyone in my household shares that reverence.

My husband looks at this serious, bookbinder-adjacent tool and says, regularly, that he’s going to use it to cut a sandwich.

A sandwich.

I live with this threat.

Meanwhile, I’m over here aligning board for covers, making careful cuts, living my best artist-book life—while also guarding the cutter like it’s a museum artifact.

Some tools are useful. Some tools are meaningful. And some tools require you to say, multiple times, “absolutely not, you may not put a sandwich in it.”