Learn basic bookbinding structures and stitches that every beginning book artist should know!

Students will learn five staple structures of the bookbinding world: pamphlet stitch, two versions of one-sheet wonders, accordion folding, and a Japanese stab binding. If you’ve been curious about book arts basics, this is a great starter class; in three hours, you’ll gain the know-how to start making books of your own.

Students also learn about local resources, bookbinding tools, and SFCB’s Bookbinding Core Program, as well as protocol for studio rental. 

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.

About the Instructor:
Jane Knoll (they/them) was the San Francisco Center for the Book's 2025 Type Devil. After an undergraduate in writing and printmaking from Bennington College and a diploma in bookbinding from North Bennet Street School, Jane was awarded two fellowships at the Boston Athenæum's conservation lab and worked as Assistant Book Conservator at the Northeast Document Conservation Center. Currently preparing for a master's in book conservation, Jane studies the archaeology of the book, with special interests in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century structures, folk repairs, and personalized bindings, and has two publications on the American scaleboard binding.

Bookbinding Core Certificate Program

The San Francisco Center for the Book celebrates the craft and art of bookbinding. Our Bookbinding Core Certificate Program introduces students to four different binding models, leading them through the history and evolution of bookmaking.  It provides students a comprehensive foundation to delve into the practice of binding and qualifies them to rent studio time in our bindery. Core classes must be taken in order, 1 through 4.

Click here to learn more about the Bookbinding Core Certificate Program and how to receive a discount!

Bookbinding Core 4: Classic Rounded Back Cloth Binding

The final class in our Core Bookbinding series (taught in two sessions) uses skills learned in each previous class to create a beautiful and classic rounded back cloth binding. After sewing, the book will be rounded and backed before the boards are attached and covered. This binding style points to many historical structures that came before it, making it an ideal structure for anyone interested in learning to bind books with leather, or learning to repair books.  More terms, more tools, more techniques: such are the rewards of the skilled bookbinder!

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 1, 2 and 3

Materials to Bring:
None, all tools and materials are provided.

About the Instructor:
Jane Knoll (they/them) was the San Francisco Center for the Book's 2025 Type Devil. After an undergraduate in writing and printmaking from Bennington College and a diploma in bookbinding from North Bennet Street School, Jane was awarded two fellowships at the Boston Athenæum's conservation lab and worked as Assistant Book Conservator at the Northeast Document Conservation Center. Currently preparing for a master's in book conservation, Jane studies the archaeology of the book, with special interests in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century structures, folk repairs, and personalized bindings, and has two publications on the American scaleboard binding.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Students are welcome to bring a second project with the understanding that it may not be possible to get both boxes fully assembled by the end of the weekend, but at least one box will be taken to completion.

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
- 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.

Learn how to make a facsimile of the earliest known codex binding, famous for containing the controversial Gnostic Gospels.

The Nag Hammadi codices take their name from the Egyptian village where in 1945 a clay pot containing thirteen ancient books was discovered. They are the earliest extant codex bindings ever found, and were uncovered in remarkably good condition.

This workshop will lead you through the making of a codex bearing all the characteristic features of these early book structures. We will construct a sympathetic facsimile of the Nag Hammadi codex, and experience the structure and form of ancient bookbinding.

We will make our version of this 3rd century book from a textblock of folded papyrus, bound together with knotted leather tackets on a leather spine piece and covered in boards stiffened by layers of papyrus. The boards have leather edging strips, and the book is covered in hand-dyed North African goatskin.

It is held closed with beautiful leather ties and wrapping bands, which are integrated to the cover using a delicate slotting and lacing technique.

Step back in time and enjoy making your own model of the oldest book in the world.

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. 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.