For students who have completed either the basic Clamshell or Lift-Top Box class.

Over the course of two days, students will measure, cut, and construct their own custom clamshell (solander) box for a book or other item of their choice such as prints or photographs.

We will review measuring & scaling, board cutting, tray construction, cover making, casing in, and options for labels and inlays. We will discuss additional lining options for the interior of the small tray and how to plan for the necessary allowances when constructing the inner tray.

Students will begin by rough cutting their materials for the box and then the coverings and trimming them down to the size required as they construct the box components. We will review key elements of the construction process and explore some stages in more depth, but students will be working independently for a substantial chunk of the class.

All materials needed for the construction of the boxes, board, bookcloth, and decorative paper, will be available at the center. If you have a specific design or color palette that you wish to use on your boxes, you will need to source your own materials.

Prerequisite:
Box-making experience, clamshell or lift-top.

Tools/materials to bring:
- your usual bookbinding tool kit (we have basic hand tools available)
- teflon bone folder
- aluminum drafting triangle (this is the drafting 30-60-90 triangle with circles punched in it
- any bookcloth or paper that you might want to use on your project.

Any materials will need to be approved by the instructor; some papers or cloths may not be appropriate.

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, and now teaches SFCBs Box Making Core 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.

For students who are Cylinder Core Certified, here's a chance to expand on the skills you’ve learned and try something new.

Learn to use strip rule - long, thin pieces of type-high metal - to build decorative borders to enhance your already interesting work. Borders can be functional, fun or both, and we'll try everything from a simple 45º angle to a bold and flourishing cornerstone.

Students will learn the difference between different kinds of strip material including brass rule, lead borders and rule, and wood borders. They'll create their own rule borders, combining strip material and decorative ornaments, and learn the painstaking process of mitering rule to get a 45-degree angle with the aid of a border box.

Students will leave class with an understanding of how to deploy a range of traditional decorative letterpress techniques to apply to their own projects.

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):
Cylinder Core 1-4 Certification or equivalent Vandercook/letterpress experience. Please email us with your qualifications if you're new to SFCB.

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

About the Instructor:
Brian Ferrett (he/him) has a printing degree from MATC and worked in offset web and screen printing. In 2008 he joined M&H Type as a typecasting apprentice under Lewis Mitchell. He currently manages M&H's daily operations, maintains the historic casting machines and presses, casts type, and prints Arion Press publications. Brian is a member of the Northern California chapter of the American Printing History Association, the American Typecaster Fellowship, and volunteers with San Francisco Public Library's annual Valentine’s Day broadside event. In his spare time he plays around with his Vandercook 219AB, C&P New Style 10x15, and his two Kelseys.

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.

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.

New session added to meet demand! Click here to see the open dates!

Learn how to exploit the natural beauty of leather to create several useful techniques which can enhance your binding. All of these techniques are used by Dominic in his Design Bindings. Each technique gives different tactile and visual results to the finished surface of the leather.

We begin with simple raised onlays which give a slightly raised effect; back-pared onlays which produce a smooth surface, and feathered onlays for a more painterly effect. We will then progress to inlays, useful for larger areas, which demand very accurate paring and cutting. We will then move on to impressed leather techniques, which allow all manner of surface patterns to be embossed in the leather grain. We will finish with Tudor Style, a way of covering a book in overlapping strips of thinly pared leather which gives a very handsome finish.

All these techniques necessitate mastering the precise steps involved in planning and execution so that the desired result is achieved.

Working on prepared panels, you will learn how to prepare the board for decoration, the correct working order needed for each technique, and how to design, cut out and apply the leather accurately.

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; Orientation to Leather, Practical Leather Skills, or other experience working with and paring leather.

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.

If you’ve taken either the Introduction to Digital or Analog Risograph Printing class and are looking to rent the Riso machine independently, this is the next step. 

The Risograph Certification class will reinforce proper usage and care of the machine through two projects, covering both analog and digital techniques.  We’ll reacquaint ourselves with the machine and troubleshoot when printing our first project from the glass. Then we will take a look at Spectrolite software, which can be used to prep digital files before printing or review files in desired color combinations. We will use Spectrolite to send files directly to the Riso for the second project. 

Each student will be required to switch drums, confidential a master and execute other basic functions. This class will be a fast-paced assessment of a student’s skills rather than a time for experimentation.

Upon satisfactory completion of the Risograph Certification class, you will be able to rent the Riso at SFCB to work independently on your posters, zines, or other printed matter! 

Prerequisite:
Introduction to Digital Risograph Printing OR Introduction to Analog Risograph Printing OR previous Riso printing experience. If your experience is from outside SFCB, please contact us before registering to request a skills review. 

Materials to bring:
Students will complete two separate projects, two colors each. Come prepared with designs ready to print. Both projects will be printed on 11” x 17” paper, they must have margins and images must not be larger than 10” x 16”.

One project should be ready to print from the glass of the machine (remember that two colors means two separate layers!). The second project should be digital files on a thumb drive, or digital storage that can be accessed from a shared laptop. Ideally you’ll work with one or more color photographs for this project, .jpg or pdf, please. The studio will supply paper for printing.

We suggest you download Spectrolite in the weeks before class to familiarize yourself with the software.

About the Instructor:
Meri Brin (she/her) has been teaching Printmaking around the Bay Area since 2007. Besides teaching at SFCB, she has taught Silkscreen at Mission Grafica, and was full-time faculty at Academy of Art University for a decade. Her prints have been exhibited in local, as well as national shows. She has a print in the Library of Congress, and also exhibits as Fixated Press at San Francisco Zine Fest. Her artwork examines the complexity and visual noise of the everyday world, or she just wants to show you some cats.

Meri is a member of the California Society of Printmakers, and is the Printmedia Studio Manager at California College of the Arts.

Added to meet student demand! Please note, this class takes place on a Monday and Tuesday.

Learn how to exploit the natural beauty of leather to create several useful techniques which can enhance your binding. All of these techniques are used by Dominic in his Design Bindings. Each technique gives different tactile and visual results to the finished surface of the leather.

We begin with simple raised onlays which give a slightly raised effect; back-pared onlays which produce a smooth surface, and feathered onlays for a more painterly effect. We will then progress to inlays, useful for larger areas, which demand very accurate paring and cutting. We will then move on to impressed leather techniques, which allow all manner of surface patterns to be embossed in the leather grain. We will finish with Tudor Style, a way of covering a book in overlapping strips of thinly pared leather which gives a very handsome finish.

All these techniques necessitate mastering the precise steps involved in planning and execution so that the desired result is achieved.

Working on prepared panels, you will learn how to prepare the board for decoration, the correct working order needed for each technique, and how to design, cut out and apply the leather accurately.

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; Orientation to Leather, Practical Leather Skills, or other experience working with and paring leather.

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.

There are many considerations for the preparation of paper and press set-up in order to successfully print in a variety of situations where partial or full bleeds are required. This class will focus on patterns, images, and texts which bleed off some or all the edges of the page, and planning for post-trimming, along with choosing inks for overprinting.

Additionally, we will discuss printing jobs which will be sent to another printer or service bureau for foil stamping, die cutting, or photographic insertion.

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.