Explore this fascinating style of limp binding, which offers many creative possibilities to today's book artist as well as presenting an interesting overview of historical sewing structures, both practical and decorative.

Limp bindings, held together with exposed sewing, have been made throughout Europe since the fifteenth century, and were used for both printed and blank books. It is interesting to note that because they are such simple structures, they were often not made by trained bookbinders, but could be put together by clerks in their offices with a few simple tools and, essentially, straightforward sewing techniques. They employ a range of sewing structures, including tackets, long and link stitches, decorative spine patterns and ingenious fastenings, using both simple and elaborate techniques.

In this workshop you will produce five bindings that are historically accurate but with a contemporary take. We will begin by making a simple binding held together with tackets — as old as the codex itself — then create a simple longstitch binding, a more complex linkstitch, and then combine the two. We will finish with a linkstitch binding, with a handsome wooden spine plate and additional decorative sewing.

You will create covers from a variety of materials, starting with handsome handmade case paper. You’ll then learn how to laminate two sheets of text paper together to make a stiffened card cover, and finally, how to create a very beautiful vellum cover by lining an old deed with thin Japanese paper. The books will be further embellished with spine plates of leather, vellum and wood. They will be given closures and ties (including hidden magnets!), and ornamented with buttons, bosses, secondary sewing and woven thread.

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:
sharp bone folders, small hand drill and thin bits, Japanese screw punch if you have one, various buttons, clasps and threads.

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 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.

Everyone is familiar with — and awed by — the gilded edge. But gilding takes many years of practice to master. However, book edges have been decorated by other methods for centuries, and these styles of edge treatments are, by contrast, extremely easy to learn.

Working on ordinary paperbacks brought from home, we will complete six different edges treatments.

We will start with the easiest technique, the splattered edge — also known as the newspaper edge — used for centuries to decorate large bound-up volumes of newspapers and magazines. Next comes the solid red edge found on bibles, almanacs and journals, followed by the sprinkled edge common on cheaper books from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Then we will produce the more complex colored, sprinkled and waxed edge found on nineteenth-century leather bindings. We will proceed to the classic German-style graphite edge, which is sanded to a mirror finish before a starch size is applied and the graphite added. This edge is burnished andwaxed to a high sheen and can be augmented with simple gold tooling. We will finish with the painted edge, used on design bindings, which allows for a more artistic interpretation of the overall book design. 

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:
- plenty of paperback books to work on
- 3 small kitchen plates
- various sized artists’ paintbrushes
- cobbler’s knife
- 4 new shoe brushes
- old toothbrush

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 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.

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.

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.

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 1: Coptic Binding

This class introduces students to the craft with the Coptic stitch, one of the earliest structures in binding. Students will spend the morning making their own decorative pastepapers, then use them in the afternoon when binding their book.

In addition to coming away with a finished book made by hand, students will also be introduced to the tools and terms of bookbinding. Basic practices and equipment will be discussed as students familiarize themselves with both skills and safety measures needed for working in a bindery.

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. Beginners are welcome. 

Materials to bring:
None. All tools and materials will be provided.

About the Instructor:
Madison Halaby Gordon (she/they) is a bookbinder and conservator-in-training living in Oakland, CA, currently working at Zukor Art Conservation and the Walt Disney Family Museum. She is fascinated by paper, and loves making and repairing practical, fun, accessible, and well-made structures for the use and enjoyment of everyday people. Madison is also trained in letterpress printing and has worked previously with the Key Printing & Binding (Oakland, CA) and Small Editions (Brooklyn, NY).

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.