Advanced Bookbinding Classes
A Little Leather?
Later this week we will be excitedly tearing these enticing brown paper wraps open in preparation for the Advanced Bookbinding Class this Saturday.
This, of course, is our leather stash. Leather bindings are a particular speciality here at Downie Allison Downie. It is a very skilled way of binding, which fewer binderies can do these days. Due to the lack of these skills still being taught, and of course the ever increasing prices of leather, it is certainly becoming one of our more high end services.
On our Advanced Bookbinding Class we spend the day binding a notebook in leather - much like this one I made as an example in our last class. We have a choice of leather for the spine and an even wider choice of beautiful papers for the sides to make your book truly the only one of its kind.
We show you how to work with the leather to stretch it over the book's spine and how we create the decorative raised bands. Hopefully we'll even have time for a little bit of gold tooling too!
Our Advanced Bookbinding Class usually requires a little prior bookbinding experience but if you would like to join us you can find out all the dates and details on our classes page. Or if you'd like to know more about our leather binding and repair work you can by clicking here.
Bookbinding Classes
Come to one of our Workshops
Our classes usually run two Saturdays a month from 10am until 4pm creating a range of products. You can take our courses all the way through Introduction and Intermediate to the Advanced class, or you could try Box Making, Book Repair or Coptic Sewing. We only have a couple of classes left before Christmas but the schedule for the New Year is organised already and bookable online in our shop. We are surprised at how quickly we are getting bookings for 2017 already so get in fast to avoid disappointment!
We usually only accomodate up to 8 people on a day - we like to keep it intimate! We only have limited space in the workshop - there are 8 or 9 of us working in the bindery on a regular basis so it's only really designed for us! It also means that you get a lot more one-on-one attention at the class which is better for you!
John, our Master Bookbinder, and myself are usually the ones who teach the classes. John did his apprenticeship straight from school and has been working in the industry all his life. As there are very few training programmes available for bookbinding John has been responsible for training everyone in our workshop on the job, so he is the ideal person to teach anyone from absolute beginner to more advanced levels.
Before I started working here at Downie Allison Downie, several years ago now, I took a couple of classes with John purely to feed an interest for beautiful handmade sketchbooks which began for me at art school. Just seeing the workshop and all the things going on here is quite inspiring and many of the peole who have previously joined us for classes now bind or repair books as a hobby at home, some even make a little money from selling the books they make!
As handmade, and small craft industries are becoming more valued it is a great time to try out a new skill and learn to appreciate the time and effort which goes into creating a hand made product. Hand binding uses very little equipment so it is ideal to do from your kitchen table, and the variety of what you can produce is endless!
Classes for Christmas
As Christmas is approaching you can of course buy vouchers for our classes as gifts! The vouchers can be used to book any class and so the lucky recipient can come to a class of their choice.
Classes for Groups
We can also organise classes for groups of varying sizes, either in our workshop or at your venue. You can read about the class we ran at the Glasgow School of Art a short while back in this article.
If you are interested in organising a class, or even just a talk about bookbinding, for your group then you can contact us for more information and we will do our best to accomodate your needs and suggest options for you.
Please share this post - drop hints for Christmas or pass on to any budding bookbinder!
We're Getting Ready for Christmas!
Have You Started Your Christmas Shopping Yet?!
Vouchers can be used against any products or services at our bindery.
We could repair or rebind a favourite book, make a brand new journal to your size and specifications or of course you could join us for one of our inspiring classes!
They can also be redeemed when purchasing tools or materials from our workshop or online shop.
Some examples of little notebooks - coming soon to our online shop! Over the next few weeks we will be expanding our online shop to offer a number of quirky products alongside all the tools and materials you could possibly need to have a go yourself!
Our vouchers come in several denominations or you can buy one of our Class Vouchers which can be redeemed for any class from Introduction to Bookbinding, to Book Repair and Box Making so your lucky recipient is free to chose when they'd like to attend from any available class dates. You can learn more about our classes here
You can also book classes through our website using a gift voucher.
Our Gift Vouchers could be the perfect present for the book lover in your life!
Need some more ideas for excellent presents - here are a few we love!
"The End" Bookend by Goodwin & Goodwin
Art Print by BookishlyUK
Library Stamp T-Shirt by The Literary Gift Company
If this sounds like your perfect Christmas gift why not share this post and drop a few hints!
Workshops at The Glasgow School of Art
Workshops at The Glasgow School of Art Portfolio Preparation Course
Bookbinding Workshops at GSA
Last week we were invited to run a couple of bookbinding workshops at the Glasgow School of Art Portfolio Preparation Course.
Robin and I spent the day in the inspiring spaces of the old McLellan Galleries teaching two groups of future artists and designers a little about bookbinding.
Portfolio Preparation Classes are a great way to build up a cohesive body of work for prospective art school applicants to take to interviews.
At GSA they run Summer classes as well as an evening course with a brilliant and varied output to encourage their students to work independently to develop their own creative processes. Similar courses can also be found in a number of other colleges.
Although not used to teaching quite so many people at once(!) the classes went really well and everyone went home with a couple of very interesting sketchbooks!
