Workshops
Workshops are offered several times a year at various bay area locations, either at teachers' studios or at local book-related venues. Courses are held by nationally recognized instructors with hands-on instruction in fine binding, book structures, paper decorating, equipment maintenance and many other techniques. Open to all those who are interested; courses that have prerequisites will be clearly marked as such.
SCHOLARSHIPS: As a member organization which includes binders of all levels, we strive to create space for everyone to learn new skills and applications. Many of our workshops offer half-tuition scholarships through our Jane Aaron Scholarship Fund. To apply for a scholarship please fill out this form. Details of the scholarship are included at the top of the form.
Creative Processes and Decorative Techniques for Design Binding
Creative Processes and Decorative Techniques for Design Binding
DATES: February 12-15, 2026; 9 am-5 pm with a break for lunch
LOCATION: The Codex Foundation, 131 7th Street, Berkeley CA
Creative design for bookbinding is often seen as a challenging part of the binding process – not only generating a visual response to the text but also, finding the right techniques and materials to translate that visual response into a binding. This course will introduce a range of activities to help you to explore your own unique way of responding to a text and engaging with the content to develop your confidence in this area of design binding. During the first part of the course, Sue will take you through a range of guided exercises. She will support you through tasks aimed at exploring a text and developing ways of translating these responses into a visual design. We will use a range of different texts, culminating in a short story, which you will use to create a small portfolio of visual responses. Sue will include a presentation with examples from her own practice to introduce the concept of design for binding and, in between the exercises, there will be lots of discussion and workshop time in which you will have the opportunity to explore everyone's ideas and responses. During the second half of this workshop, Kate will introduce you, via demonstration and images of past work, to a variety of decorative techniques suitable for bookbinding: leather dyeing - craquele, ombre, paste resist; printing - reverse offset printing, monoprinting; inlays and onlays - backpared onlays, sunken onlays, cushioned onlays, inlaying other materials; gilding leather with gold leaf; impressing leather; blind tooling, foil tooling, tooling with gold leaf. We will then explore how to translate your designs into leather 'covers' using these techniques. By the end of the four days, you will have a small portfolio of written/visual responses to the text and a plaquette of your design using some of the techniques demonstrated, plus, a whole lot of knowledge and inspiration to help you explore further.
Prerequisites: Basic Leather Paring
Tools/Materials: Please bring your paring knives and a paring machine such as a Scharf-Fix or Brockman if you have one.
Seats: Space limited to 8 students
Cost: $1150 Non-members & $950 Members plus $120 materials fee
Scholarships: To apply for a scholarship that would cover half the tuition of this workshop, please fill out this Scholarship Form by December 1st. You would still be responsible for paying half the tuition as well as the full materials fee.
Directions, Transportation and Parking: The CODEX Foundation Flex Space is a 30 minute walk from North Berkeley BART, or an 8 minute walk from the #72 San Pablo Avenue bus lines. If you need to drive, carpooling with other students is encouraged. There is street parking available.
Meet the Instructors:
Kate is a Fellow of Designer Bookbinders, a Homo Faber Master Artisan and a QEST tutor and scholar, funding study into continental fine binding techniques. Her books are in collections at the British Library, Bodleian, Miami,Yale and Berkeley Universities as well as the Library of Human Imagination and many private collections all over the world. She represented bookbinding as part of the Harewood Craft Bienniale. She is a regular binder to The Booker Prize and featured in a film on BBC The One Show exploring this. She runs the bookbinding department at Bath Spa University and is a regular tutor at West Dean College. She also runs private courses from her workshop and regularly lectures.
Sue Doggett creates artist's books and bindings and her creative interests include memory, the history of magic, haunting, mythology, folklore and women’s history. She has a degree in Visual Studies and Art History, and an MA in Design. She a Fellow of Designer Bookbinders and has lectured and led workshops in book arts in the UK, Europe and the USA. She teaches bookbinding and book arts at The City Lit in London, where she is also co-ordinator for Bookbinding and Calligraphy classes. Sue is commissioning editor of The New Bookbinder, the international journal of Designer Bookbinders. She is a regular binder of the Booker Prize, and her work is represented in the National Library of Australia, Tate Britain, The Folger Library, San Francisco Centre for Book Arts, Brooklyn Library special collections, Newlyn Library Special Collections, Oxford Brookes University, Manchester Metropolitan University and in private collections in Europe and USA.
