8 Sep 25 - Resident stories
Resource recovery: Bound to be good
Ben Norris’s former career as a bookbinder has stood him in good stead when it comes to the precision needed to restore furniture. The Summerset in the Vines resident volunteers his time with Re-Source, a waste reduction initiative that matches donated items with community needs.
“I use my garage as my workshop, and park on my drive,” says Ben, who always has a few projects for the charity on the go. “Currently I am restoring a sofa bed that has a broken base.” Handy with a hammer, for this job Ben will use wooden pallets thrown away by Carters, and uses his sewing skills to repair any ripped upholstery. “A bookbinding skill which comes in useful,” he remarks. “Sofas and beds need to survive being jumped on by kids, so I make sure they are good and solid when they go to their new homes.”
Ben has been involved with Re-Source for the past three years, fixing up the furniture that comes his way. “The charity doesn’t sell anything; it gives it away. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who have nothing.” While he sources some materials for free, Ben pays for a lot out of his own pocket. “I go through a lot of nails and sandpaper! I probably spend about $1,000 a year, but it’s my hobby so I am fine with it.”
“The main reason I do it is because I enjoy it. It keeps my brain busy to consider how to fix something. I usually do about a piece every fortnight, though once I did 37 double beds in a row!”
During his repairing hobby, Ben has also been reunited with some items from his past life. “I was refurbishing some tea trays that were pretty worn out,” he says. “Once I had cleaned them up I could read the name on the back. They had belonged to my late father-in-law, who had brought them over from London many years ago when he emigrated to New Zealand!”
An immigrant himself, Ben grew up in Glasgow in Scotland. “My family were very poor,” he says. “I was the poor kid in a good school. Bookbinding was the best-paid job back then, so let’s say I was strongly encouraged to do it! I wanted to be a draughtsman.”
An avid reader, Ben was fed a steady diet of left-wing literature by his socialist grandfather. “I had read Marx and Lenin by the time I was 12!” Learning both hand binding and machine binding, Ben’s experience with his UK employer William Collins stood Ben in good stead for a job in New Zealand, and he left the UK in 1964. “I hated living there,” he says. “I couldn’t stand the class system.”
Transferred to Auckland by his employer, Ben was 21 when he flew to New Zealand on the Comet, the first passenger plane to New Zealand from England. “It was $250 for the airfare, and after two weeks’ living here you couldn’t have prised me away from the country with an iron bar!” Ben met his future wife, Carol, at a dance shortly after his arrival in New Zealand, and the couple eventually began their own bookbinding business on the premises of their North Shore home in Auckland, where they raised their three children. “We would do about 100 books a week, binding for national and local libraries, from the north in Whangārei down to Hastings.” Ben tries not to buy books himself, preferring libraries, though he does have a collection at his villa he has bound himself. “I bought them second-hand; they were all tattered. Books have always been expensive, and I can restore them, so why buy new?”
A carpenter’s union card holder, Ben honed his carpentry skills as a house builder and has worked on big projects such as the construction of the Ellerslie Racecourse. After he and Carol sold up their binding business in 1999, they moved to Hawke’s Bay, where Ben used his building skills again as the engineer’s representative for the Port of Napier, remaining there until he was in his 70s.
“I moved to Summerset in the Vines almost four years ago,” Ben says. “We had a half-acre section with 20-odd trees, and once Carol died it became too much for me. I like it here; the villas have lots of space, and I play pool and croquet here. I love to grow my tomatoes and peas in my patio garden too. I am content.”
This is an article from the Spring 2025 edition of Summerset Scene magazine