| Summary: | This article is the result of a field survey carried out in Yemen between 2003 and 2004 on artisan bookbinders. It is an analysis technical, sociological and linguistic of a craft trade which, at the beginning of the 2000s, was already undergoing major transformation and whose evolution since then we cannot asess due to the inaccessibility of Yemeni territory to foreign researchers. This study is therefore an inventory of the situation — at the beginning of the 21st century — of a profession that has suffered the consequences on the one hand of technical progress and the industrialization of the book sector, and on the other hand, of successive economic changes. Thus, through a case study of two families of who have been bookbinders « from father to son », this article questions the role of inherited craft in the practices of bookbinders, with a view to safeguarding an intangible heritage which, like other craft trades, is disappearing.
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