Bookbinding

A couple of weeks ago I attended a 3 hour bookbinding workshop at St Brides Foundation, Fleet Street.http://stbridefoundation.org/ I received an email advertising this and thought that it would be a good follow on from the Letterpess workshop previously. See http://moveanytype.wordpress.com/

There were 6 people attending in all, a jolly little affair. Leading was Douglas Bevan. Such a great man – positive words were used by him about anything you did. It was very encouraging because making books can be fiddly yet he explained each step carefully and clearly.

 To start with, we all made a small book that could be held in one hand. This was to grasp the basic principles.

A sheet of paper was folded a few times to make the pages.

Douglas went into explaining the significant facts about paper grain and folding paper the correct way.

A good artist knows the materials and what they can do for you.

A cover was created then created and then folded over the front and back pages.

Then we all moved on to creating a slightly bigger book. This had about 8 pages and endpapers/muslin and a good quality material were used in the making of it.

Tips about sorting out corners, using a bone knife and how to

keep glue mess to a minimum were dished out by Douglas.

All of which were extremely informative and handy to know. 

I went away from this workshop with a knowledge that I find amazing. I can make a book. A tradition that is hundred of years old that is a craft that not many people would consider learning in this digital era. I would heartily recommend it to anyone. Expect books with illustrations on my Blog in the future……….

A great thanks to St Brides for keeping me in the loop about events/workshops. The majority of the staff there work voluntarily. Funds are scarce yet there’s always something happening there.