Iona Abbey Library
Preserving Iona Abbey Library
In March 2017 we were invited to the Isle of Iona to visit the Iona Abbey Library. There John and Lesley Anne appraised hundreds of books on their two day trip and we, along with two other conservators, were awarded the tender.
Iona Abbey Library is one of the most important libraries in Western Europe and attracts over 130,000 visitors a year. It is where St Columba's monks sat down to write and illustrate the Book of Kells before being rudely interrupted by the vikings!
In September 2016 the tiny library, hidden above the cloisters of the abbey, received a grant of £100,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This is being used to support the two year restoration and conservation project preserving the unique works held in the library for future generations.
Shortly after receiving several boxes containing books and manuscripts which delve into the history of Scotland and its Gaelic ancestry we set to work. Where possible the books were restored as similarly to their original bindings as possible. In many cases this involved paper repair work and conservation binding, and where pamphlets and manuscripts had been previously unprotected, they were now secured in new cases so that the internal pages will stay preserved for many more years to come.
In December 2017 we safely returned the precious works to the Iona Abbey Cathedral Trust who will look after them until the Abbey Library restoration project has been completed. We hope to be involved in the public exhibition to be created on Iona; in this it's final year; to showcase all the hard work put into this venture before its expected completion in October.
"Thank you very much to DAD Bookbinders for all your hard work and attention to our books. They have been in good hands"
Sue Clutterbuck, Project Manager, Iona Abbey Library Project
Adventures in London
Road Trip!
Every 4 weeks a couple of "lucky" bookbinders get to drive our wee van down to London and back on a two day road trip. Last week it was the turn of Gail and I.
We left at 7am on Monday morning and with just a few stops for coffee on the way we had a thankfully uneventful journey to the capital. We blethered all the way and arrived at our first stop, The British Library, at about 3:30pm. After making our delivery there we headed to pick up a little box of books in need of repair from the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths'.
We also needed to deliver an order to the London Library and collect another even bigger one to take home. The London Library give us lots of interesting rebinding work as they are such an eclectic organisation and a beautiful library - I encourage everyone to visit. They run tours!
All this before we even get to check into our hotel!
But, not a minute is wasted as we head out to enjoy the small amount of free time we have to explore the city. Gail and I love a walk to Covent Garden and a look around the quirky stalls and shops. Although we had to cut our wanderings short as we had a dinner date with our bosses!
Robin and Lesley-Anne are currently looking after a huge library cleaning job for the Royal College of Surgeons and kindly offered to take us out for our evening meal. We had a lovely time, a couple of cocktails and tried to keep the work chat to a minimum.
The following morning, Gail and I were up early to get back to the British Library. As we are not allowed to remove any of the materials from the library we need to go and measure up all the items to then create a bespoke box for each back in our workshop. The process can be fairly time consuming but they require such an accurate fit that it is the only way we can do their order effectively.
The British Library is another amazing place. It is like an iceberg as it has more levels under the city as it does above, with the vast majority of their items being stored in temperature and humidity controlled, airless environments below street level. The main areas of the library are littered with people working from notepads and laptops with the reading rooms being completely and eerily silent.
With only one more small collection to do on our way out of London we drove our laden van back, through the rain, to Glasgow. Our highlight of the drive home was meeting these two cheeky chaps at Tebay service station!
It is a long trip to do every month but we need to take care of our customers in London in the same way as we do our lovely Scottish clients!
A Bookbinders Favourite Tool
John - our Master Bookbinder
Our Unique Bone Folders
With a range of bookbinding tools now on offer to purchase from our online shop I thought it'd be timely to give you a little insight into our favourite one!
A bone folder is, unsurprisingly, traditionally made of bone, although these days you can find them produced in a few other materials. including brass and teflon.
It's purpose is primarily for paper folding, card making and origami but it has other uses. We use it for covering boxes and poking the cloth into all the nooks and crannies. It is also perfect for adding a little extra glue to a job, rubbing down paper to make sure it sticks and on the odd occasion I have seen it used for stirring coffee in our workshop!
You can see our small range of bone folders now in our online shop - all of ours started off life just like one of those. One of the reasons we are all so attached to our own particular folder is that they adapt and change as you use them. The way you rub every single spine when lining often creates a dip in one side. Sometimes we sharpen the end a little to get into a small space and unfortunately sometimes they break and so we shorten them and reshape them to continue their life. And needless to say we are in a complete panic when we misplace our folder!!
Mia - a beautiful array of shapes and sizes!
David - a name tag so no-one pinches it!
Kerry - relatively new clean ones!
Mine - one of these is teflon - non stick!
Gillian & Robin - Robin's sadly broke today!
Erin - a particularly pointed one for box making!
Check out our ever expanding online shop to see our current range of tools and materials. We don't sell anything that we don't use on a daily basis here in our workshop so it is all to true production bookbinding standard - and why not pick yourself up your own bone folder? It really is a bookbinders favourite tool!
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