If you've been looking for a book with a nearly indestructible cover, or just a unique binding, this is your answer! 

Featuring an indestructible cover inspired by Italy’s 1970’s solution to broken Yellow Pages bindings in public phone booths, this 360-degree flexible binding offers many advantages because it bends and does not break! This binding style offers visual and tactile delight, employing strips of articulated hard board covered with marbled fabric made by the instructor.

In this workshop, the instructor will guide students through the art of this rare binding technique. Students will create an articulated blank journal that can beautifully withstand the ravages of time.

Prerequisite:
None

Materials to bring:
All tools and materials will be provided. Students are also welcome to bring any of their own favorite bookbinding tools.

About the Instructor:
Pietro Accardi (he/him) owned a Bookbindery in Turin (Italy) for 12 years. He worked for Turin’s main Library, Municipal Archives, and University Libraries restoring and binding documents and books. He also runs his own paper marbling and decorative box making business. Now he lives near Lake Tahoe with wife, cats and a studio. He is currently working for the library of special collections of University of Reno doing restoration work and teaches workshops.

Create a multidimensional book using interlocking accordions and a piano-hinge fastening. Using simple folding techniques we will build two paper concertinas that can be combined together to create a honeycomb structure. This can then be further developed with paper cutting techniques and pop-ups. Color, pattern, and detail will be added with inks, stamping, and collage materials.

A piano-hinge will be attached to the covers and fasten the book closed. When the pin is removed the whole piece will open out to reveal a detailed and playful design on both sides of the book. Abstract or more figurative themes adapt well to this structure. Students will be guided in how to create a sense of narrative using purely visual motifs, or wording, or both!

Prerequisite:
None

Tools/Materials to bring:
Optional: decorative papers or ephemera to use for collage.

About the Instructor:
Stephanie Jucker (she/her) is an exhibiting artist who uses mixed media and printing techniques in her paintings, books, and art installations. Originally from London where she earned her BFA, Stephanie has an MFA from Syracuse in painting, printmaking, and ceramics. With 25 years of teaching experience, she currently runs art classes at College of Marin, Kala, and Art Works Downtown in San Rafael.

The fashion for attaching a devotional book to a girdle dates back to the twelfth century and flourished for several hundred years in England and Scotland, as well as Germany and the Netherlands.

Belts, or girdles, were worn by clerics in the middle-ages around the outside of their robes as a sign of office. Girdle books were small volumes kept about the person for frequent consultation, and were worn by monks, priests and lay people. They denoted piety, importance of office, and wealth.

Our girdle book will be made of quires of paper with vellum endsheets, sewn with linen thread onto alum tawed supports. The book has oak boards which are chamfered into a gentle curve to render them more tactile and ergonomic for handling. The alum tawed lacing slips will then travel along channels through the boards and be secured in place by wooden pegs.

The textblock will be trimmed after the boards are attached, using a drawknife. This now unusual technique of trimming was common to all bookbinding before the invention of the plough in the sixteenth century.

The book has a primary covering of reverse calfskin — the suede side providing the grip necessary to hold the outer cover, or chemise, in place. This secondary covering is made from alum tawed leather, and has simply stitched pockets into which the boards are inserted. Further strips of alum tawed leather are woven into a Turk’s Head knot around the tail of the chemise. Finally, a strap-and-pin closure secures the book within its bindings.

SFCB's Windgate Scholarship Fund is dedicated to providing need-based financial support to individuals interested in learning bookbinding, letterpress printing, and related book arts. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite:
Experience binding books in / paring leather.

Materials to bring:

Don’t worry if you don’t own everything listed, you shouldn’t go out buying unnecessarily, we can share. Bring if it is convenient.

- A small pair of pliers
- Metal square (Engineer's L-shaped square)
- Hand operated drill and small bits, 1mm - 3mm
- Woodworker's Plane (small Block Plane that can be used one-handed)
- Needle Awl
- Bone folders
- Scalpel handle and a few blades, straight and curved
- Sanding block and sandpaper, various grits
- G-Clamps
- Paste brush
- Paring machine (Scharf-fix or Brockman)
- Paring knife and strop
- A sharp quarter-inch or 3-6mm chisel

About the Instructor:
Michael Burke (he/him) studied bookbinding with Dominic Riley and paper conservation with Karen Zukor. Michael lives in England, where he teaches bookbinding as well at events across the UK. Michael researches the structures of ancient and medieval bindings and received his Masters degree in the History of the Book from the University of London in 2011.

Michael is a co-founder of Book Camp, an immersive residential bookbinding experience which aims to teach new generations of binders.

If you have heard about letterpress but are not really sure what it is or how it works, this class will allow you to peer inside the rich history and engaging techniques of letterpress printing.

This class introduces the process, the materials, the machines, and the satisfaction of printing by hand on a Cylinder proof press. Participants will learn the basics of setting type using SFCB’s vast collection of lead type and decorative ornaments as well as inking, locking up and pulling a print.

SFCB's Windgate Scholarship Fund is dedicated to providing need-based financial support to individuals interested in learning bookbinding, letterpress printing, and related book arts. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite:
None

Materials to bring:
None

About the Instructor:
Brian Lieske (he/him) wandered into SFCB many years ago and continues to haunt the place. He completed both the bookbinding and letterpress cores as well as several of the summer historic structure classes. He enjoys making fully hand-sewn books and still fights to not over-tighten his kettle stitches. He’s lived in San Francisco for more than 20 years having arrived shortly after completing an MFA at the University of Texas at Austin.

Learn how to repurpose a beautiful nineteenth century vellum document to create a robust and handsome case binding. 

For hundreds of years vellum, both calf and sheep, was used to make legal documents of all kinds — deeds, mortgages, apprenticeship agreements. They are commonly known as indentures. Many of them survive and are things of beauty. But being rather overlooked as archival material, they have been neglected, and are therefore ripe for re-use.

In this workshop, we will take an old vellum document, clean the surface, wet it and line it with Japanese paper. It is flattened overnight under blotters and weights, and, remarkably, the next day all the old creases completely disappear.

Then we’ll make the binding. We’ll sew and press the sections, then rough cut them in the board chopper to give a nice feathered edge. The book is sewn on tapes with linen thread, has red colored edges, and hand-made red cloth headbands. The book is rounded and backed and spine liners attached. 

The case is then made using the lined vellum for the cover. When dry, the binding is a like a brick: incredibly strong and durable. Vellum is indestructible.

Please note, the SF Marathon runs through our neighborhood on the second day of this workshop, July 26. Students will need to park two blocks away and walk to our building. 

SFCB's Windgate Scholarship Fund is dedicated to providing need-based financial support to individuals interested in learning bookbinding, letterpress printing, and related book arts. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite(s):
Bookbinding Core 2 plus additional experience sewing books, Core 4 preferred.

Materials to bring:
All tools and materials will be provided. Students are also welcome to bring any of their own favorite bookbinding tools.

About the Instructor:
Dominic Riley (he/him) is an internationally renowned bookbinder, artist, lecturer and teacher. He has his bindery in England, from where he travels across the UK teaching and lecturing. He spends part of the year teaching in San Francisco and across the USA. His work is mostly restoration and Design Binding, for which he has won many prizes in the Designer Bookbinders competition. He was elected a Fellow of DB in 2008 and is Patron of the New Zealand Association of Book Crafts. His bindings are in collections worldwide, including the British Library, the Grolier Club in New York and the San Francisco Public Library. In 2013 he won first prize, the Sir Paul Getty Award, in the International Bookbinding Competition. Dominic is a past President of the Society of Bookbinders. Dominic and Michael Burke are co-founders of Book Camp, an immersive residential bookbinding experience which aims to teach new generations of binders.

He has taught masterclasses in the USA, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, at the Centro del Bel Libro in Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and Canada.

Revive your manual pasta maker by learning how to use it to create small drypoint prints. This technique uses the pressure that normally rolls out the pasta dough to print artwork.

Students will learn how to use different materials to create a plate including milk cartons, Tetra Paks, and Akua plate material. They'll learn how to ink up the plate, add packing to the pasta maker for the perfect impression, and pull prints to make a small edition.

The small-format prints created in class will be up to 4” by 6”. Prints will be made using a drypoint needle and a cutting knife and will be printed on Rives BFK paper with different kind of inks. The materials fee includes a drypoint needle, chipboard & felts as well as printing paper that students will be able to take home to continue making prints on their own pasta machines.

*The pasta machine does not get any ink on it, so using it for pasta AND printing is perfectly fine. Oil based etching ink will be used during class; the instructor will demonstrate how easy it is to clean up without any heavy cleaning solution.

Prerequisite:
None

Materials to bring:

- Hand-crank pasta maker if you have one - only the basic maker is needed, we do not need the cutting or ravioli parts!

- Empty milk cartons and/or Tetra Paks for printing (Tetra Pak is a type of packaging used for store-bought soups, broth, nut milks, etc. Google it for examples.)

- Ideas for small prints - come with sketches

About the Instructor:
Bettina Pauly (she/her) lives in San Francisco and works as both a book artist and a letterpress printer with Kim Vanderheiden at Painted Tongue Studios, Oakland, California. She loves books and boxes both as physical objects and as containers of meaning. She is interested in a variety of folded, sewn and woven structures in which she can incorporate her printing.

There are myriad instances where forms require special packing and pressure manipulation to achieve even printing. We will print the notorious pointed-flap envelope, a poem with varying line lengths, and images or ornaments within a text field. Situations where the form includes elements that need a generous amount of ink on the press, and/or a lot of packing, as well as elements with the opposite needs, will be addressed.

The class will use both Vandercook and platen presses; students who are only experienced on the Vandercook presses are welcome.

Ample time will be given to questions and show and tell from both the students and the instructors.

SFCB's Windgate Scholarship Fund is dedicated to providing need-based financial support to individuals interested in learning bookbinding, letterpress printing, and related book arts. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite(s):
Students must have completed the Cylinder Core certificate program, or have equivalent printing experience. Please email us with your qualifications if you are new to SFCB.

 Materials to bring:
All tools and materials will be provided.

About the Instructors:
Alan Hillesheim (he/him) and Lisa Rappoport (she/her) will team-teach this new series of workshops for intermediate printers.

Cylinder Core Certificate Program

The four class Cylinder Core Certificate Program allows students to move quickly through the press basics while also addressing relief printing in general. Students who finish the four core classes are qualified to rent press time as well as move on to more advanced classes and techniques.

Cylinder Core 1: Experience Letterpress!
Learn about the process and practice of setting type, mixing inks and pulling impressions. Students will design and print a small edition of a folded greeting card while learning the basics of press operation.

Cylinder Core 2: Power of the Broadside
Build your letterpress skills: learn advanced justification, typesetting, and composition. Put it all together to print an 8 x 10" broadside of your own design.

Cylinder Core 3: Posterized
Get more acquainted with the press: learn about packing, roller height, and make-ready. Once you've got everything set up you'll run an edition of your own 12 x 15" poster.

Cylinder Core 4: Digital into Analog
All those fancy letterpress wedding invitations are printed from digital designs turned into polymer plates. You'll learn how to print with premade plates and walk away with a stationary suite: a coordinated set of cards, letter sheets, and envelopes.

The Weeklong Intensive rate is discounted $100 off the individual workshop fees.

SFCB's Windgate Scholarship Fund is dedicated to providing need-based financial support to individuals interested in learning bookbinding, letterpress printing, and related book arts. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite:
None

Materials to Bring:
All tools and materials will be provided. Students can come to the first class with a few greeting card ideas/brief phrases.

Please note: Class projects are for learning particular skills and supporting class dynamics. Project ideas should be flexible, open to what class time and communal studio use will permit.

About the Instructor:
Thea Sizemore (she/her) has been a letterpress printer, artist and instructor for over 20 years. She holds BFA in printmaking with emphasis on bookarts from the California College of the Arts with additional studies at Cleveland Institute of Art.

As founder of Kavamore Press, a custom letterpress and design studio in South Berkeley, Thea works with private clients and various artists to create ephemera for projects including some for the Carpenter Center for the Arts at Harvard, The Guggenheim and the SFMOMA. In recent years, Thea's personal work has focused on projects that use the power of print to connect and engage community including a mail art project called “Social Media Snail Mail”, an ongoing series of free letterpress posters and public printing protest events. To view more of her work, visit kavamorepress.com.