A book can salvage a marriage gone awry. Just ask Island bookbinder Mitzi Pratt.

Ms. Pratt stitched, backed and stamped a book in the 19th century French Dos-à-dos (back-to-back) style for a New York client with an on-the-rocks marriage. The book was in two volumes — his and her writing tablets — that shared a back cover. The quarrelling couple wrote to one another, in his or her designated booklet, all of the suppressed thoughts and feelings they couldn’t articulate. As the feelings poured out, the pair caved in to the love that had initially united them in matrimony.

“When she told me,” Ms. Pratt recounts, “I thought, wow! A book — a blank book — can save a marriage. Who knew?”

Ms. Pratt has spent the last 31 of her 52 years fashioning hand-bound books used for, among other things, journals, dream diaries, recipe books, guest books, sailing logs, photo albums, sketchbooks, poetry books, and now, it seems, marriage counseling.

And for the first time in years, Ms. Pratt will open her Aquinnah bindery to the public for a four-hour studio showcase. The exhibit, which begins on Sunday at 3 p.m., will include wine, finger foods and a behind-the-scenes look at the labor behind the binding of her handmade books, photo albums and artist portfolios.

“I think a lot of people don’t even realize that anybody does [bind books] by hand anymore,” she says while brushing glue onto the board of a book. “But you can feel the difference. A hand stitched book — it just opens and lays flat. There’s a whole different feel if it’s been well-bound.”

Ms. Pratt learned bookbinding, an old world skill she describes as both a craft and an art, as a 22-year-old bookworm with a dream. She aspired to open a café and used bookstore on the Vineyard and reasoned that she first ought to learn basic book repair techniques.

“I’m a reader. I’ve been a reader my whole life. I love books,” the petite and pleasant bookmaker says of her early career choice, spouting her words in one breath.

Ms. Pratt connected with David Bourbeau, a bookbinder and now-Vineyard resident, through her sister who often played Clue with Mr. Bourbeau and others at an ice cream parlor in Northhampton. Bookbinding schools did not exist in 1970s America, so Ms. Pratt became Mr. Bourbeau’s apprentice.

She soon developed an affection and affinity for bookbinding. After two years of study, she abandoned her coffee house scheme and sought further education. She spent the next two years as an apprentice for Arno Werner, a German-bred master binder who fled to the States after jumping from a bindery window to escape Nazi persecution. Though in his 80s, Mr. Werner was a polymath and still sharp at his craft. In exchange for his instruction, Ms. Pratt provided Mr. Werner with four days worth of unpaid labor each week.

Above all, Mr. Werner taught his pupils that structure trumps design.

“Arno’s emphasis was always on [the structural process],” Ms. Pratt says. “Germans really excelled in forwarding techniques, which are all the techniques you do before covering the book, whereas the French, for example, excelled at finishing, which is the tooling and the last, decorative aspect of [book binding]. But Arno always emphasized that good forwarding techniques were essential no matter where you were going to go with it from there.”

Ms. Pratt’s bindery, open year-round to the public by appointment, stretches across the top floor of a shingled studio holed into a knoll beside her Aquinnah home. Work tables and 19th century cast-iron machinery fill the space; scraps of leather and paper scatter the floor; metal rulers, framed bindings and a poster of Mr. Werner cloak the walls. And books — freshly restored or freshly bound — fill the shelves.

Ms. Pratt’s books are filled with sheets of soft-edged paper. Most of the pages are beige, but some — like the book she filled with stone blue-colored sheets made by the canvas sails of a windmill in Holland, the only place in the world where paper is still pulped by the power of a windmill — bear brighter hues.

Some books seal shut with magnets. Golden lockets fastened to ribbons function as bookmarks that hang below many book covers. Some books are embossed with lettering made of pure gold and silver foil. Like the books chained to desks in the medieval monastic tradition, Ms. Pratt also constructs books that hang from links of chain.

Ms. Pratt decorates her covers with a variety of materials and gems. Among the heap of books in her handmade collection is a glimmering paisley cover made of Indian silk and a pop art image of Barack Obama fashioned on an organic Ugandan cotton cover. Some books are coated with gray and silver swirls, the remnants of wasp nests. There are books made of calfskin, snakeskin, lizard skin and lead. One black leather cover displays three gray stones collected from Squibnocket Beach. Lined vertically by size with the smallest on top, the smooth circles resemble a disjointed snowman. Another cover is decked with a collage of items: a Polaroid transfer of a boat in Indonesia, an antique stamp, the wire lid from a bottle of aged European wine and an old balance account sheet.

When asked how she got her hands on the stingray skin that overlays some of the covers, Ms. Pratt is nonchalant. “Oh, I have my sources,” she says breezily.

From beneath one of her work stations, she pulls out a stiff green-gray stingray carcass, complete with golf ball-sized holes where the creature’s eyes had been lodged.

“It’s difficult to work with, but it’s just so beautiful looking. I think it’s like jewels,” she says.

Many of her books have names. Beyond the Fringe is dressed in layers of suede blue-gray and olive green fringe. Who Did I Loan That To? bears its namesake phrase on the cover in ransom note-styled lettering. The Astonishment Book exhibits an exclamation point inside a golden keyhole and The Bewilderment Book models a question mark inside a similar charm.

Ms. Pratt salvaged many of the treasures adorning her books at flea markets during twice-a-year travels to Europe.

Her books, ranging from pocket-sized to magazine-sized, are priced between $30 and $350.

Half of her business is based in book repair. Many people opt to restore a tattered book rather than purchase new, she says, because they value the handiwork of an old, beautifully-made book or because they are sentimental about a book from childhood or one that has been passed down from ancestors.

Her clientele ranges vastly in age. “I mean, I don’t have very many eight-year-olds,” she quips. But it’s clear that more than just old-timers are interested in quality hand-bound books.

And though new and repeat customers keep her busy enough to work most days of the year, Ms. Pratt says that business has slowed — just a bit — in light of the digitization of books and the economic recession.

“Who knows what’s going to happen. Everything is in such a state of flux,” she says. “My theory is that, even as e-books become more popular, I think the book will never be completely lost. The book as a tangible object is such a talisman and I don’t think that people will want to give that up.

“So, my hope is that if people are buying fewer books, they will want the books they do buy to be of fine quality and so letterpress printing and bookbinding will survive. And books will always need to be restored, too.

“So, hopefully [book binders] are not as endangered as we sometimes feel.”

Mitzi Pratt will host an open studio at her bindery in Aquinnah on Sunday, August 16 from 3 to 7 p.m. The bindery is located at 5 Moshup Trail (second driveway on the right at the lower end of the trail). All are invited. Refreshments will be served.