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.
The Artists' BookMarket 2017
Our Talented Co-workers at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
Kerry Douglas
On Saturday afternoon while most of the capital were watching the rugby Gail and I travelled straight past Murrayfield to The Fruitmarket Gallery to see all the lovely work on display last weekend at this years Artists' Bookmarket, Edinburgh.
Two of our very own bookbinders, Kerry Douglas and Gillian Stewart, were showcasing some of their own stunning prints and books among many other artists, designers and makers.
This was the first year I've been to the BookMarket but I hear it has been running for 7 years now and is sort of an annual mini artist book festival with people exhibiting and selling their work, along with talks and discussion groups, workshops and poetry readings.
There were around 40 stalls to peruse (and purchase from!) showing an interesting variety of not just book making but also book art, photography, poetry, writing, drawings, ceramic and glass work, printing and letterpress among other techniques.
Gillian Stewart
Although here in our bindery we pride ourselves on our quality of craftsmanship, it is not usual for us to be able to work as creatively as we saw the artists do at the BookMarket. The books and booklets we saw were little works of art in themselves and really inspiring to pick up and look through. Kerry and Gillian specialise in graphic design, illustration and printmaking, which combined with the skills they have learnt here at Downie Allison Downie, they use to create beautiful and thought provoking art - in book form!
I should have told you all about it sooner so that everyone could have gone to see the BookMarket - I do apologise! But please have a look at their amazing work and check out their websites. by clicking on any of the images in this post.
If you have an idea for an book project but don't know where to begin we can help it come to fruition We are always happy to listen to your thoughts and answer any questions we can. You could even come and do a class with us to learn the basics now you've seen what can be achieved!
Kerry looking after her and Gillian's stand at the Artists' Bookmarket
Kerry Douglas
Gillian Stewart
Kerry Douglas
Back in the Bindery!
Old Meets New in our New Year
This book has been re-backed in leather with the old spine remounted. The top panel had been lost so we tooled it to match.
Happy New Year everyone! We were hard at it up until Christmas, and January certainly isn't breaking us in gently after the festive season!
After a couple of days to catch up with, and finish off a couple of smaller jobs we spent yesterday cleaning the workshop from top to bottom. Decluttering and tidying in preparation for an exciting year!
Having already been awarded a prestigious tender from a huge library in London towards the end of last year, we are preparing to apply for another! These large contracts are really important for us, not only to keep us all in a job, but for to prove how great our little bindery is! We are a small operation, but we take pride in taking the same care over each book in a big order as we do with those brought to us by individual customers who come to our door every day. The quality of every single book has to reach our high standards!
Our next tender application relies on us expanding our more specialised repair and conservation skills. As more and more binding of new books is being done on such a massive scale, mainly by machines, bookbinding by hand is becoming a dying art - especially book repair. Every book brought to us for restoration is different which makes our job more difficult, but also much more interesting!
We find a lot of people want us to rebind their favourite books, books they want to hand down to their children and some that have been passed down to them. Some folk find old books in charity shops and second hand bookshops and take a shine to them, love the smell of them. They are treasured for the pencil notes in the margins, inscriptions on the front page and beautiful illustrations - both the ones printed in the book and the ones your 3 year old scribbled when you left it out near the colouring pens. Books can hold incredible sentimental value for their owners, something a modern e-book could never manage.
If you have a book you'd like restored, just bring it in - we are always happy to chat about books! You could even have a go at fixing it yourself - under our expert supervision of course - on one of our Book Repair Classes.
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.