Strong, elegant and pleasing to use, this structure is modelled on the nineteenth century artists' sketchbooks and journals, similar to the ones used by Wordsworth and Ruskin as they wandered across the Lake District to draw and write. It is an honest structure made simply and from high quality materials, opens beautifully and is very durable. It can be made at home with no equipment, just a few simple tools, and since it is not 'cased-in' requires very little pressing. The pages are made from good cartridge paper, ideal for pen-and-ink drawing, pencil sketching or writing. Working from full sized sheets, we will fold and slit the paper to give a beautiful, feathery deckled edge. We will then sew the book with linen thread on strong tapes, and sew in a cloth hinge for strength. The book is rounded, for easy opening, but not backed, eliminating the need for a press. The case, or cover, is made from cushioned boards covered in strong natural canvas that can withstand all the hard knocks associated with going 'out into the field'. The cover is then tooled with carbon and gold to personalise this simple hand made binding.

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:Bookbinding Core 2 or equivalent experience preparing a textblock.

Tools/Materials to bring:None. All tools and materials will be provided. Students are also welcome to bring any of their own favorite bookbinding tools.

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.

Learn how to print on the Risograph, a machine that combines the ease of a photocopier with the stencil concept of silkscreen. A Risograph creates a stencil for each layer, printing a single color at a time. Inks are semi-opaque, so when layered two colors can create a third overlay.

In this class you’ll create two image layers by hand, and each student will print a 2-color poster in an edition of 20. Come ready to turn sketches or drawings into your poster. If you would prefer not to draw, consider bringing clip art, traced designs, stamps, or collage elements to make your design.

This workshop focuses on the analog approach to printing with a Risograph. The Introduction to Digital Risograph Printing workshop focuses on preparing files and printing via digital transmission. Either class will suffice as the prerequisite for the Risograph Certification workshop, though students are welcome to take both. Successful completion of the certification allows students to rent time on SFCB's Risograph.

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:

• Sketches, drawings, photographs, or collage imagery no larger than 10” x 16” on paper or clear acetate (spot imagery smaller than 10” x 16” will work as well).
• Pens: black ink, all kinds of tips/types (sharpies, markers, brush pens, felt tip, different sized nibs, etc.)
• Faber Castell's PITT pens or Micron's are examples where you have different sized nibs. You can also bring pencils (especially softer/darker ones if you want more hand-drawn imagery). Essentially anything to make a drawn mark with! Colored markers in yellows and pinks won't work well, though.
• Photos can be fun. Make sure they aren't precious in case you want to cut them up. Grayscale with a wide value range work the best, rather than color photos. You can print out or photocopy what you want to play with and bring that, rather than the original.
• Collage materials: papers with patterns, tapes like washi, templates or stencils for making shapes, black or dark construction paper for cutting out shapes.
• Stamps/stamp pad and letter/number stickers are great if you want to work with text.
• Scissors or X-acto knife; glue stick or clear tape; eraser.
• Please print out any digital imagery before class, no larger than 11" x 17", with a 1/2" border all around.

About the Instructor:
Nathalie Roland (she/her) is a San Francisco-based printmaker and painter who has been creating woodcut prints since 1991. Working from her Sunset district garage studio known as Sunset Paperworks, she specializes in woodcut reduction prints using pine or mulberry wood blocks that transform through multiple stages of carving and printing. She has studied relief printing under Zarina Hashmi, screen printing at Ape Do Good, worked as a bookbinder at the Arion Press and was formerly the in-house Riso printer for Yellow Owl workshop. 

Learn how to make one of the most extraordinary historical styles of binding. It is many years since Dominic taught this workshop, due to the lack of availability of the right leather. But recent research has led him to find a new source, and so he is happy to revive this once very popular class.

Tree marbled calf dates back to at least 1775, in England, where it was employed as a cheaper decoration for leather books. It combines the use of two chemicals—salts of tartar and copperas—with the severe curving of the boards to create a channel in which the pattern is created. Actually, copperas and salts of tartar had been used as staining agents for a long period before tree marbling was developed, so it would seem that it was the curving of the boards which was the real innovation.

The style was very popular throughout the nineteenth century, as it was quick to execute, could be augmented with the minimum of gold tooling and resulted in a very handsome, striking binding. As with many hand-wrought techniques, tree calfing suffered a decline after the Second World War and by the 1960s there was very little demand for it.

In the workshop, we will make a small binding, sewing the book on cords and lacing on boards. Simple edge sprinkling and headbands are added. The book is covered in thinly pared calfskin, and left to dry open so the boards warp outwards. They are then rolled into a severe curve, coated with salts of tartar, glaired with egg white, and then the copperas is thrown on. After the boards are rinsed, they are flattened and the book completed in the usual way.

We will have plenty of time to work on practice panels before decorating our bindings. 

This is a deep dive into eighteenth century binding technique with one of the few binders working today who practices this obscure binding style.

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):
Experience binding books in leather.

Materials to bring:
A leather paring knife (something like this) and a strop. 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.

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.

The Library Style is ideal for large or heavy books which get a lot of use and need to be extra strong. Coming straight out of the Account Book tradition at the end of the nineteenth century, the Library Style was developed by the British Museum as a way of binding books which needed to be extremely robust yet could remain pleasing to use and would open well.

The book is sewn on heavy tapes with linen thread in a reinforced herring-bone style. It has a hidden cloth joint for strength, and a ‘made’ endpaper and a waste sheet. Together, the tapes, cloth and waste sheet form a flange that is glued into laminated split boards: this makes for a very strong attachment of the book to its cover. The book edges are then sprinkled, burnished and waxed, and a hollow back added to the spine. The book is covered in heavy-duty buckram, with special ‘library’ corners for added strength. The endpapers are put down and a gold-tooled leather title added.

After this class you will be able to bring all your dilapidated reference books back to life in this very strong cloth binding.

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 1-4 or equivalent bookbinding experience sewing and binding books

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:
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.

Block printing is one of the first printmaking techniques, and involves carving and applying ink to a surface to print on paper or fabric. Reduction block printing is the process of creating a multiple color print using just one block of wood, linoleum, or rubber. It is a wonderful way to create unique, handmade designs – from holiday cards to fine art prints.

This two-day workshop will introduce participants to handprinting techniques including tools and waterbased printing inks; paper prep, print registration systems, and how to carve a multiple color image using one rubber block to create a series of prints on kozo paper. Participants will walk away with the skills to create dynamic prints anywhere.

All levels welcome.

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:

- A few multi-color sketches/drawings, 6 x 8". The instructor will help decide which is best for the reduction process.

- Most tools and materials will be provided. Students should bring a Fine/Medium point Sharpie pen and one Soft/Medium pencil.

About the Instructor:
Solange Roberdeau is a visual artist and freelance art educator and she works primarily in paper, sumi ink and with contemporary gilding in her own studio practice. Solange received a BFA in Printmaking from RISD in 2005 and an MFA in Studio Art from MICA in 2012. She teaches private classes as well as has taught workshops in contemporary gilding at institutions including locally at Kala Art Institute, Berkeley; nationally at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore and internationally at Cairo American College, Egypt. More information about Solange can be found on her website: www.solange-roberdeau.com.

A trace monotype is a form of unique print made without a press. Using a plexiglass plate and water-based inks students will create prints by laying down paper on a lightly inked surface and pressing into the back of the paper with a variety of mark making tools. The resulting one-of-a-kind prints will be used to create a pop-up accordion book.

The spontaneous and playful qualities of these prints adapt well to both figurative and abstract themes and the intricate line quality can be used to add detail and text.

Prerequisite:
None

Tools/Materials to bring:
Optional: decorative papers or ephemera to use in/on your book.

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.

A thorough introduction to tooling: lines, both free-hand regular, hand-tooled titles, creative tooling and blocked labels.

 This new class combines several tooling techniques that Dominic has taught at the Center over the years, into a five-day extravaganza of traditional and creative approaches.

The first part of the class will concentrate on traditional hand tooling. We’ll begin with cloth-covered panels and a one-line wheel. Using both metallic foils and carbon paper, we will spend time producing simple tooled lines, beginning with free-style lines until the technique is learned, then progressing to formal lines using a guide. Then we’ll be ready to move onto a leather-covered panel, where we will execute a formal gold tooled ‘diaper’ pattern.

Following this will be the hand-titled spines: working on prepared leather pieces attached to a special spine tooling block, we will learn how to execute three kinds of title: in blind, carbon and gold, using various jigs devised by Dominic which ensure accuracy and efficiency.

This next part of the class will introduce you to Dominic’s creative approach to free-from gold tooling, which he has spent many years perfecting. This is done with his adapted tool which allows you to ‘draw’ in gold.  We will all make our own tool by shaping a piece of brass which is sunk into a wooden handle. We’ll then create a design and learn how to transfer it to the leather using simple jigs and templates, which control the tooling as the completed design takes shape.

Finally, we will concentrate on blocking labels using the Kwikprint. Learning to use this machine is relatively easy but there are a host of tips to learn about how to set up the machine, arrange the type correctly and produce really good crisp labels.

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):
None

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

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.