Return to Workshop and Conference Reports

Report of the 2009 Guild of Book Worker's Standards of Excellence in Hand Bookbinding Seminar

San Francisco, CA
Hotel Kabuki
October 29 - November 1, 2009

Reported by Eric Alstrom, Collections Conservator

Over the Halloween weekend I attended the annual conference of the Guild of Book Workers, called the Seminar on Standards of Excellence in Hand Bookbinding (or just Standards for short) in San Francisco. Before you think "halloween, San Francisco, likely excuse for a conference, he just wanted to party" let me tell you this was one of the best events the GBW has ever put on.

Like year's previous, I arrive a day early to attend the board of directors meeting. I serve as the chair of the Communications Committee, for which the main duties are webmaster and listserv owner. Over the last year we have done a major overhaul of our website and I have worked with a professional web developer on our redesign. Much of our board meeting was focused on what we've done, what we plan on doing in phase two, and how we can use the web to better serve our members and the public. It was a busy board meeting for me, but the praise and thanks for the new site made it worth it (even though I kept saying "it wasn't me, it was our web guy!").

The seminar officially began on Thursday with tours of various book-ish places in and around San Francisco. I went on the "Cutting Edge Tour "of the high-tech binderies and studios in Oakland and Berkeley. The highlights were a tour of the Mills College Special Collections Library, where we were treated to a hands-on display of some of their artists books; a tour of the book arts facilities at Mills given by faculty member (and owner of Flying Fish Press) Julie Chen,; a lecture by Irvin Unger, the owner of Historicana, who has just published a high-tech reproduction of the Szyk Haggadah; and a tour of Magnolia Editions, a bindery which uses super high-tech equipment (like a 4'x8', yes, thats feet!) printer and a laser cutter for cutting book board and other materials for their bindings. The Bay Bridge was closed due to repair, so we took the scenic route over the Golden Gate Bridge and through the parks of Marin County; the Bay area is quite stunning! The day ended with the opening reception held at the San Francisco Public Library Special Collections Library where the current GBW member's exhibit was on display. You can see the exhibit online. (I suggest you start by looking at the catalog between the entries submitted by Alexander and Altpeter.)

The presentations take place on Friday and Saturday. There are four presenters and they each do their presentation four times... thus everyone gets to see all four presentations. This is great for us attendees, but by Saturday afternoon you can see how drained the presenters are. Even so, they all did a fantastic job with some very diverse and interesting topics. First, I attended Tatiana Ginsberg's talk about the Kusakizomegami , the art of dyeing papers in the Japanese tradition, which goes back over one thousand years. The dyes she uses are all from natural sources, such as acorn caps, onion skin, tree bark, flower petals, saffron and even more exotic materials. The results can be subtle or vibrant and all were amazing. Traditionally these papers would have been used for manuscript books (different types of books were written on different colors of paper); art work and Japanese screens; clothing; and even packaging. Today, these paper might be used for decoration, book arts projects and conservation.

Friday afternoon I attended a presentation called "The Art and Science of Cloth Rebacking - Some Useful Techniques" by Dominic Riley, an amazing bookbinder from England. I have known Dominic for many years and looked forward to what I knew would be an informative lecture peppered with more than a bit of humor. And he didn't disappoint. In a three hour presentation, he condensed down a technique to repair 19th century publishers' cloth bindings that can easily take many more hours of concentrated work. I was most interested in this because we are finishing up a large conservation project of just this kind of book at the Wallace Conservation Lab. The tips and tricks I learned, such as the necessary colors for a historic color matching pallet and how to reuse the cloth from an original headband, will be very helpful as we finish up this project.

The second two sessions take place on Saturday. In the morning I attended a presentation by Carolee Campbell (SP?), book artist and owner of Ninja Press in California. Carolee talked about how she develops an idea for a book project, which can take several years. She generally prints poetry and creates book structures to go with the idea or words. Her books range from simple chapbooks to 15' long accordion books. The latter was a poem by W.S. Merwin called "The Real World of Manuel Corbova" and featured a river meandering along the left edge of the long page while the poem followed the contours of the shore. Last, was a presentation on tool repair by Tom Conroy, a binder from Berkeley. Of course, by this time in the seminar, the presenters are pretty tired and Tom was no exception. He had a very physical presentation, drilling, hammering and moving large pieces of wooden and metal bookbinding equipment around as he showed us how to fix a broken wooden screw on a lying press, replace the shank on a finishing tool, and remove rust from just about anything. His big trick was carefully tying string around the handle of the finishing tool (or any other wooden tool) before reinserting the brass decorative shank so that the wood would not swell from the adhesive and heat and split.

The seminar concluded with a Halloween banquet (you knew Halloween would creep in here somehow, right?). For those of us without the foresight to pack a costume, the local hosts provided a table to make your own mask, so the evening was festive and fun. Awards were presented, speeches made and the evening ended with our annual auction to benefit the Guild's scholarship fund. All-in-all, this was one of the best organized, most attended, and high quality seminars the GBW has offered in a long time. The four presentations, like all presentations from Standards past, are available to rent or purchase from the Guild. Visit the Guild's website <www.guildofbookworkers.org> for more information .