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Po Box 410963
San Francisco, CA 94141
USA
A close-knit group of hand bookbinders, with shared interests in creating and collecting fine bindings, joined together to promote hand bookbinding and related book arts and to exchange information and ideas.
Information about bookish events happening in the Bay Area and beyond. If you would like to add events to this calendar, please email the editor!
The OPEN • SET 2025 Competition & Exhibition is an event in the United States featuring finely crafted bookbindings. Sponsored by the American Academy of Bookbinding, it is designed to encourage both new binders and professionals and is open to binders around the world. We invite you to participate!
Bound to Be Different, Hand Bindings from Private Presses, showcases a range of fine bindings crafted by eleven private presses. Each press has a unique approach to the aesthetics of printing and binding from William Morris's Kelmscott Press, founded in 1891, to the present.
All the books in this exhibit were made entirely by hand, employing letterpress printing and hand-binding. Private presses have the freedom to publish classics or original works, and to use hand made materials and binding techniques that commercial publishers cannot replicate.
Registration opens Mar 4, 2024
DATE: Focus on Book Arts Conference June 26-30, 2024
NEW LOCATION: Western Oregon University in Monmouth, Oregon
The 15th Focus on Book Arts conference offers five full days of workshops that appeal to beginning as well as advanced book artists. You can come for just one workshop or for the entire conference; a range of class lengths let you tailor an experience just for you.
Remember Me: American Carved Stone Books from the Ian Berke Collection, curated by Mindell Dubansky, is a fascinating exploration of the realm where book-like objects and folk art intersect. San Francisco collector Ian Berke has amassed a collection of over 500 of these unique pieces over seventeen years.
Workshop: Pianel Binding at SFCB
Pianel binding is a modern twist on binding structures that use metal rods at the joint, more commonly known as piano hinges.
Society of Antiquaries
Taste and discrimination: The Cerruti Collection of decorated bindings.
The Bay Area Printers’ Fair & Wayzgoose will return on April 13, 2024 at History Park, 635 Phelan Ave, San Jose, CA.
This is a FREE and public event celebrating letterpress printing, typography, book arts, ephemera, fine paper, printmaking, and allied arts.
The California International Antiquarian Book Fair returns to San Francisco in 2024! This three-day event features fine and rare materials from around the globe, including manuscripts, first editions, illustrated books, ephemera, maps, and autographs, as well as antiquarian books on a vast array of topics.
The CODEX Foundation announces the 9th International Biennial Book Art Fair & Symposium.
The fair & symposium endeavors to bring to the attention of the public the importance and value of the book arts and their essential role in transmitting cultural history. This event supports and facilitates collaboration across the globe between artists, scholars, curators, and collectors in the production and preservation of meaningful scholarly and artistic contributions to the book arts field.
Letterpress print your own broadside on the Book Club’s Colombian hand press with Li Jiang, Lemoncheese Press.
A Radical Alteration: Women's Studio Workshop as a Sustainable Model for Art Marking looks at the organization's rich history as a proponent of book arts for marginalized communities in the U.S. Through artists' books, printed materials, ephemera, and archival materials, the exhibition looks at how the organization's policies, programming, and operations have evolved over the last fifty years, creating a space where the conditions of art making and institutional support are in service to a sustainable and more equitable art ecosystem.
The Cambridge University Library recently purchased a previously unknown notebook kept by Isaac Newton’s chamber-fellow, John Wickins, in the years around 1680. It is possible to identify the contents of the notebook as being previously unknown compositions and correspondence of Isaac Newton, which shed light on many aspects of his work and his engagement with the University in which he was employed.
This talk will attempt to identify the author of the inscription and the owner of the books and manuscripts in new detail; to reconstruct William Walker’s small but unquestionably significant personal library; and to trace the history of the “best” manuscript of Sir Philip Sidney’s “Old Arcadia.”
Empress San Francisco offers a fresh examination of this, one of the largest and most influential world’s fairs, by considering the local social and political climate of Progressive Era San Francisco. Focusing on the influence exerted by women, Asians and Asian Americans, and working-class labor unions, among others, Abigail M. Markwyn offers a unique analysis both of this world’s fair and the social construction of pre–World War I America and the West.
The Hroswitha Club was a bibliographic society whose members were all women. Join Kate Ozment as she reveals the Hroswitha history, tells about some if its remarkable members, and discusses its impact on the world of book collecting and specialty publishing.
This holiday season, support the Bay Area creative community by shopping this special pop-up sale featuring local presses, zine publishers, artists, and more. From artist books and zines to posters, T-shirts, and mixtapes, you’re sure to find something unique for everyone on your list — including yourself!
In-Person and Virtual Presentation
Book Club of California
Dr. Amy Gore, assistant professor of English at North Dakota State University, will discuss the connections between books, bodies, and Indigenous book history at the release of her latest monograph, Book Anatomy: Body Politics and the Materiality of Indigenous Book History (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023). From a book’s “spine” to its “appendix,” bibliographers use a language of the body that reveals our intimate connection with books.
Scholars David Stromberg and Aaron Lansky will discuss a new book, Isaac Bashevis Singer's Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt, The War Years, 1939-1945 (White Goat Press). November 11 would have been the 120th birthday of the late Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Club member Alvin Patrick, a CBS News Executive Producer, has amassed over 2,000 books during 30 years of collecting. He will discuss highlights of his first editions of African American literature dating back to 1817, and their importance to the story of Black people in America. Among his prized titles are Toussaint L’Ouverture: Biography and Autobiography (1863, coauthored with John Relly Beard), W. E. B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ann Petry's The Street (1946), Gwendolyn Brooks' Annie Allen(1949), and Arthur Ashe Jr.'s three-volume A Hard Road to Glory (1988).
After resigning from his sales position at William Doxey’s bookstore in San Francisco’s famous Palace Hotel in 1897, a young Paul Elder opened his own shop two blocks away. Elder’s goal was a bookstore with a carefully crafted ambience, reflecting his embrace of the California Arts & Crafts Movement.
Join us at The Grolier Club in Frankenstein fashion for an evening celebrating the founder of Science Fiction, Mary Shelley. The event will commence with a panel discussion including Bond & Gracepublishing and art house Founders Jacqueline Bond & Ayana Christie, Literary Scholar and former NYTimes Editor, Caroline Gilpin, and Fine Artists Holly Lowen and Kay Douglas. The panel will discuss Mary Shelley’s compelling critique of humanity’s pursuit of discovery and how her warnings of the impact of technology when coupled with blind ambition are not only presently relevant, but increasingly prophetic.
From the Bench, SFCB's series of short studio tours with friends near and far. From favorite tools to works in progress, you never know what you'll learn about from these amazing artists.
This month we'll chat with Paloma Lucas, a printmaker, book artist and graphic designer in San Francisco, CA.
A new exhibition explores the vital role of paper and papermaking within a global context
Paper Is People: Decolonizing Global Paper Cultures, co-curated by Tia Blassingame and Stephanie Sauer, offers a new definition of paper within a global and decolonial framework. Featuring works by local, national, and international artists, this exhibition explores the vital role substrates play in human communities and how meaning is made from what we might call paper and papermaking.
Experience letterpress printing on the Library's 1909 Albion handpress and take home a broadside keepsake to celebrate Halloween. Printers from the American Printing History Association's NorCal Chapter will provide printing assistance.
Kenneth Gloss, a rare book specialist and appraiser who runs the Brattle Book Shop in Boston and appears on national TV shows (including Antiques Roadshow), will speak on "improbable finds" of his decades-long career.
In recognition of Banned Book Week, Molly Manning will speak on censorship and propaganda in connection with the themes of her exhibition, "The Best Read Army in the World."
Subscription to Mischief is a time capsule of graffiti letterforms and a tribute to the community formed through snail mail.
This free event features:
•Printing demonstration: take a turn on the press!
•Hands on activities: make your own mini book
• A gallery of artist books made by members
•Vendors offering unique artist books, handmade papers, greeting cards, art supplies, and more!
•Flea market/boutique of deeply discounted art-related items
Claiming Space - A Celebration of Multicultural Artists’ Books
Environmental Design, Library Atrium
Come enjoy a selection of 20 artists’ books that we’ll have on hand for you!
The Standards of Excellence Seminar in Hand Bookbinding is the annual Guild of Book Workers conference. Held annually at a different location around the country, participants attend presentations by leading experts in the fields related to the book and paper arts.
Tours of binderies, conservation facilities, rare book libraries and papermaking establishments are regularly arranged in conjunction with the event.
This year, San Francisco Center for the Book celebrates twenty years of the Roadworks Steamroller Printing Festival by hosting a family-friendly, daylong block party featuring public printmaking, bookmaking, and hands-on art activities.
Celebrate the opening of a new exhibit: Stenciling in Book & Applied Arts
Come meet the collector, Alex Angell and enjoy food and fine beverages, meet up with friends, and partake in conversation and scholarship!
An RSVP is appreciated
A new exhibit at the American Bookbinders Museum: Stenciling in Book & Applied Arts from Japanese Katazoime to French Pochoir...and back again.
In this class students will have a chance to learn and practice more advanced paper marbling techniques. In this more advanced and limited enrollment class, the instructor will demonstrate more advanced marbling techniques, then allow the students to try their hand at doing them.
