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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!
Magic of Marbling | Unique by Design - an exhibit celebrating the art, techniques and designs of marbling. The marbling samples in this exhibit were made by marbling artist Pietro Accardi.
The Book Arts Bazaar is a one-day celebration of the book, print and paper arts featuring BABA Members Gallery, hands-on activities, guest exhibitors and more.
Bruce Holsinger will discuss the making of parchment past and present, the imaginative role of parchment in literary works, and parchment's historical importance in the Euro-Mediterranean world.
Join HBC’s past President, Rhiannon Alpers, for a two-day workshop sponsored by the Guild of Book Workers' California Chapter.
SFCB showcases contemporary publishers and artists utilizing Risograph technology to create experimental and thought-provoking bookworks.
Roman Holiday is the 40th International Calligraphy and Lettering Arts Conference. After a five year hiatus, our international calligraphic community will gather IN-PERSON to celebrate our collective journey from formal, traditional rules of historical form to personal, creative expression.
Design Week Open House at Letterform Archive
Erin Fletcher will explore the history of embroidered bindings leading up to contemporary binders in the craft. Fletcher will also talk about the significance of embroidery in her craft.
Ever wonder what materials are used to make the book you are reading?
Come see American Bookbinders Museum latest exhibit and explore the different categories of materials and their various uses.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
An exhibition of rarely seen work explores the iconic Bay Area printer’s playful and improvisational process. Using a mismatched set of 19th-century wood block letters, Stauffacher reimagined type as abstract form.
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.
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.
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.
